As a DBA, you are often alert to the usual suspects—blocking, deadlocks, or long-running queries. But sometimes, performance issues creep in silently, and one of the quietest yet most impactful culprits is latch contention. Unlike locks, latches are lightweight synchronization primitives that protect internal memory structures. When these get overwhelmed, even the most well-tuned queries can slow to a crawl.
In this guide, you will explore what latch contention is, how it differs from locks, when it occurs, how to detect it, and most importantly—how to tune your system to minimize its impact. Whether you are running a high-throughput OLTP workload or managing a reporting environment, understanding latches could be the missing piece in your performance puzzle.
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Recently, Mark Varnas posted a client's experience in his LinkedIn profile. The client has 16 core virtual processors however, SQL Server was using only 4 cores and performance was terrible. My favorite SQL Server expert Brent Ozar also commented and shared his relevant blog's link in the post. I was curious how Mark Varnas identified and resolved this. Robert Concepcion's comments and Brent's blog showed me the path. Let's go through the problem!
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