Yes, it is already time for T-SQL Tuesday again (well one week away, time for the invite). I have been thoroughly enjoying T-SQL Tuesday (especially the posts ones from Brad Schulz) but the fact that this is #004 means time is flying too fast lately.
You Don’t Know What T-SQL Tuesday Is Yet?
Adam Machanic (Also on twitter as @AdamMachanic) had a great idea 4 months back – Invite new and existing SQL Server bloggers to post about the same topic on the same day. The results have been excellent – diverse skill sets and data related job roles all posting from differing perspectives on the same issue.
Since this is still early in the game, a quick list of the post roundups from the first 3 topics:
- #001 Adam Machanic started this off with a topic of Date/Time tricks
- #002 Adam then wanted to hear about your Puzzling Situations
- #003 Rob Farley got romantic on us and asked about Relationships
IO, IO, It’s Off To Disk We Go!
IO is on my mind lately. It could be some recent “discussions” with a SAN administrator, clients with disk performance issues or helping developers with some queries that are doing lots and lots of needless reads. It could be that I just changed my son’s diaper and it was heavy on the Output side (time to start potty training, I think…)
Actually, as a DBA, IO is often on my mind. So that is what this month’s theme is: IO.
Like last month’s theme, you could treat this topic in a few different ways. Perhaps some best practices that you have implemented for disk allocation. A professional development topic on working better with your storage administrators? A case study with a vendor or type of storage system? A developer writing about better managing reads in your queries? You could brag about your latest experiment with SSDs? Maybe a walk down memory lane of storage performance even. How about writing a beginners guide to setting up optimal storage? Have some really busy SQL Servers running on a virtual? How is your IO configured?
Well, you get the idea, the post has to have something to do with IO but it doesn’t have to be about T-SQL necessarily.
There’s always rules…
Once again, please note the time is in UTC. I also echo earlier encouragements to feel free to write your post ahead of time and schedule it. The rules are around when the post publishes, not when it is written.These rules are the same as the previous couple of T-SQL Tuesday’s but I’ll recap:
- The Post must go live between 00:00:00 UTC on Tuesday the 9th of March and 00:00:00 UTC on Wednesday the 10th. If it isn’t, it can’t be included in the round up post.
- Your post must link back to this post here (Trackback or Comment)
- It is your responsibility to verify the trackback or comment appears (My commenting system has a difficult time with trackbacks – If I can’t resolve it by next week I will disable it and use standard WP comments but please still verify and add your own comment with a link back to your T-SQL Tuesday post and it will be included in the roundup.
That’s it. Hopefully those aren’t too difficult to follow 
Remember
Not a rule but a great idea. A lot of the folks who read and participate are on twitter. Follow the hashtag #TSQL2sDay and when your post goes live, tweet a link to it with that tag.
Want To Host?
All you have to do is participate in at least two events and let Adam Machanic know. You can tweet him or leave a comment on his blog, all described in his first T-SQL Tuesday Invitation.
If you need any more clarification, leave a comment. I will respond in the comments or update this post if necessary. Have fun thinking of a topic and I look forward to reading the posts!
(Gulp) Thanks, Mike, for your comments in your opening paragraph… but now (gulp) it’s not like I have any pressure on me or anything. 8^)
I don’t have a clue what I’m going to write about… but then again, I didn’t have a clue what to write in Rob’s #003 either until the day before it was due.
Better put my thinking cap on now… Perhaps I’ll take the week off… Hmmm…
–Brad
No pressure, Brad… Mwooohahaha I am sure you’ll come up with something. It is alright if it is slightly orthogonal to the topic. I figured from you we’d see some sort of neat T-SQL trick and multiple ways to do something with the IO impact being highlighted. Who knows though, maybe you have some DBA up your sleeve also. Either way, your posts so far have been great and your blog is truly a pleasure to read. It’s not uncommon for me have a big smile while reading a post and learning at the same time I am being entertained.
Thanks again, Mike, for your kind words… I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed my past work.
I have an inkling of something I can use… something along the lines of what you mentioned… an idea I’ve been considering blogging about for a while.
Or I might choose something that is orthogonal to the nth degree… from another dimension completely… Mwooohoohoohahahaha.
We’ll see…
Mike,
It seems that your blog doesn’t properly support trackbacks. There is none from my post mentioning this, nor from the various Tweetback sources. Might want to fix that before Tuesday.
Should be good now, Adam. I dumped JS-KIT/Echo… Trackbacks were always a hassle and the stock commenting seems fine.
Hi Mike,
Here is a link to my post:
http://glennberrysqlperformance.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!45041418ECCAA960!3880.entry
Mike,
Trackbacks aren’t working yet and here is my post for this installment.
http://sankarreddy.com/2010/03/how-can-i-tell-if-a-sql-server-system-is-affected-by-forwarded-records/
Here is the next one.
http://sankarreddy.com/2010/03/transaction-log-block-checksum/
Here is my contribution to T-SQL Tuesday: Improve Performance by Reducing IO – Creating Covered Index
http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2010/03/09/sql-server-improve-performance-by-reducing-io-creating-covered-index/
Kind Regards,
Pinal
My post is at: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/archive/2010/03/09/t-sql-tuesday-query-cost.aspx
Here’s my post: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/michael_coles/archive/2010/03/08/t-sql-tuesday-004-why-doesn-t-tde-encrypt-my-filestream-data.aspx
Hi Mike – here’s my contribution:
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/merrill_aldrich/archive/2010/03/08/t-sql-tuesday-004-real-world-ssd-s.aspx
My contribution
http://englishtosql.squarespace.com/blog/2010/3/8/tsql-tuesday-004-whos-using-my-io.html
Here is my contribution.
IO IO IO
Here is my contribution http://blog.gre-sqlserver-solutions.com/2010/03/tsql-tuesday-4-io.html
I put a disk IO poll up… will post a comment here with results sometime tomorrow.
I’m writing a series on SSD performance and put up Part 1 for today’s entry: http://kendalvandyke.blogspot.com/2010/03/solid-state-disk-performance-hands-on.html
Okay, Mike, you asked for it… I’ve really gone over the edge this time:
http://bradsruminations.blogspot.com/2010/03/this-article-on-recurson-is-entitled.html
Since I put the link back after the fact the trackback probably won’t work. So here’s link URL to my post.
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/io-io-its-off-to-disk-we-go/
http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/post/Inside-sysdm_db_index_physical_stats.aspx
T-SQL Tuesday #004: IO — Where Are My TempDB Objects?
Okay. All posts after this Reply will not be included in the Roundup Post. Adam’s rule’s indicated it should be done at 00:00:00 GMT. I am being nice and giving a 2.75 hour grace period since it encouraged a smart geek to put out another blog post (Aaron) and introduced me to a new blog (Brian).
After this post, all pingbacks that are attempting to put a post in to the fray will have to be deleted to keep with the rules. Comments are always welcome, of course.
I am in the process of reading the posts and working on the Roundup. I hope to have that out by Wednesday or Thursday.
I will leave the poll up if anyone wants to participate
http://stefbauer.wordpress.com/poll-questions/
So far the response of 8 people does not make much of a statistical study
But of the 8 responses 50% are using SAN…
50% Storage Area Network (SAN) (4 responses)
25% Local drives (2 responses)
13% Huh? What are you talking about? (1 response)
13% Network Attached Storage (NAS) (1 response)
0% Solid State Storage
o% USB (please really?!?)
Stefan – Thanks for the poll. It was a good idea.