Posts by Brent Ozar

Kevin Kline put together a great paper on the new features in SQL Server 2008 called “Worth the Wait: Why SQL Server 2008 is Great” and it’s a good read. It’s the best DBA-focused paper I’ve seen on the topic. People have asked me what’s coming, and this is probably the best handout to use…

Behind the times or ahead of the curve?

Last Updated May 3, 2009

I have this strange personality quirk – I can’t decide whether I’m behind the times or ahead of the curve. I found out about Dinner With The Band, an HDTV podcast where a music-savvy chef (Sam Mason) cooks for a band, and then they play a couple songs in his NYC apartment. It’s a slick…

SQL Backup Software: Part 4 – Features Still Missing

Last Updated February 13, 2017

In this issue of my multi-part series about SQL Server backup compression software, I’m going to talk about some features that database administrators might find useful, but don’t yet exist in the current generation of backup software. In-Depth Backup & Restore Progress Monitoring On multi-terabyte data warehouses – especially those running new backup compression software…

What’s the Largest Database You’ve Worked With?

Last Updated January 26, 2018

Professional Development, SQL Server

When hiring a production DBA, I start by asking them, “In terms of file size, what’s the largest database you’ve worked with?” In a perfect world, we’d only hire very experienced candidates, people who’ve worked with larger databases than we’re dealing with. In reality, though, we can’t always afford those candidates – if they’re even…

SQL 2008 release date pushed back

Last Updated August 6, 2008

Remember all the hoopla when SQL 2005 came out? Microsoft swore we’d get more frequent releases because the 5-year lag after SQL 2000 meant it wasn’t worth paying for Software Assurance on SQL Server. They promised we’d get new stuff faster. Fast forward to today’s announcement: “Microsoft is excited to deliver a feature complete CTP…

Dell EMC AX150i review

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Storage

Dell AX150i The iSCSI EMC AX150i is resold by Dell, and refurbished versions are available pretty inexpensively through the Dell Outlet. We just picked up our second AX150i with 12 500gb SATA drives for around $6,000 total, or about $1,000 per raw terabyte. It’s a great deal for lab or development storage, but there are…

SQL Backup Software: Part 3 – New Features for Backup/Restore

Last Updated August 14, 2018

In the last decade, Microsoft has brought SQL Server a long way – bringing in things like .NET code, data encryption, partitioning, and a darned slick management user interface. But one of the things that hasn’t changed has been the process of backing up and restoring data. We still back up to a file, and…

Microsoft Technology Center: The DBA Experience

Last Updated August 24, 2009

Our contacts at Microsoft offered us the services of a Microsoft Technology Center to do a two-week lab exercise on our data warehouse. We’d kept piling one application after another on our data warehouse SQL Server until the poor thing was plain out of maintenance windows and couldn’t keep up, and we needed info from…

At Microsoft’s Technology Center in Chicago

Last Updated November 1, 2009

Carlos and I flew into Chicago midday yesterday, and a winter storm came in right after us. We’re at Microsoft’s Technology Center on Wacker drive, and our work area on the 23rd floor has a wall of windows with a great view of the city. We watched the sky get darker in the afternoon as…

SQL Backup Software: Part 2 – Quad Cores are Changing the Game

Last Updated February 13, 2017

In my last post, Why Native SQL Backups Suck, I talked about the weaknesses of native SQL Server backups. Today, I’m going to extend that a little by talking about one of the greatest surprises for DBAs in recent history: the advent of dirt-cheap multi-core processors that don’t cost extra for SQL licensing. How SQL…

SQL Server Backup Software: Part 1 – Why Native SQL Backups Suck

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Before we start looking at SQL Server backup compression software, we need to spend a few minutes looking at the weaknesses of the native SQL Server backup process. In order to judge the fixes, we have to know what’s broken. Native SQL Server backups take the same disk space as the data. When we back…

SQL Performance Tuning: Estimating Percentage Improvements

Last Updated November 11, 2007

When I’m doing performance tuning on an application in the early stages of its lifecycle (or any app that’s never had DBA attention before), I end up with a ton of recommendations within the first day of performance tuning. The resulting to-do list can seem overwhelming to project managers and developers, so I include one…

Sunday Buffet at The Lady & Sons

Last Updated August 24, 2009

As part of our road trip this week to Oklahoma City, we stopped at Paula Deen’s The Lady and Sons in Savannah. For those of you unfamiliar with The Food Network, Paula Deen and her two sons are food celebrities, great people with a great story. The restaurant doesn’t take advance reservations: instead, hopeful diners…

SQL Server load testing: synchronized tests versus random ones

Last Updated February 14, 2017

Load Testing

Our QA department uses Mercury TestDirector to do load testing of our .NET web apps. The basic idea is that TestDirector runs through a set of URLs to load test an application, and it can gradually scale up the number of simultaneous sessions until the datacenter is filled with smoke. When the fire alarms go…

SQL Server Backup Best Practices

Last Updated September 18, 2017

Backup and Recovery, SQL Server

I’ve been backing up SQL Servers for almost a decade now, and it’s time to share the lessons I’ve learned. All of this is my own opinion – your mileage may vary – but I’ll try to explain the reasoning behind the choices I make. I won’t address log shipping or snapshots this time around.…

PASS Summit 2007: Day Three Notes

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Bill Baker: Keynote on Office PerformancePoint 2007 Bill’s a fantastic speaker, and this is an interesting product, but our organization’s BI isn’t mature enough to take on this product yet. The product has a lot of potential; in a nutshell, it combines the flexibility and agility of Excel with the data safety & consistency of…

PASS Summit 2007: Day Two Notes

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Tom Casey: Keynote Tom covered basic SQL Server marketing slides about the BI stack. Yawn. Good presenter, but couldn’t overcome the dry material. Then he handed it off to a Dell woman to announce that they’ll be selling packaged BI solutions with hardware, software, storage, etc all in one bundle. They’re targeting customers in the…

PASS Summit 2007: Day One Notes

Last Updated February 9, 2017

My notes on the sessions I’ve attended so far: Ted Kummert: Keynote on SQL 2008 I’d already seen most of this PowerPoint deck during a South Florida SQL meeting at Microsoft, but the demos kicked butt. Finally, we have Intellisense in Management Studio! Woohoo! There was other fun stuff, but I’ve already forgotten it. One…

In Denver for SQLpass 2007 Summit

Last Updated February 12, 2017

I splurged and forked over $180 for a first class upgrade for my flight from Miami to Denver. It’s been years since I’ve flown, and it was scheduled to be a four hour flight, so it seemed like a good – albeit decadent – option. Turned out to be a lucky gamble: the plane was…

Registered for the SQLpass Summit

Last Updated February 12, 2017