Post reply

SQL 2008 Std. Edition Maintenance Plan Wizard

  • December 18, 2009 at 10:56 am

    #218868

    Hello All,

    I have a couple of questions regarding setting up a maintenance plan in 2008 (Standard Edition).

    1. When you are setting up a Rebuild Index task you have an option to "Sort Results in tempdb" as well as "keep index online while reindexing"

    I have to scenarios which I would appreciate some direction of the pro's / con's on what would be recommended for these settings.

    Scenario #1

    SQL 2005 / 2008 Std. install with separate drives for mdf (i.e. E:\) and ldf files (i.e. F:\) which have the system db's on the same drives

    1-3 gb's of RAM and RAID 5 disc configuration

    Questions

    I am pretty sure you cannot (based on what i found on BOL), but I will ask to be 100% clear. Can you enable 'keep index online while reindexing' for a standard version of 2005 / 2008? I have read that it is only for Dev / Enterprise editions.

    if that is true and it is only for advanced editions, why is it an option in the standard edition menu?

    what happens if you enable it? does it just Not work?

    Scenario #2

    SQL 2008 Enterprise server with 16 gb's ram with separate drives for system databases as well as multiple drives (6 to 8) for user database with a 1 data file per drive configuration RAID 5 configuration

    Database sizes vary between 200 gb to 500gb

    Question

    what would be the best or most recommended method of maintaining databases of this size?

    Run with a maintenance plan wizard type setup? or find a custom script to maintain databases of this size?

    I have seen posts where people run the "keep index online while reindexing' and the process takes an extremely long time 10-20 hours???

    Lastly, is there any combination of the settings that either enhance / hinder / cancel out performance based on the above scenarios?

    Thanks in advance for any experiences or recommendations.

    Lee

  • December 21, 2009 at 5:31 am

    #1094683

    can't help with std edition as I only use enterprise. on-line rebuilds may be tricky if the index is large and a volatile table - it's possible your index may never rebuild. The view I have about on-line rebuilds is that you can't be 100% sure when it will finish or what imapct it will have.

    I always set sort in tempdb on, mainly as I usually have dedicated drives'luns for tempdb - I've never tested to see if there's a difference and I'm not sure I have anything suitable to run such as test as my non prod boxes don't have the same config ( as such )

    The big benefit is parallel index rebuilds which I don't think you get in std edition - I have tested parallel vs non parallel index rebuilds and there was a significant difference there.

    I think you'll have to test which suits your environment best. If you have a window for index rebuilds then rebuild offline, probably quicker.

    [font="Comic Sans MS"]The GrumpyOldDBA[/font]
    www.grumpyolddba.co.uk
    http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/grumpyolddba/

Viewing 2 posts - 1 through 1 (of 1 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply