How Fast and Robust Is Your Storage? - Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning - page 423

UsingSQLIO
SQLIO is a highly configurable tool for measuring storage performance. One of the biggest challenges
facing anyone trying to use SQLIO for the first time is the overwhelming number of options. Without
clear guidance it becomes a daunting task to get the tool to give you anything meaningful.

Along with the download comes some sample scripts that Mike Ruthruff, a PM on the SQL Server
Customer Advisory team, wrote. These are a great place to start, but you really need to spend quite
some time playing with the tool and trying to figure out really what you want to see before you can
modify the samples in a way to give you the results you want.

What I am going to share with you here is the methodical process I developed to help assess storage
performance. Then I am going to show you how to process the results and end up with a visual
representation of the performance of your storage system. Along the way you will look at a couple of
performance bottlenecks that I found while setting up a real life SQL Server storage system.

GettingStartedwithSQLIO
Okay, so much for all the talk. Let's get started with running SQLIO!

The first thing you need to do is download SQLIO from the Microsoft download center. This currently
exists at www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9a8b005b-84e4-4f24-8d65-cb5344
2d9e19&DisplayLang=en .

The download center occasionally gets reorganized, so the link may get broken. If that's the case then a
quick internet search for SQLIO should locate its new home.

After you have downloaded and installed it to your favorite tools folder (I put mine in c: \ tools \ sqlio
as it's short and easy to find), you will see that you received a number of files along with sqlio.exe :

❑ EULA.txt: This contains all the usual legal stuff.

❑ Param.txt: This is a sample param file, more on what you use this for later.

❑ Readme.txt: This is an expanded version of the built in help. This is actually the help file that

originally came with SQLIO, so it has lots of really useful details on all the arguments. However,
it's worth noting that not all of them work with this version of SQLIO.

❑

Sqlio.exe: This is the one you want!

❑ Using SQLIO.rtf: This is a good place to get started on using SQLIO and includes some basic

scripts to get you going.

Running SQLIO
Now that you have SQLIO installed, try using it.

The first thing you need to do is to open a command prompt. Because SQLIO is a console app, you can
just double click it in Explorer, and it will run. However, because the output goes to the console if you
start it by double clicking it, when it's finished the console closes and your results all disappear.

So it's better to run it by opening a command prompt and navigating to the folder where you installed
SQLIO. This is one place where the benefit of a short simple path pays dividends.