SQLBits 2012

The NUMA internals of SQL Server 2012

This session reviews the purpose of NUMA, how it changes the internal behaviours of Windows and SQL Server 2012 and NUMA related performance monitoring.

Most servers we deploy today use a NUMA rather than an SMP mainboard architecture and while we might conceptually understand what that means we often don’t appreciate the subtle changes to how Windows and SQLOS work when they run on a NUMA architecture server. To make things even more interesting, we can deploy Soft-NUMA ourselves to request some of the behaviour changes ourselves.

This session will cover:

what is NUMA and why it exists,
how Windows responds to NUMA hardware
how SQL Server 2012 changes its behaviour in the NUMA world.

We’ll then look at some of the benefits NUMA brings us and how we sometimes need to adapt our monitoring for the NUMA world.

Gavin Payne's previous sessions

An introduction to SQL Server for data scientists

A little bit of knowledge about how SQL Server works can go a long way towards making large data engineering queries run faster.

Designing quality SQL Server 2014 solutions

This session shows how you can use SQL Server 2014’s features to meet your solution’s non-functional requirements and ensure operational success.

The NUMA internals of SQL Server 2012

This session reviews the purpose of NUMA, how it changes the internal behaviours of Windows and SQL Server 2012 and NUMA related performance monitoring.

Through the virtual looking glass - monitoring virtualised SQL

Virtualisation changes the way you need to monitor the performance of a virtualised instance of SQL Server. In this session I will demonstrate a balanced and well-rounded approach to performance monitoring in the virtual world along with best practices to avoid poor virtualised performance.

Oracle for SQL Server DBAs

If you’ve only ever chosen to use Microsoft database products then there’s a chance you might hide a curiosity deep down about the Oracle database platform; or like me a few years ago be told that your next big production system will use it and now’s the time to upskill. This session introduces some key concepts and differences about the Oracle database platform to people like myself who are used to the UI-heavy Windows-based database world and hopefully make you curious enough to want to at least give it a try when you get back home.