Making buffer pools large enough for the workload

You might improve the performance of I/O operations by increasing the size of your buffer pools.

You should make buffer pools as large as you can afford for the following reasons:

  • Using larger buffer pools might mean fewer I/O operations and therefore faster access to your data.
  • Using larger buffer pools can reduce I/O contention for the most frequently used tables and indexes.
  • Using larger buffer pools can speed sorting by reducing I/O contention for work files.

However, many factors affect how you determine the number of buffer pools to have and how big they should be.