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Ensure that the best practices to design the database layout are followed to get an optimal database performance. SQL Server Database files are mostly categorized in random and sequential files. Storing all the files in one partition or drive is not a recommended database design. To use SDS storage pool capacity and I/O performance, database and log files are shared across different disk partitions.
The following figure shows the SQL server pod database layout. The layout includes database files (mdfs, ndfs), transaction log files (ldfs), and temp files which are distributed across different partitions for a better database performance.
Figure 13. Pod database layout
TempDB files are moved out from their default location to another persistent volume to optimize the database performance. Preallocating space for TempDB and assigning a large file size accommodates a typical workload and results in good performance. Also, increasing the number of TempDB files reduces the database contention. This reference architecture recommends configuring 16 tempdb files to improve the database performance. For more information about configuring tempdb files, See Reducing allocation contention in TempDB.
The following table shows partition size and file systems used for this solution to store a TPC-C like database.
The following table shows partition size and file systems used for this solution to store a TPC-C like database.
Table 3. Partition size and file systems
Volume name | Size | File system | Purpose |
/dev/scinia | 304 GB | xfs | SQL data volume to store datafile |
/dev/scinib | 200 GB | xfs | SQL log volume to store database transaction log files |
/dev/scinic | 304 GB | xfs | SQL temp volume to store tempdb files |