SQL Server linked server performance

Question

I am using SQL Server 2008 Enterprise. And I am using Linked Server technologies to link another SQL Server 2008 Enterprise instance from another server. I write TSQL to manipul

Answer 1

I use linked servers frequently to synchronise data between environments, mainly because I found it to be the easiest solution to code and manage.

One tip I found, but may not be an option for others, was to run any procedures on the server that has the most data or is doing the most updating/inserting. For example I have a procedure that compares two tables and inserts/updates from A to B. If I ran this on server A it would take many times longer than running the procedure on B. If you don't have a choice where to run our code, and you are stuck on, say, server A, then this advice may not help.

Another tip is to reduce the data returned to the minimum necessary. Whereas you might normally have data returned almost instantly on a local server, if a linked server is some distance away then the latency can be very painful. Be stricter than normal in accessing only those columns you need.