One of the things that drives me crazy as I’m getting older is that my brain is losing the capacity to differentiate version numbers. As I speak travel around speaking with customers and at conferences, I find my self saying things like “I can’t recall if this problem was fixed in SQL Server 2000 or 2005. But you don’t have to worry about that any more.” Or things like “That feature was added in SQL Server 2008 R2, eh, or was that version 6.5. DOH!” followed by a loud slapping sound as I whap my palm into my forehead.
The Internet doesn’t forget either. Recommendations that were once helpful, if not outright essential, now are neutral or even downright bad. So now, whenever I put together new presentations, I always spend a lot of time in research, reassessing my knowledge on the topic. (That doesn’t mean that I’ll extemporaneously say it wrong, because I speak in an off-the-cuff and rapid style. But at least my notes are usually correct).
Case In Point
Take backup and recovery (B&R), for example. I’ve been writing about and performing B&R for years. I’m even part of the team that builds the most popular B&R tool in the SQL Server space. It’s an extremely important part of what I do. And yet, even after spending a couple days re-researching topics (yet again), I still manage to get a few of the more specific details wrong because of changes over the years in the feature set. How so?
During an Expert’s Perspective webcast last week (and available on-demand) covering the top backup and recovery mistakes on Microsoft SQL Server, I mis-explained the details concerning how SQL Server performs a differential backup. A very clever SC on our team who was also attending the webcast pointed out to me after the session that I’d described differentials working at an 8k page-level when, in fact, they work at the extend-level (that’s a block of eight 8k pages). #FACEPALM!
When describing the differential backup I said that a bit was flipped on each page header and SQL Server would only back up those pages. Instead, whenever a page is changed a bit is recorded on the differential change map (1bit per extent), the backup process then queries these map pages and backs up those extents that have been marked as changed.
The cool revelation here is not that I can admit my mistakes. The take-away from this blog post are all the great articles I read writing my latest slide deck. These blogs and articles were so good that I needed to spread the word. Add these to your must read list:
Virtual Log Files must be tamed!
Performance impact: a large number of virtual log files Part I and Part II by one of my favorite not-so-prolific bloggers, Linchi Shea (blog). The thing I love about Linchi’s content is its rich benchmarking information. Few SQL Server experts out there routinely test the behavior and performance of specific SQL Server features like Linchi does.
Introducing the Microsoft Broadcaster: A self-service technical content repository that provides you with rich content for your blogs/sites.
On behalf of Microsoft, I would like to invite you to dive into Microsoft Broadcaster. It’s a site that unleashes a torrent of free technical content like Videos, Webcasts, Whitepapers, eLearning, and more, which you can use in your blogs or user group site to drive deeper engagement with your audience and community.
Key Features of Microsoft Broadcaster include:
Download and embed content on your sites without sending traffic away from your site with Microsoft’s full blessing.
Customize site by product (e.g. Windows, SharePoint, or Office), by keyword, or by form factor (e.g. webcasts, videos, podcasts)
First off – the Pain of the Week webcast series has been renamed. It’s now known as The Expert’s Perspective. Please join us for future webcasts and, if you’re interested in speaking, drop me a note to see if we can get you on the roster!
The bigger your databases get, the longer backups take. That doesn’t really seem like a huge problem — until disaster strikes and you need to restore your databases as fast as possible.
Join my buddy Brent Ozar (blog | twitter), a Microsoft Certified Master of SQL Server and good friend, as he reveals ways to make these critically important maintenance tasks run faster.
You’ll discover:
Why Instant File Initialization is so important for restores
How to use DMVs to check restore progress
How to find the bottleneck while you’re backing up or restoring data
Interested in my various performance tuning and troubleshooting videos about SQL Server? These videos feature my good buddies (and uber-SQL Server experts) Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) and Buck Woody (blog | twitter). View these insight-packed training videos from our SQL Server training events originally presented on March 3 and July 21 of 2010:HERE.
You can watch the videos now at the URL above or order a DVD, shipped free of charge in the USA and Canada, HERE.
Kevin discusses resources online that he uses and considers to be excellent destinations for SQL Server professionals. Kevin will discuss each site he uses in detail – check it out!
In this vblog entry on www.SQLServerPedia.com shows SQL Server expert Kevin Kline discussing his views on how to be both efficient and effective in your day to day and career – aimed at the SQL Server professional, but good for anyone.
Join SQL Server MVP and President of PASS, Kevin Kline as he:
* Identifies the issues that can arise from relying only on modeling tools
* Discusses the 10 most common modeling issues you will face when transforming data models from logical (conceptual) to physical
* Describes how to correctly identify and resolve serious problems
* Provides best practices to resolve issues
