{"id":1795,"date":"2014-04-28T13:08:15","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T20:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3.209.169.194\/blogs\/bobb\/?p=1795"},"modified":"2014-04-28T13:08:15","modified_gmt":"2014-04-28T20:08:15","slug":"last-week-azure-sql-database-part-4-performance-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/last-week-azure-sql-database-part-4-performance-levels\/","title":{"rendered":"Last week in Azure SQL Database \u2013 Part 4 &#8211; Performance Levels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this post I&#8217;ll address perhaps the most important of all the announcements, performance levels.<\/p>\n<p>The 6 new ASD tiers provide different levels of performance and different resource guarentees\/reservations. There is a chart here: <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/library\/azure\/dn741340.aspx\">http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/library\/azure\/dn741340.aspx<\/a> that lists performance levels (among other things) and there is a different chart here: <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/azure\/dn741336.aspx\">http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/azure\/dn741336.aspx<\/a> that gives more details on performance, predictability, and resource guarantees (like max worker threads and max sessions).<\/p>\n<p>The part concerning predictability is useful because ASD servers (physical servers in datacenters, not SQL Server master database they call &#8220;servers&#8221;) are shared. Because servers are shared, there is a syndrome that affects predictability called the &#8220;noisy neighbor&#8221; syndrome. Imagine someone who shared a physical server with you is performing a database stress test&#8230;maybe during your business&#8217; peak time&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Performance is defined in a new, curious, unit of measure called a DTU or Database Throughput Unit. DTUs are meant to allow comparison between the new tiers. Currently, there is no direct comparison between the new tiers and the old (Web\/Business) tiers, possibly because there was no performance SLA in the old tiers at all.<\/p>\n<p>DTUs are based on throughput with a described benchmark (The Azure SQL Database Benchmark, see <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/azure\/dn741327.aspx\">http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/azure\/dn741327.aspx<\/a>). This benchmark and how they run it are described in a nice level of detail. However, it would be better if the source code and running instructions could be released in future. Unless it&#8217;s already been released, and I missed it.<\/p>\n<p>For now, the DTU is a nice way to compare the tiers and a known benchmark is a nice thing but, to reiterate, there&#8217;s no way to ensure that you&#8217;re getting your bang-per-buck. And remember, at this point, any &#8220;smoke tests&#8221; you do on your own are being performed against a preview, not production. With Basic, sometimes it seems to take &#8220;a long while&#8221; (a nebulous term) to connect the first time to a new Basic tier database. After that, it&#8217;s faster (another nebulous term). Others have reported that Basic\/Standard is slower than Web\/Business on self-invented performance test. It would be nice, before the new tiers go GA, if they run the benchmark on a traditional Web\/Business database (maybe a few times and take the average, but post all detail runs) just to assuage the fears of folks before they need to convert to the new tiers. MHO&#8230; After everyone&#8217;s converted, we can start talking about DTUs again, and they become more interesting and meaningful.<\/p>\n<p>BTW, to get information about your databases (new or old tiers) in T-SQL, just use this query. It has all of the tier and objective information. There is some redundancy in the metadata, so start with SELECT * and choose the information you&#8217;d like to see:<\/p>\n<p>select o.name, o.description, st.*, do.*<br \/>\nfrom slo_objective_setting_selections sl<br \/>\njoin slo_service_objectives o<br \/>\non sl.objective_id = o.objective_id<br \/>\njoin slo_dimension_settings st<br \/>\non sl.setting_id = st.setting_id<br \/>\njoin slo_database_objectives do<br \/>\non o.objective_id = do.current_objective_id<br \/>\norder by o.name;<\/p>\n<p>Cheers, @bobbeauch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this post I&#8217;ll address perhaps the most important of all the announcements, performance levels. The 6 new ASD tiers provide different levels of performance and different resource guarentees\/reservations. There is a chart here: http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/library\/azure\/dn741340.aspx that lists performance levels (among other things) and there is a different chart here: http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/azure\/dn741336.aspx that gives more details on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sql-azure-database"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.9.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Last week in Azure SQL Database \u2013 Part 4 - Performance Levels - Bob Beauchemin<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/last-week-azure-sql-database-part-4-performance-levels\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Last week in Azure SQL Database \u2013 Part 4 - Performance Levels - Bob Beauchemin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In this post I&#8217;ll address perhaps the most important of all the announcements, performance levels. The 6 new ASD tiers provide different levels of performance and different resource guarentees\/reservations. 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