Where Do You See Biggest Tuning Challenges?
When you’re working with your databases, do you see the areas you go after for tuning and for performance in general changing?
There have been more and more instances where we’re working with people on tweaking installations where the specific areas to consider are getting… fuzzier. This comes from the fact that so many different approaches are available for your applications (different platforms, cloud vs. on-premises, etc.) and each of those, along with options you pick on each, can impact what tools you have for tweaking, for reporting on tweakable elements.
For example, working on SQL Server on-premise on a dedicate box is one thing, but on a virtual machine introduces new variables. You have to consider other workloads on the system while considering your specific SQL Server VM. We’ve seen this come up more and more as people work to optimize hardware utilization.
If you’re working with any cloud-based instances (at any point in your infrastructure), keep in mind that different metrics are exposed to you, and potentially addressable. You may, or may not, have access to tweaks and tuning options in the cloud, depending on how you have deployed things and which platform you use.
One areas too to consider is a mixed environment. This doesn’t just mean "hybrid" cloud, but also mutliple pieces of database technology in the cloud – perhaps VMs, databases as a service, all living to serve a single application. It can be very challenging to tune this type of environment.
How are you approaching tweaking and tuning – do you have any surprises you’ve run up against as you build out your procedures to support applications?