11.2. Maintaining SQL Performance

One of the most critical components in your WSS environment is the SQL Server that provides storage for all of SharePoint content and configuration. To guarantee optimum performance of your SQL Server, you must do several things.

Microsoft recommends keeping content databases under 100GB so that they can be backed up and restored quickly. This can also avoid some contention issues that occasionally occur during peak usage of list and library data. Another key component in maintaining adequate SQL performance is the design of your SQL Server environment. Creating SQL Server clusters will allow you to scale and expand your SQL Server environment for appropriate performance levels. There are also general SQL maintenance tasks that should be planned for in order to maintain your environment at peak performance.