You administer a SQL Server 2008 infrastructure. You plan to deploy a new SQL Server 2008 multi-node failover cluster. The failover cluster uses a storage area network (SAN) that will use redundant…

Question

Options

• A8-KB
• B32-KB
• C64-KB
• D156-KB

• A
  8% (2)
• B
  4% (1)
• C
  83% (20)
• D
  4% (1)

Explanation

Windows NT File System (NTFS) Allocation Unit SCSI Drives: When you format the new drives in Disk Administrator, you should consider an allocation unit, or block size, that will provide optimal performance. Significant performance gains may be obtained by sizing this to a larger value in order to reduce disk I/Os; however, the default value is based on the size of the physical disk. The best practice for SQL Server is to choose 64 KB, because this reduces the likelihood of I/Os that span distinct NTFS allocations, which then might result in split I/Os. Keep in mind that although this information can be useful, the type of storage you are using (and in some cases also your backup software) will drive the format of your disks. If you are changing the block size on an existing system, be sure to run a baseline in your test environment and another after you have tested the changes.

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