Kevin Kline

Quick Tip – Speed Up a Slow Restore from the Transaction Log

November 14, 2012 by in IO Subsystem, SQL Performance | 3 Comments
SentryOne Newsletters

The SQLPerformance.com bi-weekly newsletter keeps you up to speed on the most recent blog posts and forum discussions in the SQL Server community.

eNews is a bi-monthly newsletter with fun information about SentryOne, tips to help improve your productivity, and much more.

Subscribe

Featured Author

Itzik is a T-SQL trainer, a co-founder of SolidQ, and blogs about T-SQL fundamentals and query tuning.

Itzik’s Posts

Here's a quick tip for you:

During some restore operations in SQL Server, the transaction log redo step might be taking an unusually long time. Depending somewhat on the version and edition of SQL Server you've installed, you may be able to increase performance by tinkering with the readahead performance for the redo operations. To do this, you should use the MAXTRANSFERSIZE parameter of the RESTORE statement. For example, if you set MAXTRANSFERSIZE = 1048576, it'll use 1MB buffers.

If you change the MAXTRANSFERSIZE, keep an eye on the PerfMon objects for Buffer Manager and Readahead I/O. You may also wish to keep an eye on LOGBUFFER wait stats.

I'd love to hear your feedback. Have you tried this technique? Did it work as advertised? Did it require some changes to work on a specific version or edition?

Many thanks,
-Kev
Follow me on Twitter!