How do you split a large .MDF file?

[bandgeekmafia78]

Hi.

We are running SharePoint 2007 and our WSS_Content_xxx.Mdf is a huge 194Gb. I've already managed to shrink the .Ldf file to virtually nothing but we are still getting performance issues and my thinking is that it would be best to split the MDF file.

Does anyone know if splitting the mdf file would increase VLE performance? If so, what is the best method to do this?

Also - I would like to find out why the .mdf file is so big - is there software which can explore this file to show the main areas of our VLE which are causing it to be so big?

Thanks.

Alan.

[SimpleSi]

I use my B&D Scorpion Saw to partition mdf

[bandgeekmafia78]

Thanks. I'm not sure whether its worth the hassle of splitting the mdf file if there isn't a significant change in performance afterwards. I've found a good tool called CardioLog which is helping me to figure out why my SharePoint Server is on its knees.

[apearce]

Hi.

We are running SharePoint 2007 and our WSS_Content_xxx.Mdf is a huge 194Gb.

Hi,
Do you actually have 194GB of data in your database.

You need to consider splitting your SharePoint sites with more top route site collections. Each site collection then has its own database to store data. For best practice SharePoint and SQL don't like databases more than 50GB so you need to reduce the size.

[LPPLUS_Support]

Hi

194gb for a content database is really large. Large content databases can be cause of performance issues and also cause issues when upgrading to SPS 2010 It would be advisable to split the content database if you have a number of site collections. could you please advise on your hardware setup and specs. Some suggestions to help:

- run performance counters that come with Windows Server to ensure its not a hardware issue i.e CPU utilisation / available memory / disk IO / NIC IO- do you use my sites at the moment it would be worth seperating these
- seperate my sites web application and content databases. this article should help The SharePoint Bandit: Moving My Sites to a separate content database and web application
- if you have a number of site collections move them to another content database. a good reference for this is: Move site collections to a new database (split a content database) (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)

As alex has pointed out for best practices the databases should not be more then 50gb.

hope this helps

San Mehta
LP+ Support