The Art of SQL Server FILESTREAM - Red Gate Software

Chapter 12: Planning, Configurationand Best PracticesCorrect planning and configuration are vital ingredients in any successful technologyimplementation, and the FILESTREAM feature is no exception to this rule. To makesure the FILESTREAM feature is tuned for optimum performance and manageability,there are a number of factors to consider. The most important practices are included inthis chapter. Readers may also wish to further refer to the seminal white paper by PaulRandal: FILESTREAM Storage in SQL Server 2008 (http://brurl.com/fs7). Even thoughthe paper was written to target SQL Server 2008 and written around the original release,the information it presents is still valid and highly useful.PlanningFILESTREAM is a great feature if implemented where it is really needed, but it shouldnot be an automatic choice for every BLOB storage requirement. It is very important tounderstand this at the planning stage of your project. Keep in mind that there are caseswhere storing BLOB values in a VARBINARY(MAX) column will perform better thanstoring them in a FILESTREAM column, so we need to understand where FILESTREAM isideal and where it is not.As with many technology questions, the answer is "it depends." A Microsoft Researchstudy (conducted before the introduction of the FILESTREAM feature) investigatedthe impact of storing BLOB values in the database versus the file system, and foundthe following:• BLOB values over 1 MB in size provide best performance when stored in the file system(i.e. would benefit from storage in a FILESTREAM column).437