Is it okay to shrink tempdb?
Shrinking the file is fine as long as Tempdb is not being used, else existing transactions may be impacted from performance point of view due to blockings and deadlocks. Cleaning procedure cache, buffer caches etc will have negative impact on the database performance itself until those are not re-created.
If more files are added to tempdb , you can shrink them after you restart SQL Server as a service. All tempdb files are re-created during startup. However, they are empty and can be removed. To remove additional files in tempdb , use the ALTER DATABASE command with the REMOVE FILE option.
Best practices dictate that one TempDB data file be created for each CPU core on the server, up to a maximum of 8 data files. However, you may need to adjust this number based on the workload of your SQL Server instance. We recommend sizing each data file at 1GB to start with a 512MB growth rate.
Recommendations. A shrink operation is most effective after an operation that creates a large amount of unused storage space, such as a large DELETE statement, truncate table, or a drop table operation. Most databases require some free space to be available for regular day-to-day operations.
The optimal number of tempdb data files depends on the degree of contention seen in tempdb. As a starting point, you can configure tempdb to be at least equal to the number of logical processors that are assigned for SQL Server. For higher-end systems, the starting number could be eight (8).
If you shrink a database repeatedly and notice that the database size grows again, this indicates that the free space is required for regular operations. In these cases, repeatedly shrinking the database is a wasted operation. Autogrow events necessary to grow the database file(s) hinder performance.
This is done to ensure we lose as few entries to the output file as possible. If TempDB fills up, the entire instance can often stop working completely. We want to catch as much information as possible before this happens, so we flush to the output file in very short intervals.
- Configure TempDB correctly. TempDB is a critical system database storing temporary data such as worktables and temporary tables. ...
- Place TempDB on Separate Disks. ...
- Use trace flag 1118. ...
- Monitor TempDB performance. ...
- Enable Instant File Initialization. ...
- Disable auto-update statistics.
If your SQL Server's tempdb database is heavily used by your application(s), consider locating it on an array of its own (such as RAID 1 or RAID 10). This will allow disk I/O to be more evenly distributed, reducing disk I/O contention issues, and speeding up SQL Server's overall performance.
Uncontrolled TempDB growth. There are many reasons for uncontrolled TempDB growth events. Much like your operating system has a page file to handle memory overflows, SQL Server uses TempDB like a page file. The most common occurrence of this is when a query “spills” to TempDB.
Does shrinking database improve performance?
This may be a positive move as the larger freed space will improve performance. But shrinking may affect your database performance significantly, if not properly done. Shrinking will increase fragmentation and will cause any DB operation costly.
The major problem with the Shrink operation is that it increases fragmentation of the database to very high value. Higher fragmentation reduces the performance of the database as reading from that particular table becomes very expensive. One of the ways to reduce the fragmentation is to rebuild index on the database.
The disadvantages are efficiency. If your DB keeps expanding, it is doing so for a reason. Shrinking it is doing a lot of IO that the DB will just expend more time to undo as it expands back to its original size. This is a lot of DB effort for no effect in the end.
When TempDB is heavily used, a service may experience contention when it tries to allocate pages. Depending on the degree of contention, this may cause queries and requests that involve TempDB to be unresponsive. Therefore, TempDB is critical to the performance of the service.
Too many tempdb data files can cause performance problems for another reason. If you have a workload that uses query plan operators that require lots of memory (e.g. sorts), the odds are that there won't be enough memory on the server to accommodate the operation, and it will spill out to tempdb.
To take advantage of the round-robin processing of TempDB, it is essential to have multiple data files so that the workload can be spread proportionally across them. To ensure this happens, you must make sure your files are also equal sizes and autogrowths are the same.
What Happens when you Shrink a Database? When you shrink a database, you are asking SQL Server to remove the unused space from your database's files. The process SQL uses can be ugly and result in Index fragmentation. This fragmentation affects performance in the long run.
- Identify low use server times that you can run the shrink.
- Monitor your Agent Jobs and watch SQL Server for blocking if you don't have an outage window.
- Use DBCC SHRINKFILE and set a specific, targeted size for the file you're shrinking.
Neither shrinking the database nor logs takes the db offline. See the docs: Other users can work in the database during file shrinking - the database doesn't have to be in single-user mode. You don't have to run the instance of SQL Server in single-user mode to shrink the system databases.
Shrink TEMPDB using DBCC SHRINKFILE
We can use the DBCC SHRINKFILE command to shrink the data or log file for the TempDB. We do not need a restart of SQL Service in this case. Execute the following query to get individual file size in TempDB. Let's try to shrink TempDev data file using the DBCC SHRINKFILE command.
What is consuming tempdb?
There are two ways tempdb gets consumed. User tempdb usage and system tempdb usage. User temdpb usage is related to creating and populating @table variables or #temporary tables and explicitly populating them.
For tempdb files with good read/write performance RAID 0, 1 or 10 is recommended. Although tempdb contains temporary data and DBA's often go in for RAID 0 for tempdb, keep in mind that SQL Server requires tempdb to carry out many of its activities. So if you want your system to be always available, rethink RAID 0.
- Set tempdb to auto grow.
