10 Things All BI Administrators Should Know

Robert L Davis

Who am I?

www.sqlsoldier.com

11+

@SQLSoldier

10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

10 – SQL components don’t play well together Database Engine, Analysis Services, and SSIS

Packages are resource hogs Each one will try to use as many resources as it

can They don’t care what the other needs Recommendation: separate components to

different servers

10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

9 – File placement still matters Separate files to different drives for best performance

BackupDir DataDir LogDir TempDir

10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

8 – Backup the encryption keys SSRS stores data encrypted in ReportServer

database Data source accounts and passwords Report subscriptions

Key can be recreated but encrypted data will be lost

Import to other SSRS instances to create a farm

10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

7 – Warm the cache in SSAS Run a pre-defined set of queries Use the WITH CACHE statement to pre-load a

commonly used slice of a cube

WITH CACHE AS '([Sales Territory].[Sales Territory Region].Members)'SELECT {[Sales Territory].[Sales Territory Region].Members} ON COLUMNS, {[Measures].[Order Count]} ON ROWSFROM [Adventure Works];

10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

6 – More RAM > large paging file > out of memory errors SSAS uses RAM if it can If available RAM is low, SSAS will use the paging

file If out of RAM and paging file space, out of

memory errors may occur

10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

5 – Tune parallelism for high CPU servers ThreadPool\Query\Maxthreads <= 2 X CPU count

Controls maximum concurrency ThreadPool\Process\MaxThreads <= 10 X CPU

count Controls maximum parallel threads per process

Logical CPUs

10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

4 – Use partitioned views Older, static data in partitioned table Newer, changing data in stand-alone table Combine with a partitioned view

10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

3 – Load balancing SSAS > Clustering Hardware or Software load balancing Allows you to process cubes one at a time

programmatically Scalable to many servers

10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

2 – Don’t give SSRS users database access Used stored credentials of a non-user domain

service account

10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

1 – Back up your databases SSAS databases should be backed up too Use SSMS to create backup script in XMLA Schedule via a SQL job

<Backup xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine"> <Object> <DatabaseID>Adventure Works DW 2008R2</DatabaseID> </Object> <File>E:\MSSQL\OLAP\BAK\Adventure Works DW 2008R2.abf</File> <AllowOverwrite>true</AllowOverwrite></Backup>

10 Things All BI Administrators Should Know

Q&A

10 Things All BI Administrators Should Know

Thank You!The PowerPoint slide-deck and recording of the session will be available on my website later today.

http://www.sqlsoldier.com