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.