- Ensure the disk has enough free space.
- Set it's initial size reasonably.
- If possible put tempdb on its separate disk.
- Batch larger and heavy queries.
- Try to write efficient code for all stored procedures, cursors etc.
If tempdb never uses most of the tempdb space, then you might want to consider decreasing the size of tempdb. In order to resize tempdb you can use the ALTER DATABASE command. By using the ALTER DATABASE command, you can set the initial size of the tempdb data and/or log files.
- Change all references to the temp table in your Transact-SQL statements to the new memory-optimized table: ...
- Replace the CREATE TABLE #tempSessionC statements in your code with DELETE FROM dbo.
Track TempDB growth. Tracking the growth of the TemDB database files and the queries that are consuming the TempDB resources can be performed using the Performance Monitor counters associated with the TempDB files and the SQL Profiler tool that listens to a specific database workload type.
Response times for tempdb database should be less than 20 ms.
The default max size for all TempDB data files on the new SQL Managed Instances is -1 which stands for unlimited. The default max size for TempDB log file is 120 GB on the General Purpose managed instance and 2 TB on the Business Critical managed instances.
The tempdb size is reset to the last configured size (that is, to the default size, or the last size that was set by using alter database) after each restart.
TempDB should be sized based on the size of the drive it's on (and it should be on its own drive). Generally speaking you should have one TempDB file per CPU core (up to 8) and one TempDB_Log file. So... divide total space on the drive by (number of CPU cores + 1).
What is the benefit of shrinking database in SQL Server?
By using the Shrink Database task, a package can shrink files for a single database or multiple databases. Shrinking data files recovers space by moving pages of data from the end of the file to unoccupied space closer to the front of the file.
- 1: Check your database server.
- 2: Improve indexing strategies.
- 3: Identify access to database.
- 4: Evaluate connection capacity.
- 5: Optimize Queries.
- 6: Database Performance Resources.
Improve Indexes
Indexing creates a “structure” that helps keep your data organized, which in turn, makes it easier to locate. Proper indexing can improve your database performance as it increases the efficiency of the data retrieval process, saving you and the system time and effort.
This SHRINKFILE process must fit within a 7 hour maintenance window PER database. However the DBCC SHRINKFILE on each is taking MANY hours to run. For example shrinking an 800 GB database down to 120 GB takes over 15 hours.
You're only going to have to do an index rebuild after the fact so shrinking may/maynot be the right approach. Shrinks do take a long time, it is all down to how much data movement is needed and how fast the IO subsystems can keep up. You will be surprised how slow they can be.
At best shrinking a database is a wasted operation. At worse it is harmful because it causes heavy fragmentation. Yes, you can reindex after you shrink, but that does not make it an acceptable action.
To shrink one data or log file at a time for a specific database, execute the DBCC SHRINKFILE command. To view the current amount of free (unallocated) space in the database, run sp_spaceused. DBCC SHRINKDATABASE operations can be stopped at any point in the process, and any completed work is kept.
Memory Contention
SQL Server caches the databases in what's called a buffer pool. A buffer pool acts as a storage space for data pages that have been recently written or read to and from disk. A small buffer pool will slow down your SQL application by overwhelming the disk's subsystem.
Shrink: Basically, if used, this option is to compress your database size or used unusable space. If you Shrink the database, then all your database will have more space. If you are Shrink files, then more file space will be available.
Tempdb can be a major bottleneck on a busy SQL Server instance. A common source of this is PFS, GAM, or SGAM page contention.
What is the problem with tempdb?
On some instances, tempdb requires a lot of space, pre-allocated so files aren't constantly growing. If tempdb uses all the space allocated to it and can't grow it will halt any further activity in SQL Server that needs tempdb.
This database is re-created every time an instance of SQL Server is started. When the server instance is shut down, any data in tempdb is deleted permanently. You cannot back up the tempdb system database.
Unlike User Database Datafiles, shrinking the tempdb datafiles will not cause any fragmentation or performance issues since it only holds temporary objects and not actual data.
Shrinking the file is fine as long as Tempdb is not being used, else existing transactions may be impacted from performance point of view due to blockings and deadlocks. Cleaning procedure cache, buffer caches etc will have negative impact on the database performance itself until those are not re-created.
tempdb in SQL Database
Global temporary tables and global temporary stored procedures are shared for all users' sessions within the same database. User sessions from other databases can't access global temporary tables. For more information, see Database scoped global temporary tables (Azure SQL Database).
tempdb is a system database in MS SQL Server whose main functions are to store temporary tables, cursors, stored procedures, and other internal objects that are created by the database engine. By default, the database size is set to 8 MB and it can grow by 10% automatically.
- Open SQL Server Management Studio.
- Expand System Databases and right click tempdb and select "properties"
- With in Properties, select "Files" and you should see the window below.
- Click the Add button (lower right)
Shrink TEMPDB using DBCC SHRINKFILE
We can use the DBCC SHRINKFILE command to shrink the data or log file for the TempDB. We do not need a restart of SQL Service in this case. Execute the following query to get individual file size in TempDB. Let's try to shrink TempDev data file using the DBCC SHRINKFILE command.