The course is part of this learning path
This course focuses on maximizing the performance of hardware and infrastructure relating to database servers. You will learn the best ways to improve an SQL server's performance and that of its databases through infrastructure choice and configuration settings.
Learning Objectives
- Learn how to set up disks for maximum performance
- Understand how to boost file performance and how to use instant file initialization
- Understand how to optimize TempDB and choose the right VM for your workloads
- Learn how to manage an instance's resources
- Learn how to configure your database as well as your SQL Server system accounts
- Understand how to use Intelligent Query Processing to optimize database performance
- Understand the benefits of using Azure SQL Serverless
Intended Audience
- Database administrators
- Solutions architects
- Anyone interesting in improving the performance of their database
Prerequisites
To the most out of this course, you will need to be familiar with basic Azure concepts, have some knowledge of computer hard drives and networking, and be familiar with databases and their servers.
Typically when people think of database storage it is the hard drive where the data files live. Speed and volume, or capacity, are the two main attributes of storage we're interested in. In terms of cost, speed and volume have an inverse relationship. That is, the more you want of one, the less you can have of the other for the same cost.
Storage also includes the location of database backups. Making regular full, differential, and log backups are crucial to a successful disaster recovery program. As the backup process takes place regularly and impacts database performance to some degree, backup storage performance needs to be considered.
Having said that, backups consume a lot of disc space while getting very little use. So you wouldn't want to spend a lot on storing what you would hope to be redundant data. These considerations mentioned so far only apply to databases running in a VM or on-premise. Azure SQL platform as a service and SQL-managed instance, have managed environments that aim to keep your database operating optimally for any given workload service tier combination.
Hallam is a software architect with over 20 years experience across a wide range of industries. He began his software career as a Delphi/Interbase disciple but changed his allegiance to Microsoft with its deep and broad ecosystem. While Hallam has designed and crafted custom software utilizing web, mobile and desktop technologies, good quality reliable data is the key to a successful solution. The challenge of quickly turning data into useful information for digestion by humans and machines has led Hallam to specialize in database design and process automation. Showing customers how leverage new technology to change and improve their business processes is one of the key drivers keeping Hallam coming back to the keyboard.