Min Partition Size Best Practices

Guidelines for getting reliable signal from Min Partition Size checks while keeping the noise (and the maintenance) low.

Size the threshold from real loads, not from a round number

Look at what the container actually loads over a few weeks before picking a value. A threshold set from intuition either never fires or fires every day. Leave enough headroom for legitimate variation, such as a month-end peak or a quiet weekend.

Use the pair to bracket the expected range

Min Partition Size on its own only guards one side. Adding Max Partition Size to the same container brackets the load between a floor and a ceiling, which is usually what "the batch looked normal" really means.

Remember the threshold is per partition

On a file container that loads dozens of files per Scan, a threshold sized for the whole delivery will fire on every single file. Size it for one partition.

Reach for Volumetric when you want a trend, not a limit

A fixed threshold answers "is this partition the right size?". Volumetric answers "did this container change size compared to how it usually behaves?", which needs no number to maintain.

Route the anomalies to the right people

A failure usually points at the system that produced the value, not at the warehouse. Set an Anomaly Assignee from the team that owns that producer, and tag the check so related checks are easy to find.

See Also