Posted by Ed Murphy on 02/15/07 16:07

Mark wrote:

> Hi...I have a server that responds to web pages
> and back end processing....im not sure the best place to start to increase
> performance.....
> im a programmer..not a super dba but im pretty good...
> i have two servers at the isp site....was
> thinking of putting all the backen store procedures on one server and when
> there invoked to retrieve the record sets from server1 ....

You want to minimize the amount of data that has to travel over the
network connection between the servers. I'd put all the SQL stuff
(tables and stored procedures) on one server, all the web front-end
stuff (HTML/ASP/PHP/whatever and images) on the other.

> looking for some ideas...on how to make this server performance
> increase.....

Memory is faster than disk is faster than network, so:

1) Maximize RAM. There's some slightly non-trivial configuration
involved in getting SQL Server to use more than 2 GB. But don't
let it use quite /all/ the RAM, you need to leave some for the OS.

2) Optimize disk usage. Ideally, keep data, temp, logs, and other
stuff (including the OS) separate. Someone more familiar with
the different types of RAID can chime in here.

3) Minimize network traffic. Filter data server-side, unless the
ugliness of the resulting code outweighs the speed gain.

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