Book Image

SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines

By : Joey D'Antoni, Louis Davidson, Allan Hirt, John Martin, Anthony Nocentino, Tim Radney, Randolph West
Book Image

SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines

By: Joey D'Antoni, Louis Davidson, Allan Hirt, John Martin, Anthony Nocentino, Tim Radney, Randolph West

Overview of this book

Deploying SQL Server on Azure virtual machines allows you to work on full versions of SQL Server in the cloud without having to maintain on-premises hardware. The book begins by introducing you to the SQL portfolio in Azure and takes you through SQL Server IaaS scenarios, before explaining the factors that you need to consider while choosing an OS for SQL Server in Azure VMs. As you progress through the book, you'll explore different VM options and deployment choices for IaaS and understand platform availability, migration tools, and best practices in Azure. In later chapters, you'll learn how to configure storage to achieve optimized performance. Finally, you'll get to grips with the concept of Azure Hybrid Benefit and find out how you can use it to maximize the value of your existing on-premises SQL Server. By the end of this book, you'll be proficient in administering SQL Server on Microsoft Azure and leveraging the tools required for its deployment.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)
8
Index

SQL Server Configuration with OLTP

In online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads, much of the workload is made up of thousands of low-cost queries. When a query comes into SQL Server, the query optimizer creates an execution plan for that query. The execution plan determines how SQL Server will gather the data, such as which tables and indexes to use. It also assigns an overall cost to each query regarding how much effort it will take to complete that query. That query cost is known as the estimated subtree cost. SQL Server has a method by which it determines which queries it will process in parallel and those that it won't. It determines this by the cost threshold for parallelism (CTP) value.

By default, the initial value set for CTP is 5. It is widely accepted that this value is too low for most environments and should be increased to a higher value. The appropriate value will ultimately depend on the workload running on the server. This can be determined by looking...