If you haven’t worked with MSDTC before you might mistake it for a simple straight forward service which is easy to setup, configure, and troubleshoot. I too once thought that until I stumbled into the thick forest of MSDTC with those promises and didn’t return for years all grizzly and worn (ok it wasn’t that bad).
What comes next is my contribution to those who follow into the dark denizens of MSDTC hoping to fix things so they can go home.
When called in to diagnose a performance issue, what are the 1st things you review? How much of the environment do you check before going straight to the line of code you think is at fault? Because of the urgency many DBAs and developers make the mistake of diving straight into the code looking for an answer. What if the solution is not in the code but rather in the overall environment? Environmental troubleshooting is often a quick and overlooked method for discovering and configuring SQL Server. Perform at a higher level without the need for application change controls!
NOTE: this article is the summary of a 3 part series on optimizing SQL Server configurations along with Windows Server and VMware. Please read these first then return to read the rest.
Nowadays everyone virtualizes. SQL Server is no exception. VMware is the most common hypervisor by far (sorry Hyper-V) so it is very beneficial for DBAs to know their way around vSphere, understand how to optimally configure SQL Server and VMware to work together, and know the red flags to watch for performance.
This is part 2 of a 3 part series about SQL Server Environmental Diagnostics. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 as well.
Diagnostics and the optimization of configurations are important for any SQL Server instance. However, it is not only the database server which need attention. The operating system, Windows Server, needs consideration as well. There are various general configurations to consider optimizing on any Windows Server hosting a SQL Server instance.
NOTE: this deals only with Windows Server. I know that Linux is now recently an option but this article will deal only with Windows Server.
This is part 2 of a 3 part series about SQL Server Environmental Diagnostics. Part 1 can be read here.