I have a weird problem in a production environment at a customer. I can't give any details on the infrastructure except that sql server runs on a virtual server and the data, log and filestream file are on another storage server (data and filestream together and log on a seperate server).

Now, there's this query that when we run it gives these durations (first we clear the cache): 300ms, 20ms, 15ms, 17ms,... First time it takes longer, but from then on it is cached.

At the customer, on a sql server that is more powerfull, these are the durations (I didn't have the rights to clear the cache. Will try this tomorrow). 2500ms, 2600ms, 2400ms, ...

The query can be improved, that's right, but that's not the question here. How would you tackle this? I don't know where to go from here. The servers at this customer are really more powerfull but they do have virtual servers (we don't).

What could be the cause... - Not enough memory? - Fragmentation? - Physical storage?

I know it can be a lot of things, but maybe some of you have got some info for me on how to go on with this issue...