Christian Bolton's SQL Server Blog - All Comments

re: MVP Award for SQL Server

Christian — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:52:08 GMT

Thanks guys! It's a great honour. Congratulations to you as well James!

re: MVP Award for SQL Server

james.rowland-jones — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:03:42 GMT

Congratulations Christian! Well deserved..

re: MVP Award for SQL Server

tonyrogerson — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:56:55 GMT

Well done Christian and well deserved - welcome to the ranks!

Tony.

How important is it to understand SQL Server Wait Statistics??

Desiree's Blog — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:21:49 GMT

To be clear, it is very important to understand wait statistics. It is a key part of tracking down application

SQLBits: Advanced SQL Server Troubleshooting workshop - £150 early bird only 3 days left

Christian Bolton's SQL Server Blog — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:18:03 GMT

There are only 3 days left to take advantage of the 25% early bird discount for this workshop. The full

re: Microsoft Certified Master Certification just announced

Christian — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:01:38 GMT

Per Farny, the Program Manager for the Master and Architect certs has posted some more details here:

blogs.msdn.com/.../more-on-the-certified-master-programs-from-me-per-the-program-owner.aspx

Ist der MCTIP nicht mehr das Ma? der (MS-)Dinge? - MCSEboard.de MCSE Forum

Ist der MCTIP nicht mehr das Ma? der (MS-)Dinge? - MCSEboard.de MCSE Forum — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:57:52 GMT

Pingback from Ist der MCTIP nicht mehr das Ma? der (MS-)Dinge? - MCSEboard.de MCSE Forum

re: Disk Sector Alignment

Christian — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 22:32:52 GMT

Hi Joe,

I can tell you for certain that it will only consume 1MB of the first partition because you only need to align the first one. If you think of all the blocks on all the partitions on your disk unravelled into one long piece of string. Sector alignment is kind of like chopping off the fraid bit at the beginning so you have one contiguous perfect piece. You don't need to cut out another piece every time a new partition is defined along the length.

As to 1024KB being a catch-all value that is certainly my understanding but I don't claim to be a storage expert. However, if you install Windows Server 2008 it would automatically align the first partition to 1024KB anyway for no other reason than to stop you having to do it which adds some feasibility to my understanding.

There's a nice storage whitepaper here: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/subsys_perf.mspx that discusses related stuff but there's nothing in there that'll make your choice any easier unfortunately.

Cheers,

Christian

re: Disk Sector Alignment

Joe — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:15:04 GMT

We are using HP EVA 4100.

We tried asking HP representatives about the right value for sector alignment. At first they didn't know what we're talking about, but then they gave us the number 64...

I'm not sure if this is the right number for this system.

My question is, can we just use 1024 and be sure that it will work well?

As I understand from your post, it will only consume 1Mb of storage for each partition, but will give us the certinty that we are perfectly aligned. Am I correct here?

Are there any problems with setting a bigger number than the actual number?

Thanks,

Joe.

Coeo and useful blog posts

Justin Langford's Blog — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:28:13 GMT

I've worked with Christian Bolton for a number of years - and known him a few years longer! Since establishing

Coeo and useful blog posts

Justin Langford's Blog — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:28:11 GMT

I've worked with Christian Bolton for a number of years - and known him a few years longer! Since establishing

Coeo and useful blog posts

Justin Langford's Blog — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:28:08 GMT

I've worked with Christian Bolton for a number of years - and known him a few years longer! Since establishing

re: Disk Sector Alignment

Christian — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:03:41 GMT

Thanks for your comments. Post a link if you find those documents :)

re: Disk Sector Alignment

HumbleDBA — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:09:49 GMT

Just found your blog...a little gold mine for the DBA.

I've come across this too, and funnily enough, when speaking to the EMC SAN Vendor they knew about this but didn't implement initially. We were in a high perfomance environment where every ounce of performance was needed. We got changes made to align the Sectors. We certainly saw some quite significant improvements too (some approx 20% - I have a doc somewhere, which I'll try and dig out, which suggests improvements of up to 30% may be achieved in some environments).

Great stuff, Christian. And I look forward to the book.

http://blogs.solidq.com/en/rdyess/lists/posts/post.aspx?id=8

TrackBack — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:32:58 GMT