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Best practices for SQL Server in a SharePoint Server farm

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When you configure and maintain SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 relational databases on SQL Server 2014 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), SQL Server 2016, or SQL Server 2017 RTM, you have to choose options that promote performance and security. Likewise, you have to choose options that promote performance and security when you configure and maintain SharePoint Server 2013 relational databases on SQL Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), SQL Server 2012, and SQL Server 2014.

The best practices in this article are ordered based on the sequence in which they would apply, from installing and configuring SQL Server, to deploying SharePoint Server, and then maintaining the farm. Most of the practices apply to all versions of SQL Server. Practices that are unique to SQL Server versions are shown in separate sections.

Note

If you plan to use SQL Server Business Intelligence components in a SharePoint Server 2016 farm you must use SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.1 or later. You can now download SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.1 or later to use the SQL Server Power Pivot for SharePoint add-in. You can also use Power View by installing SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) in SharePoint-integrated mode and the SSRS front-end add-in from the SQL Server installation media.

For more information, download the new Deploying SQL Server 2016 PowerPivot and Power View in SharePoint 2016 white paper. For details about configuring and deploying business intelligence in a multiple server SharePoint Server 2016 farm, download Deploying SQL Server 2016 PowerPivot and Power View in a Multi-Tier SharePoint 2016 Farm.

Note

If you plan to use SQL Server Business Intelligence components in a SharePoint Server 2013 farm you must use SQL Server 2012 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SQL Server 2014. For information about SQL Server 2012 with SP1 BI and SharePoint Server 2013, see Install SQL Server BI Features with SharePoint 2013 (SQL Server 2012 SP1). For more information about SQL Server 2014 and SharePoint Server 2013, see Install SQL Server 2014 Business Intelligence Features.

Important

Best practices in this article apply to the Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) of SQL Server with SharePoint Server.

Use a dedicated server for SQL Server

To ensure optimal performance for farm operations, we recommend that you install SQL Server on a dedicated server that does not run other farm roles and does not host databases for other applications. The only exception is deployment of SharePoint Server 2016 or 2019 in a Single-Server farm role or SharePoint 2013 on a stand-alone server, which is meant for development or testing, and is not recommended for production use. For more information, see Description of MinRole and associated services in SharePoint Servers 2016 and 2019 and Install SharePoint Servers 2016 or 2019 on one server.

Note

The recommendation to use a dedicated server for relational databases also applies to deploying SQL Server in virtual environments.

Configure specific SQL Server settings before you deploy SharePoint Server

To ensure consistent behavior and performance, configure the following options and settings before you deploy SharePoint Server.

  • Due to potential performance issues with maintaining multiple SQL instances, we recommend that you use a single instance of SQL Server per deployed database server.

  • Do not enable auto-create statistics on SharePoint content databases. Enabling auto-create statistics is not supported for SharePoint Server. SharePoint Server configures the required settings during provisioning and upgrade. Manually enabling auto-create statistics on a SharePoint database can significantly change the execution plan of a query. The SharePoint databases either use a stored procedure that maintains the statistics (proc_UpdateStatistics) or rely on SQL Server to do this.

  • For SharePoint Server 2013, Maintenance Plans are managed by SharePoint:

    • SQL statistics are managed by the health rule "Databases used by SharePoint have outdated index statistics" that calls proc_updatestatics
    • Content databases have the Auto Update Statistics property set to False

  • For SharePoint Servers 2016 and 2019, SQL administrator must create Maintenance Plans for SharePoint content databases:

    • SQL statistics are not managed by the health rule "Databases used by SharePoint have outdated index statistics"
    • Content databases have the Auto Update Statistics property set to True `

  • Set max degree of parallelism (MAXDOP) to 1 for instances of SQL Server that host SharePoint databases to make sure that a single SQL Server process serves each request.

    Important

    Setting the max degree of parallelism to any other number can cause a less optimal query plan to be used that will decrease SharePoint Server performance.

  • To help simplify maintenance, such as to make it easier to move databases to another server, create DNS aliases that point to the IP address for all instances of SQL Server. For more information about DNS or Hostname aliases, see How to Add a Hostname Alias for a SQL Server Instance.

For more information about these SQL Server settings and options, see Set SQL Server options.

Harden the database server before you deploy SharePoint Server

We recommend that you plan for, and harden the database server before you deploy SharePoint Server. For more information, see:

Configure database servers for performance and availability

As is the case with front-end servers and application servers, the configuration for database servers affects how well SharePoint Server performs. Some databases have to be on the same server as other databases. Conversely, some databases cannot be on the same server as other databases. For more information, see Description of MinRole and associated services in SharePoint Servers 2016 and 2019 and Storage and SQL Server capacity planning and configuration (SharePoint Server).

For guidance about highly available databases that use mirroring, see Database Mirroring (SQL Server).

SQL Server Failover Clustering and Always On Availability Groups

SQL Server 2012 introduced the Always On Availability Groups feature. This feature is a high availability and disaster recovery solution that's an alternative to database mirroring and log shipping solutions. Always On Availability Groups now support up to nine availability replicas.

Note

Database mirroring will be deprecated in future versions of SQL Server. We recommend using Always On Availability Groups.

