10 Things All BI
Administrators Should Know
Robert L Davis
Who am I?
10 Things All BI Admins Should Know
 10 – SQL components don’t play well together
 Database Engine, Analysis Services, and SSIS
Packages are resource hogs
 Each one will try to use as many resources as it
can
 They don’t care what the other needs
 Recommendation: separate components to
different servers
10 Things All BI Admins Should Know
 9 – File placement still matters
 Separate files to different drives for best performance
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BackupDir
DataDir
LogDir
TempDir
10 Things All BI Admins Should Know
 8 – Backup the encryption keys
 SSRS stores data encrypted in ReportServer
database
 Data source accounts and passwords
 Report subscriptions
 Key can be recreated but encrypted data will be
lost
 Import to other SSRS instances to create a farm
10 Things All BI Admins Should Know
 7 – Warm the cache in SSAS
 Run a pre-defined set of queries
 Use the WITH CACHE statement to pre-load a
commonly used slice of a cube
WITH CACHE AS '([Sales Territory].[Sales Territory Region].Members)'
SELECT
{[Sales Territory].[Sales Territory Region].Members} ON COLUMNS,
{[Measures].[Order Count]} ON ROWS
FROM [Adventure Works];
10 Things All BI Admins Should Know
 6 – More RAM > large paging file > out of
memory errors
 SSAS uses RAM if it can
 If available RAM is low, SSAS will use the paging
file
 If out of RAM and paging file space, out of
memory errors may occur
10 Things All BI Admins Should Know
 5 – Tune parallelism for high CPU servers
 ThreadPool\Query\Maxthreads <= 2 X CPU count
 Controls maximum concurrency
 ThreadPool\Process\MaxThreads <= 10 X CPU
count
 Controls maximum parallel threads per process
 Logical CPUs
10 Things All BI Admins Should Know
 4 – Use partitioned views
 Older, static data in partitioned table
 Newer, changing data in stand-alone table
 Combine with a partitioned view
10 Things All BI Admins Should Know
 3 – Load balancing SSAS > Clustering
 Hardware or Software load balancing
 Allows you to process cubes one at a time
programmatically
 Scalable to many servers
10 Things All BI Admins Should Know
 2 – Don’t give SSRS users database access
 Used stored credentials of a non-user domain
service account
10 Things All BI Admins Should Know
 1 – Back up your databases
 SSAS databases should be backed up too
 Use SSMS to create backup script in XMLA
 Schedule via a SQL job
<Backup xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine">
<Object>
<DatabaseID>Adventure Works DW 2008R2</DatabaseID>
</Object>
<File>E:\MSSQL\OLAP\BAK\Adventure Works DW 2008R2.abf</File>
<AllowOverwrite>true</AllowOverwrite>
</Backup>
10 Things All BI Administrators Should
Know
Q&A
10 Things All BI Administrators Should
Know
Thank You!
The PowerPoint slide-deck and recording of
the session will be available on my website
later today.
http://www.sqlsoldier.com