SharePoint Database Optimization

Many enterprises who have implemented SharePoint face this problem when the database size increases as more and more files are added to the SharePoint. This hinders the performance of the SharePoint platform. How do you manage this issue even if you have a file server? What is the way about? This is the common questions posed by everyone. The answer lies in making use of SQL Server 2008 feature RBS.

SharePoint is basically a document management system and one of its core features is that it stores document, lots of documents, and it stores all of those documents and document versions in an ever-expanding content database.

Databases are optimized for structured data that is relatively small. However, a content database upwards of 100 gigabytes is by no means uncommon and that size is comprised mostly by the physical files that reside inside the database.When your content database size starts to expand to the point of unmanageability, one of the first questions that may come to mind is why the heck are all those files in there in the first place?  

 

 

BLOB storage is effectively abstracted from database users. In SQL 2008, there are a few more options because Microsoft implemented a FileStream provider model for the BLOB storage mechanism that opens up the possibility of storing it elsewhere.

Following is a brief rundown of some of the benefits associated with RBS:

It is also worth noting that RBS is enabled at the content database level, not the site collection level. This means that if you have multiple site collections in a content database, enabling RBS on that content database enables RBS on all of those site collections. If this is not the desired behavior, then you may need to move site collections to other content databases.