New on DBTA.com: Database Benchmarking Tools, the final article in the database benchmarking series

IMG_0415aIn the last several articles on Database Trends & Applications, I’ve been describing the benefits of reading and analyzing the benchmarking case studies released by the Transaction Processing Council. I’ve given you from a broad overview of the TPC benchmarks and shown ways that the vendor-published TPC benchmarks can help you save money and how the vendor-published TPC benchmarks must explain in disclaimers how they tweak their workloads. I have described how to run your own benchmarks and explained how to properly prepare your environment for a benchmark test.

Pictured (L-R): Scott Klein (Blog), me, and Tobiasz Koprowski (Twitter | Blog) at the SQL Relay event in Glasgow, Scotland.

Now, in this final entry in the database benchmarking series, Great Tools for Database Benchmarking,  it is time to show you where the rubber really hits the road, testing and benchmarking tools that can run highly scalable benchmarking workloads against your database servers. (Found online at July 2013 Issue).

You can read me regular monthly column for DBTA at http://www.dbta.com/Articles/MoreNews.aspx?ContextID=329.

Here’s a quick recap of my other articles in the series:

Three Key Steps to Benchmark a Proposed Architecture When you decide to undertake your own benchmarking project, it’s a strongly recommended best practice to write up a benchmarking plan. A benchmark must produce results that are both reliable and repeatable so that we can foster conclusions that are predictable and actionable. Keeping the “reliable and repeatable” mantra in mind necessitates a few extra steps. May 2013 Issue

 

Running Your Own TPC Benchmarks The best database benchmarks are those that accurately and reliably reflect the applications and configuration of your own database infrastructure. On the other hand, the amount of work that goes into extracting your own transactional workload can be immense. An easier route is to learn and run your own TPC benchmarks, use one of the free tools to run the benchmark, and then extrapolate the TPC test results for your environments. In light of the past several articles in this column about the TPC benchmarks, you’re probably wondering how you can do your own TPC benchmark test. First, is this caveat: A “true” TPC benchmark must go through a rigorous and expensive auditing process. So when I say “run your own TPC benchmark,” what I really mean is running a “TPC-like” benchmark which contains all of the activities of a regular TPC benchmark, but without the auditing. April 2013 Issue

 

Cheaters Never Win, Even in TPC Benchmarks Two columns ago, I described how the TPC benchmarks are useful for getting a general idea of the performance characteristics of your preferred database vendor and hardware platform. And in last month’s column, I described how the published TPC benchmarks can even help with pricing, especially when you don’t have your own quantity discounts in place. March 2013 Issue

 

Use TPC Database Benchmarks to Save Money Today, I would like to give you a primer on how to read the benchmark reports that are published by the major database and hardware vendors. You never know when a vendor will publish a new benchmark. There’s no set schedule for them to publish their test findings. Of course, you can always look for new advertisements from many of the vendors. But that’s very imprecise. February 2013 Issue

 

Introduction to TPC Database Benchmarks Let’s talk about database application benchmarking. This is a skill set which, in my opinion, is one of the major differentiators between a journeyman-level DBA and a true master of the trade. In this article, I’ll be giving you a brief introduction to TPC benchmarks and, in future articles, I’ll be telling you how to extract specific tidbits of very valuable information from the published benchmark results. But let’s get started with an overview. January 2013 Issue

 

Have you ever run your own database benchmarks? If so, what tools did you use?  Tell me what you think!

Best regards,

-Kevin

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