Our company is using a Citrix farm for some of our SQL Servers (2019), they currently have an SSD for their storage so our servers have the tempdb/data/logs all using the E drive. Does it make sense to try and have these files separated out since they are now on SSD drives? I have asked about the SSD drives and so far vendor just tells me they are super fast and there is very little latency.
Also, if there is any literature to support why they should be separated out please include that.
I am familiar with Microsoft's general rule of separating them for the sake of "placing the files on separate drives allows the I/O activity to occur at the same time for both the data and log files" but with SSDs and no physical moving 'heads', wondering if this is really as big of an issue as it has been in the past. If I am going to ask my vendor to reconfigure his drives I want to be able to back it up with something other than 'we have always done this'.
Thanks
March 16, 2022 at 1:13 pm
Let's be really clear, SSD are indeed, insanely fast.
If you put everything onto one SSD can you overwhelm it, despite it being insanely fast?
Yes.
There's a reason organizations like Pure Storage (who creates arrays of SSDs as a way to speed them up) exists. You can absolutely still bottleneck on a single SSD. Also, don't forget, even with an SSD, you've also only got one disk controller, another potential bottleneck.
Look, SSDs are wonderful. I wouldn't trade them for anything (except more SSDs). However, they aren't magic.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
Is your system already up and running, or are you in the process of configuring ?
If it's already up & running, and you do not have performance problems, leave it alone.
If you do have performance problems, isolate them to see if it's software or hardware.
There's not a "Yes" , "No" answer. Depends on your workload, upfront costs, maintenance costs. Why pay for extra hardware, if no benefit ?
March 16, 2022 at 5:55 pm
System already configured and running, just looking at optimizing the current environment.
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