A popular SSIS talk at recent conferences has been about the http://blogs.msdn.com/mattm/archive/2008/02/27/ssis-sets-an-etl-world-record.aspx that we announced last year. They’ve converted the talk to a white paper, and it is http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd537533.aspx on MSDN. It’s a very interesting read.
Summary: In February 2008, Microsoft announced a record-breaking data load using Microsoft® SQL Server® Integration Services (SSIS): 1 TB of data in less than 30 minutes. That data load, using SQL Server Integration Services, was 30% faster than the previous best time using a commercial ETL tool. This paper outlines what it took: the software, hardware, and configuration used. We will describe what we did to achieve that result, and offer suggestions for how to relate these techniques to typical scenarios. Even for customers who don't have needs quite like this benchmark, such efforts can teach a lot about getting optimal performance.
