Microsoft SQL Server performance

Deeply understand your Microsoft SQL Server performance.

Data-driven Microsoft SQL Server performance

A simple Microsoft SQL Server performance tuning can speed your application significantly. Before tuning, however, you need actionable data about your database's current performance.

Before tuning your MSSQL server make sure you go through the following database performance checklist:

  • Verify your hosts’ health by looking at server data
  • Ensure that your virtualization works fine by analyzing virtual machine metrics
  • Optimize database access with application data
  • Analyze the network impact of database communication with network data

Verify your hosts’ health with server data

By checking CPU, memory, and disk space metrics you make sure your Microsoft SQL Server processes have sufficient resources available.

  • CPU - MSSQL will deliver better performance on faster CPUs. When monitoring virtual machines, also monitor the virtual host that the machines run on. Numbers like CPU ready time are of particular importance.
  • Page faults per seconds - Having thousands of page faults per second indicates that your hosts are out of memory.
  • Disk space - For an optimal MSSQL performance make sure you have lots of disk space available on your hard drive.
MSSQL CPU metrics
MSSQL memory metrics
MSSQL disk metrics

Know which commands affect database performance

Knowing which services access your MSSQL server is vital for finding database performance bottlenecks. If there is a single service that’s suffering from bad database response times, dig deeper into that service’s metrics to find out what’s causing the problem.

Take a deeper look into the service’s communication with the database and find out which commands affect the database performance the most.

Services accessing MSSQL
MSSQL service backtrace

Verify your app’s database connection

Even if the way you query your database is perfectly fine, you may still experience inferior database performance. Make sure if your application’s database connection is correctly sized.

Keep an eye on network metrics

If a database performance issue suddenly appears, process level visibility comes in handy in identifying a failing component.

Optimize your MSSQL performance with Dynatrace

Dynatrace monitors and analyzes the activity of your Microsoft SQL servers across all platforms, providing visibility down to individual database statements.

Key benefits:

  • Auto-detect your MSSQL databases
  • Visualize how apps use your database
  • See detailed metrics for every single MSSQL statement
  • Directly relate MSSQL performance metrics to queries

Get a free trial

Want to see what intelligent observability powered by AI and automation can do for you? Get a free trial of the Dynatrace platform now.
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