Always On Availability Groups require a Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) cluster. A WSFC resource group is created for every availability group that is created. For more information, see the following resources:

Design storage for optimal throughput and manageability

We recommend that you separate, and prioritize your data among the drives on the database server. Ideally, you should place the tempdb database, content databases, usage database, search databases, and transaction logs on separate physical hard disks. The following list provides some guidance. For more information, see Configure databases.

  • For collaboration or update-intensive sites, use the following ranking for storage distribution.

    The highest ranked item should be in the fastest drives.

    Rank Item
    1 tempdb data files and transaction logs
    2 Content database transaction log files
    3 Search databases, except for the Search administration database
    4 Content database data files

  • In a heavily read-oriented portal site, prioritize data and search over transaction logs as follows.

    The highest ranked item should be in the fastest drives.

    Rank Item
    1 tempdb data files and transaction logs
    2 Content database data files
    3 Search databases, except for the Search administration database
    4 Content database transaction log files

  • Testing and user data shows that insufficient disk I/O for tempdb can significantly impede overall farm performance. To avoid this issue, allocate dedicated disks for the drive that stores tempdb data files.

  • For best performance, use a RAID 10 array for the drive that stores tempdb data files. The number of tempdb data files should equal the number of CPU cores, and each tempdb data file should be set to the same size.

  • Separate database data and transaction log files across different disks. If data and log files must share disks due to space limitations, put files that have different usage patterns on the same disk to minimize concurrent access requests.

  • Use multiple data files for heavy-use content databases, and put each on its own disk

  • To improve manageability, monitor and make adjustments as needed to keep content databases below 200 GB, rather than restrict the database size.

    Note

    If you manually restrict database size in SQL Server, you can cause unexpected system downtime when the capacity is exceeded.

Proper configuration of I/O subsystems is very important to the optimal performance and operation of SQL Server systems. For more information, see Monitoring Disk Usage

Tip

Consider that how you measure disk speed varies between data files and log files. The fastest drives for database data may not be the fastest for log files. Consider usage patterns, I/O, and file size.

Proactively manage the growth of data and log files

Following are recommendations to proactively manage the growth of data and log files:

  • When possible, increase all data files and log files to their expected final size, or periodically increase these at set periods, for example, every month or every six months, or before rollout of a new storage-intensive site such as during file migrations.

  • Enable database autogrowth as a protective measure to make sure that you do not run out of space in data and log files. Consider the following:

    Important

    You must factor in the performance and operations issues associated with using autogrowth. For more information, see Considerations for the "autogrow" and "autoshrink" settings in SQL Server.

    • The default settings for a new database are to grow by 1 MB increments. Because this default setting for autogrowth results in increases in the size of the database, do not rely on the default setting. Instead, use the guidance provided in Set SQL Server options.

    • Set autogrowth values to a fixed number of megabytes instead of to a percentage. The bigger the database, the bigger the growth increment should be.

      Note

      Use care when you set the autogrowth feature for SharePoint databases. If you set a database to autogrow as a percentage, for example at a 10-percent (%) growth rate, a database that is 5 GB grows by 500MB every time that a data file has to be expanded. In this scenario, you could run out of disk space.

      Consider for example, a scenario where content is gradually increased, say at 100MB increments, and autogrowth is set at 10MB. Then suddenly a new document management site requires a very large amount of data storage, perhaps with initial size of 50 GB. For this large addition, growth at 500 MB increments is more appropriate than 10MB increments.

    • For a managed production system, consider autogrowth to be merely a contingency for unexpected growth. Do not use the autogrow option to manage your data and log growth on a day-to-day basis. Instead, set the autogrowth to allow for an approximate size in one year and then add a 20 percent margin for error. Also set an alert to notify you when the database runs low on space or approaches a maximum size.

  • Maintain a level of at least 25 percent available space across drives to accommodate growth and peak usage patterns. If you add drives to a RAID array or allocate more storage to manage, monitor capacity closely to avoid running out of space.

Continuously monitor SQL Server storage and performance

We recommend that you continuously monitor SQL Server storage and performance to make sure that each production database server is adequately handling the load put on it. Additionally, continuous monitoring enables you to establish benchmarks that you can use for resource planning.

Take a comprehensive view of resource monitoring. Do not limit monitoring to resources that are specific to SQL Server. It is equally important to track the following resources on computers that are running SQL Server: CPU, memory, cache/hit ratio, and the I/O subsystem.

When one or more of the server resources seems slow or overburdened, consider the following performance guidelines based on the current and projected workload.

Use backup compression to speed up backups and reduce file sizes

Backup compression can speed up SharePoint backup operations. It is available in SQL Server Standard and Enterprise Edition. If you set the compression option in your backup script or configure SQL Server to compress by default, you can significantly reduce the size of your database backups and shipped logs. For more information, see Backup Compression (SQL Server) and Data Compression, or Enable Compression on a Table or Index

Acknowledgements

The SharePoint Server Content Publishing team thanks the following contributors to this article:

  • Kay Unkroth, Senior Program Manager, SQL Server

  • Chuck Heinzelman, Senior Program Manager, SQL Server

See also

Concepts

Overview of SQL Server in SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 environments

Storage and SQL Server capacity planning and configuration (SharePoint Server)

Other Resources

Securing SharePoint: Harden SQL Server in SharePoint Environments