You posted SQL Server  questions and upvoted the ones you’d like to see at https://pollgab.com/room/brento, and before the Cabo Clasico finals start for the day, I sat by the pool to talk through ’em:

Here’s what we covered:

• 00:00 Introductions
• 00:53 Neil: Does putting up a giant monitor on the wall with SQL Server info like CPU %, Disk activity, blocked sessions, top queries, etc, so non-DBA’s and Executives can see the server status sound like a good idea or is that just inviting trouble?
• 03:07 Omer: What are the possible causes for sp_whoisactive to show a SPID with a long running INSERT statement (non blocked) but the SPID is in a sleeping state?
• 03:42 Theo: Does the order of include columns ever matter for a non-clustered index?
• 03:53 Uncle Leo: What are the pros/cons of using third party SQL backup software over native SQL backup?
• 05:05 Mehdi: Hi Brent! Auto-update stats is enabled on a database. Does the database need up-to-date statistics with the maintenance plan?
• 06:07 DBA_Mufasa: Hi Brent! What’s your best approach for tracking tables usage in SQL databases, in order to find tables that haven’t been touched (for eg. no select, updates, or inserts ) for a a defined amount of time. Considering that table statistics get cleared after server restart.
• 07:49 default blame acceptor: Hi Brent, could you advise a KPI that I can show not-technical folks to convince them that SQL is not a root cause of the application slowness (when it seems that it is true!) and they should look for a solution somewhere else instead of convincing me to restart SQL’s VM…
• 09:03 Yousef: How do you determine the optimal auto growth size for a given SQL data file running on NVME SAN?
• 09:47 Ted Striker: What are the pros/cons of running sp_blitzfirst for longer periods of time (@Seconds = 300)? Any maximum value of @Seconds we should stay under?
• 10:57 Wilma: What is the optimal monitor size / count / configuration for viewing large query plans in SSMS?
• 11:25 Alain: Hi Brent, what are the advantages of using VMWare stretched cluster instead of AlwaysOn? Thank you
• 12:56 TeeJay: We’re expecting to move from on-prem (2017 vintage) to azure VMs soon. What should I benchmark on our old servers that’s useful to assure us that the virtual hardware in azure is (at least) not going to leave us with worse performance than we currently have?
• 13:56 Ain’t Lyin’: Got a tuning problem with a query inner joining some large tables to a table with 0 rows. Optimizer estimates 1 row anyway and does a lot of work before realizing there are no rows to return. I can’t change the query, how do I get the optimizer to figure this out early?
• 16:29 Hamid: What is the fastest way to split a comma delimited string in in TSQL 2019 / 2014Compat level DB?
• 17:56 Kfir: What is the maximum size key/include column you would consider adding to a non-clustered index?
• 18:58 Thomas Franz: How much memory should I reserver for OS / other stuff when I configure the Max Memory settings for servers with 1 or 2 TB (!) RAM. Following the common recommendations I would end with ~256 GB for OS / 1.792 for SQL which seems a bit too much (most servers have much less RAM).
• 20:55 CKI: Management wants to create a copy of the production database for reporting purposes. The new “reporting” copy should be refreshed nightly with production data. Production database is on AWS Web Edition 45GB. What is easiest way to do it? Thank you very much!
• 22:04 Gerald Krobath: Is it recommended to install CU updates for MSSQL 2016/2019 automatically via the regular updates or should this always be done manually?
• 23:47 Sir Galahad: Has OPTION (FAST N) query hint ever got you across the finish line?
• 23:59 Buck: Have you noticed the annoying issue in SSMS 18.11.1 where it does not maintain your query plan scroll position when you switch off that tab over to another tab then back to the original tab with the originally displayed plan? Is this worth submitting to feedback.azure.com?
• 27:27 Recap, discussing skimboarding