What is the current best practice or general guidance on formatting the filesystem for SQL server database files.
Currently we have SQL Server file system, NTFS formatted with 64KB block size based on these Microsoft guidelines.
I am not sure how much is this applicable right now and how do we find the best fit as with the latest Windows servers we can go with formatting up to 1 or 2 MB.
Therefore I am looking for advice how to format the disk for modern SQL Server say 2017 and up, with the latest Windows, as the MSDN documentation seems out of update. Would a different block size, like 512 KB or 128 KB be better to format the drives where mdf, ndf and ldf files reside.
Best Answer
Nothing has changed since that article. You should still use 64KB as your unit size.
That is how the default storage in SQL Server VMs in Azure are configured: