Surprising but True: the Basics are Still Difficult

SURPRISING BUT TRUE: THE BASICS ARE STILL DIFFICULT I always look forward to new research from Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., publishers of this magazine and other great products for data professionals. The latest report which you should read is "SQL Server Transformation: Toward Agility & Resiliency 2017; PASS Database Management Survey." READ MORE... Originally Posted April 07, 2017 … [Read more...]

ICYMI: Troubleshooting Availability Groups and the Schema Switcharoo – SQL Server Performance

Aaron Bertrand (b | t) is on a roll this month's SQL Server performance highlights with more great articles from SQLPerformance.com.   Troubleshooting AlwaysOn – Sometimes it takes many sets of eyes Aaron Bertrand (b | t) hit some obstacles recently when configuring an Availability Groups lab environment. This post shows how some assistance from the community helped him isolate and solve the issues. Another argument for stored procedures Learn the subtle ways that ad hoc queries can interfere with SQL Server performance by taking up more space in the plan cache than … [Read more...]

ICYMI: Sequences, CPUs, and Trimming T-Logs – SQL Server Performance Topics

Have you read any of the great articles on SQLPerformance.com? The deep-dive technical info about SQL Server performance issues authored by the SQL Server industry’s top experts. Here are a few great articles from the early days of the website, January 2013:   Generate a set or sequence without loops Aaron Bertrand (b|t) provides detailed performance information about a variety of methods used to generate sets and sequences in this first in a three part series. Selecting a Processor for SQL Server 2012 Glenn Berry (b|t) of SQLskills.com sheds light on the best CPU to select … [Read more...]

Windows Azure and SQL Database News

This morning Microsoft released some great updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: SQL Server AlwaysOn Support: General Availability support with Windows Azure Virtual Machines for High Availability and Disaster Recovery Notification Hubs: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Notification Hubs (broadcast push notifications for Windows 8, Windows Phone, iOS and Android) AutoScale: Schedule-based AutoScale rules and richer logging support Virtual Machines: Load Balancer Configuration and Management Management Services: New Portal Extension for Operation … [Read more...]

The All-New ‘Database Lifecycle Management” is available on MSDN

The initial release of Database Lifecycle Management is now available on MSDN. The site is something called "curated content". This means it's a single consolidated location to look up lots of disparate articles and content, all in one easy to search location. This “curated content view” contains the best content, video, and community-centric information from Microsoft, including topics like: SQL Server Data Tools · Get started with sample projects, code samples · Video demos by Gert Drapers (blog) · Script common data portability tasks using Sqlpackage.exe · Link to the SSDT … [Read more...]

Quick Tip – Speed a Slow Restore from the Transaction Log

Here's a quick tip for you: During some restore operations on Microsoft SQL Server, the transaction log redo step might be taking an unusually long time.  Depending somewhat on the version and edition of SQL Server you've installed, you may be able to increase performance by tinkering with the readahead performance for the redo operations.  To do this, you should use the MAXTRANSFERSIZE parameter of the RESTORE statement.  For example, if you set MAXTRANSFERSIZE=1048576, it'll use 1MB buffers. If you change the MAXTRANSFERSIZE, keep an eye on the PerfMon objects for Buffer Manager and … [Read more...]

High-Availability White Papers and Resources for SQL Server

I was just telling the good people of Charlotte about how they (and how YOU) need to read all things by Paul Randal (blog | twitter), except for all of his cheesy romance novels like Caress and Conquer written under the nom de plum of Connie Mason. There's lots more good stuff from Paul, just not romantic. This is a 'so-last-version' whitepaper describing  five common high-availability and disaster-recovery architectures deployed by customers, along with a case study of each. Although the white paper is specific to SQL Server 2008 R2 and isn't updated for AlwaysOn features, it's still … [Read more...]

‘Backup Completed’ is NOT an Error Message

If you're like me, you like for things to be semantically reliable.  Huh? Said another way, I like for things to mean what they say and say what they mean.  Here are a few examples of I get annoyed by failed sematics - when a footpath is used almost entirely by cyclists, when an escalator is merely stairs, or when a restroom has a huge crowd and long lines.  (No rest to be had in that room). So you can bet that I get a little prickly when the "Error Log" is used to post messages that something completed successfully.  Really?  I came here to this error log looking for, wait for it, ... … [Read more...]

Must-Have Resources – SQL Server Backup & Recovery

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 … [Read more...]

Wednesday Quest: Plenty O’Betas and Product Releases

Spotlight on SQL Server That's right! An all new version 8.0 of Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise is now GA and updated trials are live on the website. Some cool stuff therein: • Support for SQL Server 2011 (Denali) - Spotlight can now be used to monitor SQL Server 2011 databases (Denali CTP1 and CTP2 releases). • Project Lucy integration - Use Project Lucy to analyze the performance of your database and compare your experience with everyone else who uses the service. • VMware memory diagnostics - Analyze virtual memory using charts similar to that used to analyze virtual CPU. We also … [Read more...]