Microsoft blog on weird transaction log growth

Most of MSDN blogging was shut down last week for a site upgrade, but I happened across this one that I thought was interesting.  Apparently for all versions of SQL Server (beginning 2005) there's a problem with expanding the transaction log:

whenever the difference between the new size and the current size is a multiple number of pages of any value between 0x80000 and 0x8001F the log will only grow 31 pages (MIN_LOG_FILE_SIZE / PAGESIZE).

Why the dude didn't write 8000-8001 MB and instead gave us binary I have no idea.  Maybe he'd like my bitmasking series on SQLSevercentral? LOL.  Anyway, here's what you get when you run his script:

I expanded it to 12GB and got the below, which seemed to follow his disclaimer. Upping from here 8GB finishes in a millisecond (doesn't grow) and then I run again and it then expands to 20GB.

Lee

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Pretty freaky

Portillo, 2010. Weird behavior of transaction log growth in SQL Server 2005, 2008, and R2. Retrieved 5/30/2010 from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ialonso/archive/2010/05/27/weird-behavior-of-transaction-log-growth-in-sql-server-2005-2008-and-r2.aspx