Performance issues from wasted buffer pool memory
Below is a script to analyze the buffer pool and break down by database the amount of space being taken up in the buffer pool and how much of that space is empty space. For systems with a 100s of GB of memory in use, this query may take a while to run:
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| SELECT ( CASE WHEN ([database_id] = 32767) THEN N 'Resource Database' ELSE DB_NAME ([database_id]) END ) AS [DatabaseName], COUNT (*) * 8 / 1024 AS [MBUsed], SUM ( CAST ([free_space_in_bytes] AS BIGINT )) / (1024 * 1024) AS [MBEmpty] FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY [database_id]; GO |
And here’s some sample output from a client system (made anonymous, of course):
DatabaseName MBUsed MBEmpty ------------------- -------- --------- Resource Database 51 11 ProdDB 71287 9779 master 2 1 msdb 481 72 ProdDB2 106 17 model 0 0 tempdb 2226 140 |
Below is a script that will break things down by table and index across all databases that are using space in the buffer pool. I’m filtering out system objects plus indexes where the amount of space used in the buffer pool is less than 100MB. You can use this to identify tables and indexes that need some work on them to allow your buffer pool memory to be used more effectively by SQL Server and increase your workload performance.
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| EXEC sp_MSforeachdb N 'IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM (SELECT DISTINCT DB_NAME ([database_id]) AS [name] FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors) AS names WHERE [name] = ' '?' ') BEGIN USE [?] SELECT ' '?' ' AS [Database], OBJECT_NAME (p.[object_id]) AS [Object], p.[index_id], i.[name] AS [Index], i.[type_desc] AS [Type], --au.[type_desc] AS [AUType], --DPCount AS [DirtyPageCount], --CPCount AS [CleanPageCount], --DPCount * 8 / 1024 AS [DirtyPageMB], --CPCount * 8 / 1024 AS [CleanPageMB], (DPCount + CPCount) * 8 / 1024 AS [TotalMB], --DPFreeSpace / 1024 / 1024 AS [DirtyPageFreeSpace], --CPFreeSpace / 1024 / 1024 AS [CleanPageFreeSpace], ([DPFreeSpace] + [CPFreeSpace]) / 1024 / 1024 AS [FreeSpaceMB], CAST (ROUND (100.0 * (([DPFreeSpace] + [CPFreeSpace]) / 1024) / (([DPCount] + [CPCount]) * 8), 1) AS DECIMAL (4, 1)) AS [FreeSpacePC] FROM (SELECT allocation_unit_id, SUM (CASE WHEN ([is_modified] = 1) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS [DPCount], SUM (CASE WHEN ([is_modified] = 1) THEN 0 ELSE 1 END) AS [CPCount], SUM (CASE WHEN ([is_modified] = 1) THEN CAST ([free_space_in_bytes] AS BIGINT) ELSE 0 END) AS [DPFreeSpace], SUM (CASE WHEN ([is_modified] = 1) THEN 0 ELSE CAST ([free_space_in_bytes] AS BIGINT) END) AS [CPFreeSpace] FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors WHERE [database_id] = DB_ID (' '?' ') GROUP BY [allocation_unit_id]) AS buffers INNER JOIN sys.allocation_units AS au ON au.[allocation_unit_id] = buffers.[allocation_unit_id] INNER JOIN sys.partitions AS p ON au.[container_id] = p.[partition_id] INNER JOIN sys.indexes AS i ON i.[index_id] = p.[index_id] AND p.[object_id] = i.[object_id] WHERE p.[object_id] > 100 AND ([DPCount] + [CPCount]) > 12800 -- Taking up more than 100MB ORDER BY [FreeSpacePC] DESC; END' ; |
And here’s some sample output from the same client system with the more comprehensive script:
Database Object index_id Index Type TotalMB FreeSpaceMB FreeSpacePC -------- ------ -------- ------------ ------------ ------- ----------- ----------- ProdDB TableG 1 TableG_IX_1 CLUSTERED 531 130 24.5 ProdDB TableI 1 TableI_IX_1 CLUSTERED 217 48 22.2 ProdDB TableG 2 TableG_IX_2 NONCLUSTERED 127 27 21.8 ProdDB TableC 1 TableC_IX_1 CLUSTERED 224 47 21.4 ProdDB TableD 3 TableD_IX_3 NONCLUSTERED 1932 393 20.4 ProdDB TableH 1 TableH_IX_1 CLUSTERED 162 33 20.4 ProdDB TableF 5 TableF_IX_5 NONCLUSTERED 3128 616 19.7 ProdDB TableG 9 TableG_IX_9 NONCLUSTERED 149 28 19.1 ProdDB TableO 10 TableO_IX_10 NONCLUSTERED 1003 190 19 ProdDB TableF 6 TableF_IX_6 NONCLUSTERED 3677 692 18.8 . . |
This is cool because it’s a lot less intrusive way to figure out which tables and indexes have data density issues than runningsys.dm_db_index_physical_stats (see this post for an in depth view of this DMV). You can mess around with the script to make it create a table to hold all the data for all databases and slice+dice however you want. I have a much more comprehensive script that I use on client systems but this one will provide you with lots of relevant data.