I took the Graffiti Gulf 356 out to the Valley of Fire State Park to exercise it, and took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.

Here’s what we covered:

• 00:00 Start
• 01:39 mailbox: Hey Brent! I’m really enjoying your prerecorded training classes. Quick question,I’m running sp_BltizCache @SortOrder = ‘reads’ on our DW server and receiving a priority 1 warning of Plan Cache Instability. How meaningful is this warning on a DW server?
• 02:49 Briggers: Hi Brent. I have inherited an intense AG with 1 database, utilising an async read-only secondary. Is there a way to help reduce the size of a redo queue? For example reducing the number of checkpoints (Automatic) on the primary?
• 04:00 DoesTimeReallyExist: Hi Brent! I prefer to learn SQL Server in depth instead of learning no-SQL or PostgreSQL and TimescaleDB. What do you think?
• 04:31 Aksel: Duplicate Index How to explain a situation where there are indexes A (col1, col2) and B (col1, col2, col3, col4), and there is a query that checks the values of col1 and col2. If the query uses index A, no memory grant occurs. If the query uses index B, a memory grant occurs.
• 05:31 Cameo: What are your pros / cons of using local time vs UTC time for OS clock running SQL Server? Which do you see more of out in the field?
• 06:51 mailbox: My friend’s company pays only to license 4 cores enterprise(SA) on a reporting server. Best I can tell, we don’t need enterprise as of now. However, we might need it in the future. Is it a good idea to switch to Std edition on same budget, thus increasing core count?
• 08:00 adba: I am seeing high CPU on a SQL server VM,I have added more cpu and tuned the query, but we still see the issue. What parameters do I need to monitor to show it is a problem on the host side.
• 08:59 GenXerTiredOfTheBabyBoomers: You have probably got this question often, but getting up there in age/end-of-corporate-life, how does one become a consultant? I have decades of experience with MS SQL, Windows OS, and networks, yet have trouble crossing the great divide of corp to cnslt.
• 10:18 SportsFan101: What are your thoughts on the new JSON data type in Azure SQL? Will we see this feature in the new on-prem version, SQL Server 2025?
• 11:28 Bandhu: When doing row vs page compression for canned SQL, do most of your clients do all row compression or all page compression or some combination?
• 11:48 mailbox: In your experience, when is it time to upgrade server hardware? Maybe I should ask, how often should we try to upgrade the server hardware of our SQL Servers? My friend says that they have VMs on hosts that are 8 years old.
• 12:53 Juan Pablo Gallardo: In pure ERP environments, with no user queries or tasks outside the ERP, is it safe to say that any deadlock is responsibility of the ERP vendor to solve?
• 14:06 Dopinder: What criteria do you use when evaluating standup desks? What is your favorite brand and model?
• 14:44 Vasilis Hadjiloucas: Should I exclude my antivirus software from scanning my FILESTREAM container in SQL Server? What are the potential risks or benefits of doing so?
• 15:17 CryingInTheCorner: Hi Brent, you still didn’t update most of your Mastering classes since Sql Server 2022 came out… :'(
• 16:41 Dumb dude: If you had a server that was having a lot of resource contention and you were only allowed to add CPUs or Memory, but not both, without cost being factored into it, which would you pick.
• 17:21 About the 356’s Graffiti Gulf paint job
• 18:40 Dopinder: Can a single DBA manage a new SQL AG or is a team of DBAs recommended for AG administration? What do you see in the field?
• 19:31 mailbox: What is it like to work as a DBA for a consulting firm? Is it just non-stop performance tuning fun? Or are their lots of nights and weekend work?
• 20:50 Eddy Grant: When upgrading Azure SQL VM from 2019 to 2022, is it ok to do in place migration since we have snapshot backups or should we logship to new VM hardware?