Kinds of Storage Testing in SQL Server
Kinds of Storage Testing in SQL Server
By : Kasim Wirama, MCDBA, MCITP, MVP SQL Server
Before a new database is deployed into production server, it is strongly suggested that storage of the server box is tested against performance perspective to know how far the storage capability to handle normal load and under heavy load. There are 3 kinds of test, i.e. performance test, stress test and real life performance.
Performance test is a test to some or all database objects to get how fast a thing gets done. Sometimes performance test is more like stress test but the objective between them are different. In performance test, the objective is how fast you can get something done, not how many you have it done.
Stress test is used to get information in what extent a database server could hold up for concurrent request. Stress test could be said parallel test while performance test is called sequential test. Result correctness would be in consideration when doing both kind of test.
Real life performance test is a mixed test between performance test and stress test. Usually use case is used to get information for the test. What is difference between real life performance test and 2 previous tests? Real life performance refers to actual unit of works a user does while stress/performance test refers to smaller server subsystem such as single disk’s I/O or few disk I/O’s together. Talking about use case, you can devise what kind operation might be involved whether they are random/sequential read or random/sequential write for each activities in a use case.
For example of sequence of customer billing info activities in a use case:
- query customer for general info
operation : random/sequential read.
- get customer detail info
operation : random/sequential read
- get customer billing summary
operation : random/sequential read
- get customer billing history
operation : random/sequential read
- update customer data
operation : random write