Can a large transaction log cause cpu hikes to occur

Posted by Simon Rigby on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Simon Rigby
Published on 2010-12-23T12:41:16Z Indexed on 2010/12/23 12:54 UTC
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Hello all,

I have a client with a very large database on Sql Server 2005. The total space allocated to the db is 15Gb with roughly 5Gb to the db and 10 Gb to the transaction log. Just recently a web application that is connecting to that db is timing out.

I have traced the actions on the web page and examined the queries that execute whilst these web operation are performed. There is nothing untoward in the execution plan.

The query itself used multiple joins but completes very quickly. However, the db server's CPU hikes to 100% for a few seconds. The issue occurs when several simultaneous users are working on the system (when I say multiple .. read about 5). Under this timeouts start to occur.

I suppose my question is, can a large transaction log cause issues with CPU performance? There is about 12Gb of free space on the disk currently. The configuration is a little out of my hands but the db and log are both on the same physical disk.

I appreciate that the log file is massive and needs attending to, but I'm just looking for a heads up as to whether this may cause CPU spikes (ie trying to find the correlation). The timeouts are a recent thing and this app has been responsive for a few years (ie its a recent manifestation).

Many Thanks,

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