Stress Management

[Sonti Kumar M]

What exactly `Stress Management` is.
Any tools for assessing Stress Management?

[Don Romano]

I would assume that `stress management` is to provide a heavy transaction load on your SQL Server to insure that it can handle the volume. Make sure there are no locking issues to worry about, etc.

There are two levels of `stressing` your system... at the system hardware level (can the system handle the I/O, disk access, CPU, etc... requirements) and the application level (does the database lock up, index utilization, memory utilization, etc).

Basically... you want to make sure your system (hardware & software) can meet the business requirements under normal and peak operating activity.

Doing a search on Yahoo for Microsoft SQL Server Stress I see a company called www.bluecurve.com that seems to offer a few things.

In the SQL Server Developers Resource Kit (http://backoffice.microsoft.com/downtrial/moreinfo/sqldrk.asp) there is listed a: "SQL Server Load Simulator Version 2.3. The SQL Load Simulator application provides the ability to simulate a large number of user connections to Microsoft SQL Server from a single workstation. The application is a multithreaded 32-bit application and therefore will only run on the Windows NT and Windows 95 platforms. Sql LS allows the user to open one or more SQL script document(s) and assign between 1 and 64 execution threads to each document with a configurable delay between executions. The actual SQL statements that each thread execute can be generated dynamically at runtime by embedding ActiveX Script code in the SQL script. " The download address for this utility is: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/library/loadsim.exe

I also see a SQLHDTST (file system stress program) at http://support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/SQLHDTST.EXE.

I`m sure there are others but the cheapest will be the utilities from Microsoft. You can always turn on SQLTrace and have people exercise (just run the system in a normal mode) and collect the information. Than run the scripts

Don

[Bruce Clark]

There are some excellent capacity planning and testing resources at:

http://www.capicity.com

http://www.benchmarkresources.com
(they have an excellent handbook online now at:
http://www.benchmarkresources.com/handbook/index.html)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/developer/news/sqlperftune.htm - links to tons of tips from Microsoft on both SQL and NT tuning, etc.

HTH,

Bruce Clark