Hi
We have recently found during random periods of the day our applications that use an SQL database slow down almost to a complete halt.
I am the network administrator and I don't have a great deal of experience within SQL, I am comfortable doing basic tasks however I am a bit stuck as to what is causing these issues.
My initial thought is we need to upgrade the server we are currently using SQL Server 2008 and it only has 4GB ram installed. I think the issues are being caused by memory pressure however I didn't want to just throw money at upgrading without first trying to confirm where the fault lies.
I have done some performance monitoring and I have noticed when we the system grinds to a halt the SQL: Buffer Manager: PLE counter bottoms out to sub 20 even as low as 0 sometimes it then gradually works its way back up. It can spend quite a while at sub 20 during this period the applications run slow particularly when trying to save documents to our document management system.
At the same time the PLE counter drops the SQL:Buffer Manager:Page reads/sec shoots up from 0 to various amounts like 8,390. I have also noticed occasionally at the same time the SQL:Buffer Manager:Buffer cache hit ratio drop from 100 to something like 86.
I have checked and no Maintenance Plans are running during business hours and it does seem random.
I am thinking it is when the system is extremely busy a lot of people saving documents and doing searches which is causing memory pressure but I just thought I would ask if given my results I was able to investigate it any further.
I have also done some missing indexes searches which show at number an index with a total cost of 1895145 but I don't know if getting the software to create the index will actually improve matters.
Any help appreciated and sorry if I have been vague.
I think I may have put this in the wrong thread as well but can't see a way to move it.
Cheers
Chris
Cheers Chris