Last week, I talked about Discovery Wizard’s Plugin Query Pack concept: the ability for DBAs to write their own inventory queries to figure out what’s going on in their environment. I talked about how we’d only deliver a few basic Plugin Query Packs with the product, because those types of queries are difficult (and expensive) [...]
In my last post about the development process of the next version of Quest Discovery Wizard for SQL Server, I talked about how DBAs need to track what’s going on in their environment. Companies with big bucks bring in a configuration management database (CMDB) to monitor this stuff, but for the rest of us, the [...]
As a production database administrator, you’re responsible for making sure databases don’t have little icons next to them that say “Suspect”. Here’s what you want to know when I walk in the door:
What am I dealing with?
How many servers are out there? I don’t want to take somebody’s word for it, either, because I [...]
Quest Discovery Wizard for SQL Server is a free program that goes through your network and your Active Directory looking for SQL Servers. It discovers things about the server, like what databases are on it, what applications are connected, what version numbers it has, and so on. Version 2.0 just came out today.
I wish [...]
Pop quiz: should you be worried if your SQL Server’s page life expectancy is averaging 214? There’s only one correct answer: it depends.
Performance tuning is all about finding the RIGHT bottleneck, focusing on it, and fixing it to the application owner’s satisfaction. Learn what happens if you don’t do it right.
Read More »Erika’s friends call her “Fancy Feast” because she only likes the best things in life. She’s got champagne tastes, but we can’t afford to buy the best of everything. I recently picked up a coffee table from Ikea, and it got me thinking about SQL Azure.
In a perfect world, I’d have on-premise SQL Server for every database. I’d use cutting-edge storage and cluster everything. But this isn’t a perfect world…
Read More »I get a lot of questions from people who want to get a better job. They want to know if certification, training, or branching out will help them get the job of their dreams. These things just aren’t the real answer.
The answer is simple: the Buddy System. Learn why.
Read More »In high school, I threw a huge party in Grandma’s house. It had long-lasting implications – among other things, I got disinherited.
Learn why SQL Server data compression has a lot in common with me after that Jungle Juice bash.
Read More »When my Grandpa Ozar wanted to find out if his 10 megabyte 5.25″ hard drive was responding fast enough to handle his database loads, he monitored the Perfmon counter Physical Disk: Disk Queue Length.
Things have changed since Grandpa’s time, though, and now it’s time to learn a new performance tuning trick – SQL Server waits.
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