Top 10 Performance Tips for SQL Server

Found a blog with some tips for SQL Server Performance Tuning.
the 10 tips helps you start on performance tuning in Microsoft SQL Server Tuning.

For the complete explanation, I refer to the original blog
Here's a short overview of the tips:

1. Stop waiting around
   Check the SQL wait statistics to recognize the bottlenecks


2. Locate I/O bottlenecks
   Find I/O bottlenecks, as they are one of the key reasons for bad SQL performance


3. Root out problem queries
   Find the most expensive queries


4. plan to reuse
   Determine the statements that are not reusing query execution plans


5. Monitor index usage
   Evaluate the usage of all indexes


6. seperate data and log files
   Make sure the data and the log files are on separate physical drives


7. use seperate staging databases
   Use a seperate database in simple recovery model for all initial imports to minimize the transaction logging


8. Pay attention to log files
   Make sure there is plenty of free space in the log file to avoid the auto-grow operation as much as possible


9. Minimize tempdb contention
   Optimize your tempdb files


10. Change the max memory limit
    Make sure you configure the correct max memory setting

Source: Top 10 Performance Tips for SQL Server