This is the third of my 5 part series on my over 10 years of experience in Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check consulting engagement. Here are the five blog posts which are the essence of my consulting business. You can also call it as my business secret. In today’s blog post we will discuss one of the most popular questions I receive – Why Do I Assure SQL Server Performance Optimization in 4 Hours?
- Consulting 101 – Why Do I Never Take Control of Computers Remotely?
- Consulting 102 – Why Do I Give 100% Guarantee of My Services?
- Consulting 103 – Why Do I Assure SQL Server Performance Optimization in 4 Hours?
- Consulting 104 – Why Do I Give All of the Performance-Tuning Scripts to My Customers?
- Consulting 105 – Why Don’t I Want My Customers to Return Because of the Same Problem?
- Consulting Wrap Up – What Next and How to Get Started
Why Do I Fix SQL Server Performance in 4 Hours?
Before I continue the blog post, let me ask you a question:
Do you want me to solve your problem as quickly as I can, or do you want me to solve the problem as late as I can?
Well, let us discuss why I give my 4-hour assurance for SQL Server Performance Tuning.
Reason 1: 80/20 Principle
The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. I am a big fan of this theory and I have adopted it in my business. I have been doing SQL Server Performance Tuning for over 10 years and I have seen nearly every problem out there in this area.
I often see organizations coming back to me with a long list of issues related to the SQL Server Performance area. When I take a look at them, I know that most of the problems will be resolved just by implementing a few fixes. From years of experience of fixing SQL Server Performance tuning, I have devised a unique method where I know that by putting a few hours of high-impactful work, I can get optimal performance for my customers.
Reason 2: Babysitting – Yes/No/Cancel – Assure
As a consultant, when I work with new customers every day I always enjoy the freshness of the environment and making new friends, but my client is stressed out as they want their SQL Server to perform better very quickly. Additionally, if you have read my previous blog posts, you must be familiar that I like to do SQL Server Performance Tuning without taking control of the server. As I believe in transparency and coaching, I want my clients to learn everything that I suggest to them to change their server.
Essentially, if you accept or not, when you are an external consultant your situation is more like babysitting. It is fun in the beginning but very quickly you will want to finish it quickly when the server starts to cry relentlessly. Well, from my years of experience I have built SQL Server Performance Tuning Blueprints which can be applied to any server to get immediate performance improvements.
In that case, I have worked on situations when the server was not responding and, within just a few minutes, I was able to get it back online and run it quickly at optimal speed.
Reason 3: 4 Hours is Too Long
I am fortunate that most of my customers want quick resolutions to their chronic SQL Server Performance problems. However, there are always those who want to spend more time on their system, as they believe the longer the time we spend the better the results they will get. Well, I have to agree with them and once again will mention Pareto in this blog post.
When I am involved in SQL Server Performance Tuning Health Check consultancy, the first 90 minutes is usually spent identifying the problem and implementing the remedies. I have observed that in the first 90 minutes we gain maximum performance and business is restored to the best possible speed. In the rest of the time, we can focus on the less important left out leaf nodes.
If you have ever worked with me in the past, you must be aware that we have solved SQL Server Performance problems in very little time and used the rest of the time for further follow-up and training time where we learn new features of SQL Server.
The question is: do you want to slow and painful resolutions or quick and efficient resolutions?. I always like to assure my clients about their expectations.
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Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)
