[SQLServer] TempDB Recommendations

I was going trough a nice article , so sharing apart from it regarding the recommendations for TempDB.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cindygross/archive/2009/11/20/compilation-of-sql-server-tempdb-io-best-practices.aspx

Pre-size TempDB appropriately. Leave autogrow on with instant file initialization enabled, but try to configure the database so that it never hits an autogrow event. Make sure the autogrow growth increment is appropriate.

· Follow general IO recommendations for fast IO.

· If your TempDB experiences metadata contention (waitresource = 2:1:1 or 2:1:3), you should split out your data onto multiple files. Generally you will want somewhere between 1/4 and 1 file per physical core. If you don't want to wait to see if any metadata contention occurs you may want to start out with around 1/4 to 1/2 the number of data files as CPUs up to about 8 files. If you think you might need more than 8 files we should do some testing first to see what the impact is. For example, if you have 8 physical CPUs you may want to start with 2-4 data files and monitor for metadata contention.

· All TempDB data files should be of equal size.

· As with any database, your TempDB performance may improve if you spread it out over multiple drives. This only helps if each drive or mount point is truly a separate IO path. Whether each TempDB will have a measurable improvement from using multiple drives depends on the specific system.

· In general you only need one log file. If you need to have multiple log files because you don't have enough disk space on one drive that is fine, but there is no direct benefit from having the log on multiple files or drives.

· On SQL Server 2000 and more rarely on SQL Server 2005 or later you may want to enable trace flag -T1118.

· Avoid shrinking TempDB (or any database) files unless you are very certain you will never need the space again.

[T-SQL] Move TempDB from one drive to another drive if TempDB is full.

If you come across following errors in log file, please follow the direction below.

Source: MSSQLSERVER
Event ID: 17052
Description: The LOG FILE FOR DATABASE 'tempdb' IS FULL.
Back up the TRANSACTION LOG FOR the DATABASE TO free
up SOME LOG SPACE

Make sure that TempDB is set to autogrow and do not set a maximum size for TempDB. If the current drive is too full to allow autogrow events, then arrange a bigger drive, or add files to TempDB on another device (using ALTER DATABASE as described below and allow those files to autogrow.

Move TempDB from one drive to another drive. There are major two reasons why TempDB needs to move from one drive to other drive.
1) TempDB grows big and the existing drive does not have enough space.
2) Moving TempDB to another file group which is on different physical drive helps to improve database disk read, as they can be read simultaneously.

Follow direction below exactly to move database and log from one drive (c:) to another drive (d:) and (e:).

Open Query Analyzer and connect to your server. Run this script to get the names of the files used for TempDB.
USE TempDB
GO
EXEC sp_helpfile
GO

Results will be something like:
name fileid filename filegroup size
——- —— ————————————————————– ———- ——-
tempdev 1 C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQLdatatempdb.mdf PRIMARY 16000 KB
templog 2 C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQLdatatemplog.ldf NULL 1024 KB
along with other information related to the database. The names of the files are usually tempdev and demplog by default. These names will be used in next statement. Run following code, to move mdf and ldf files.
USE master
GO
ALTER DATABASE TempDB MODIFY FILE
(NAME = tempdev, FILENAME = 'd:datatempdb.mdf')
GO
ALTER DATABASE TempDB MODIFY FILE
(NAME = templog, FILENAME = 'e:datatemplog.ldf')
GO

The definition of the TempDB is changed. However, no changes are made to TempDB till SQL Server restarts. Please stop and restart SQL Server and it will create TempDB files in new locations.