UPDATED 14.10.2020
How do you know if there are problems or issues caused by poor or sub-optimal data platform performance? Do you believe your data platform is performing well enough, or is there actually room for improvement?
The data platforms are a business-critical part of the infrastructure. The applications rely on the databases, and if there are hiccups in the database platform, it will cause a chain reaction and eventually hurt the customers’ user experience.
So, it is crucial to keep enough focus and resources in the performance management and optimization of the data platform to keep the business going and services running smoothly.
Have you experienced slowness in the systems that are running on the data platform? Is it hard or slow to react to the changing needs coming from the business that are reflected to the data platform? Does it take a lot of manual work managing or optimizing the data platform? These are some of the questions you should ask yourself to find out, if you have a need for performance improvement in your data platform.
Why should you optimize the data platform's performance?
Putting enough effort into performance management and optimization will pay off. If you can prevent problems, you will avoid the costs that your business needs to cover from any unexpected downtime. But you can also save in resources when you have less critical problem situations that sometimes happen also outside the office hours.
When your server architecture is well planned, and the data platform is compact, you will save in database platform life cycle costs. You will also need less time and resources for administration work and taking backups. Eventually you will see all the benefits of proactiveness below-the-line.
How to improve the performance output of your Microsoft data platform
Finding out if you are having performance related issues in your Microsoft data platform will require monitoring several performance counters in your SQL Servers. Preventing the problems will, on the other hand, require doing continuous optimization and life cycle management. Doing that efficiently will require implementing appropriate tools that increase automation and utilize machine learning. In addition, it is crucial to have enough skilled DBAs in your team.
In an ideal situation you will have all the routine tasks and monitoring automated with a proper software solution, along with experts who have the appropriate skills and who focus on the developing and optimization of the systems. When these are well balanced, you will not only see better performance output in your data platform, but also be more cost-efficient.
We have more information on the typical performance problems you can run into with your SQL Servers in our ebook — A 5-step guide for improving your Data Platform performance. We will also give insight on how to:
- Solve problems faster
- Find out the current condition of the data platform
- Plan the platform capacity smarter
- Utilize predictive alerting
- Utilize automation and machine learning
We also recommend you look into our previous articles on How to shift from reactive to proactive data platform management, Pinal Dave's thoughts on how to prevent performance issues with capacity planning, and How to perfect SQL Server wellbeing throughout the life cycle.
