{"id":2173,"date":"2013-07-25T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2024-01-22T22:49:13","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T06:49:13","slug":"buffer-pool-extension-to-ssds-in-sql-server-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sql-server\/blog\/2013\/07\/25\/buffer-pool-extension-to-ssds-in-sql-server-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffer Pool Extension to SSDs in SQL Server 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

How many of you have been looking into ways of cost effectively improving the performance of your OLTP workloads, without having to buy new more expensive hardware? Most of you know already that memory is one of the key assets available for the SQL Server and especially buffer pool memory, which plays key role in storing data pages and in turn reducing the I\/O demand. Have many of you seen your servers struggling from the workloads intensity increase that generated memory pressure and in turn exceeded planned capacity?<\/p>\n

Did you see the machine level limitations that makes it hard to upgrade memory in those machines and you have been thinking that it would be great if you only could upgrade your memory in the same easy way you can upgrade your storage options?<\/p>\n

You are not alone. We have heard similar feedback from many customers, so we tried to address it in the way that would allow you to avoid significant changes in your hardware or create cost-effective mid-size hardware configurations for OLTP workloads from the scratch.<\/p>\n

The answer we come up with is Buffer Pool Extension feature (BPE) that targets nonvolatile storage devices, in particular SSD drives, as an extension for SQL Server buffer pool. Those devices have some advantages over direct memory increase: the first one, already mentioned above, is the higher flexibility of storage options over memory options; the second, might be even more important, is the greater price efficiency of available storage vs. memory.<\/p>\n

What does Buffer Pool Extension offer?<\/p>\n

A few things:<\/p>\n