Maximum clones

kslanicky

Is there any recommended maximum number of clones on a single database server?
Or any thresholds where folks have seen performance degradation?

We have approximately 40 clones on a single database server, which also has a few other DBs that are NOT clones.  And we've been having issues related to long I/O times to the file system (ldf and mdf)

This is a test server, and as such, has only 32GB or RAM

Should it have more, to host 40+ databases?

Thanks

Mark R

Most of the disk access to the clones will hit the image file. If the image is stored on the network, then the network connection might be the limiting factor.

As for RAM - from SQL Server's point of view, clone databases are just normal databases, so you'll need as much RAM as you would need if in that case.

TheSQLGuru

My laptop has 32GB of RAM. If you have more 'active' data than the maximum memory limit of your version of SQL Server and your server doesn't have 20GB+ MORE than that limit, then you don't have enough RAM. 

Having said that, with clones you need some serious low-latency-high-throughput networking for it to be successful if the image files are not local. Does your server have a single 1Gb network card by any chance? Oh, and the storage that the images are on needs to be fast as well.

Also, what is your server's storage comprised of?