The Microsoft definition of this wait type is:
Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is in an
I/O request. The latch request is in Shared mode. Long waits may
indicate problems with the disk subsystem.
As mentioned above, excessive PAGEIOLATCH_SH
wait types don’t mean necessarily that the I/O subsystem is the root cause. It can often be some other reason, such as: bad index management, memory pressure, synchronous mirroring and AlwaysOn AG, logical/physical drive misconception, network issues/network latency, overloaded I/O subsystem by another processes that are producing the high I/O activity.
You may want to try some of the following to resolve having excessive PAGEIOLATCH_SH
wait type values:
- Keep in mind that in case of high safety Mirroring or synchronous-commit availability in AlwaysOn AG, increased/excessive
PAGEIOLATCH_SH
can be expected
- Check your SQL Server queries and indexes as very often this could be found as a root cause of the excessive
PAGEIOLATCH_SH
wait types
- Check the memory pressure before jumping into any I/O subsystem troubleshooting
If more details on this wait type are needed, including real-word situations that are causing this wait type values to be excessive, take a look at the Handling excessive SQL Server PAGEIOLATCH_SH
wait types article.