What is the purpose of filegroups in SQL Server?

What is the benefit of using filegroups?

The big benefit of filegroups is to separate database objects. You can put one table or a set of tables on one FG, and indexes on another, or some other configuration. You can also choose to put large object data on its own FG.

What is filegroups in database?

The filegroup contains the primary data file and any secondary files that aren't put into other filegroups. User-defined filegroups can be created to group data files together for administrative, data allocation, and placement purposes.

What is the purpose of secondary data file?

Secondary data files are optional and can be used to spread data across multiple files/disks by putting each file on a different disk drive. SQL Server databases can have multiple data and log files, but only one primary data file.

What is the difference between files and filegroups in SQL Server?

tl;dr; Filegroups are a logical construct used to separate tables and indexes from each other, files are the physical construct used to store information (log & data) about the database.

What is the use of .NDF file in SQL Server?

ndf extension is a secondary database file used by Microsoft SQL Server to store user data. NDF is secondary storage file because SQL server stores user specified data in primary storage file known as MDF.

What is secondary file group in SQL Server?

A secondary filegroup (also called a user-defined filegroup) contains secondary datafiles (ndf) and database objects. The default filegroup contains objects which were created without an assigned filegroup. The primary filegroup is the default filegroup unless another filegroup is specified.

What is log file in SQL Server?

Every SQL Server database has a transaction log that records all transactions and the database modifications made by each transaction. The transaction log is a critical component of the database. If there is a system failure, you will need that log to bring your database back to a consistent state.

What are MDF and NDF files in SQL Server?

A Microsoft SQL database consists a primary data file (mdf) a secondary data file (ndf) and a transaction log file (ldf). For this article, we will concern ourselves with the mdf and ldf files. MDF stands for Main Database File and contains all the information in a database.