Brent Ozar, Author at Brent Ozar Unlimited®

Brent Ozar

1593 posts

https://www.brentozar.com

I make Microsoft SQL Server faster and more reliable. I love teaching, travel, and laughing. I live in California with my wife Erika.

What should you do about memory dumps?

February 22, 2019

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration

A SQL Server monitoring tool is warning you that you’re getting memory dumps, and you’re wondering what that means. This isn’t normal: you’re encountering a situation where SQL Server is so freaked out that it’s unable to proceed normally with a query. In order to help you (and really, Microsoft) debug the problem, it’s calling…

You know what your deadlock graphs need? Animation.

February 21, 2019

Brent Ozar

Deadlocks

In SQL Server Management Studio, plain ol’ deadlock graphs look like this: Two thumbs down, would not lock the dead again BOOOOO-RING. That’s why I prefer opening deadlock graphs in SentryOne Plan Explorer, which presents a much better visual in the form of a circle…a circle, let’s just stop there: Deadlock graph in SentryOne Plan…

Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for February 2019

February 20, 2019

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit Updates

I hereby christen this the Rich Benner Memorial Release. He’s still alive, it’s just that we’ll always remember him for the work he put into this month’s version. (I’m kidding, of course. We won’t remember him. (I’m kidding. Rich will appreciate the humor in that.)) You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here, and Consultant Toolkit customers…

What does Azure SQL DB Automatic Index Tuning actually do, and when?

February 19, 2019

Brent Ozar

Azure SQL DB, Indexing

Azure SQL DB’s Automatic Tuning will create and drop indexes based on your workloads. It’s easy to enable – just go into your database in the Azure portal, Automatic Tuning, and then turn “on” for create and drop index: ENGAGE Let’s track what it does, and when. I set up Kendra Little‘s DDL trigger to log index changes, which…

Building SQL ConstantCare® Version 2: Easy-to-Afford Monitoring

February 18, 2019

Brent Ozar

SQL ConstantCare

tl;dr – SQL ConstantCare® is now just $59 per month, or $495 per year. As we were building SQL ConstantCare®, I wanted it to be mentoring, not monitoring. I wanted to take daily data samples, trend them over time, and give you big-picture advice on what tasks you should focus on to make your SQL Servers faster…

[Video] How to Capture Baselines with sp_BlitzFirst

February 15, 2019

Brent Ozar

Monitoring, sp_BlitzFirst

Everybody tells you to capture baselines – but what exactly are you supposed to capture? Which Perfmon counters matter? How do you track which data files are growing, and which ones are slow? How can you track which queries are using the most resources? All you have to do is install the free, open source…

Should you run SSAS/SSIS/SSRS on the SQL Server?

February 14, 2019

Brent Ozar

Architecture, Configuration Settings

When you’re building a new SQL Server, you’re going to see a few intriguing checkboxes during setup. It’s all free, right? Check everything! The services are all free, right? You can just check the boxes for Machine Learning Services, R, Python, Data Quality Services, PolyBase, Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services – it’s not…

How fast can a $21,468/mo Azure SQL DB load data?

February 13, 2019

Brent Ozar

Microsoft Azure

In my last post, I explored how fast a $5,436/mo Azure SQL DB Hyperscale could load data. I’d had a client who was curious about spinning up their dev environment up there to see how query plans might look different. Well, as long as I was running this test, I thought – “How does this…

How fast can a $5,436/mo Azure SQL DB Hyperscale load data?

February 12, 2019

Brent Ozar

Hyperscale

A client asked, “How quickly could we spin up a full copy of our database in the new Azure SQL DB Hyperscale?” Their database size wasn’t too far off from the 340GB Stack Overflow database, so I decided to migrate that to Hyperscale to see how the experience went. Hyperscale is Microsoft’s intriguing competitor to Amazon Aurora. Hyperscale…

[Video] An Introduction to GitHub for DBAs

February 8, 2019

Brent Ozar

Development, Videos

Distributed source control is really intimidating: branches, pull requests, merges – will somebody just take my code, for crying out loud? Why does it have to be so complicated and involved? I’m with you: I hated GitHub. For years, I struggled with it, but I’ve come to a gradual truce. I’m not a GitHub pro…

What Queries Does Microsoft’s Telemetry Service Run On Your SQL Server?

February 7, 2019

Brent Ozar

Monitoring

I was working in my lab and I was having some odd blocking waits that I wasn’t expecting. I started firing up sp_WhoIsActive to see what queries were running, and I got a rather odd surprise: sp_WhoIsActivelyRunningTelemetryQueries (click to see full size) Ah-ha, the telemetry service, also known as SQLCEIP! Starting with SQL Server 2016,…

The Next Mastering Series is About to Start. Wanna Save $2,000?

February 6, 2019

Brent Ozar

Company News, Conferences and Classes

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Ever wanted to take my Mastering series of classes? I recommend that you take ’em in a specific order because each class builds on the next. If you try to parachute in out of order, you’re gonna have a bad time. The next rotation is about to start: Fundamentals of Index Tuning – Feb 13…

Registration Open for My Upcoming Pre-Cons: Belgium, Dallas, Iceland, Israel, Miami, Orlando!

February 5, 2019

Brent Ozar

Company News

No Comments

I’m hitting the road this spring. Here’s where to find me in person: SQLSaturday Iceland – Your First SQL Server Performance Tuning Class – March 16 – You’re stuck with a database server that’s not going fast enough. You have a hunch that the biggest bottleneck is inside the database server somewhere, but where? In this one-day…

The “Guess the Next Release Date” contest continues…

February 4, 2019

Brent Ozar

SQL Server 2019

Back in December 2017, when I posted the Guess the Next SQL Server Release Date Contest, you could leave your guess in the comments for a chance to win a Live Class Season Pass and a Recorded Class Season Pass. Here’s how the guesses so far have gone – and for this quick analysis, I’m only…

[Video] Getting Started with the Consultant Toolkit

February 1, 2019

Brent Ozar

Consultant Toolkit, Videos

You’re a consultant who needs to figure out why your clients’ SQL Servers are slow and unreliable. You’ve collected a bunch of diagnostic queries over the years, but they have a lot of holes, and you don’t really have the time to maintain them – let alone make ’em better. You waste time connecting to…

10 Database Tasks That Sound Easy, But Aren’t

January 31, 2019

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

All of these are doable with scripts, tools, and/or elbow grease, mind you – they’re just not as easy as they sound at first glance until you know about the existence of those scripts, tools, and/or free people waiting around with spare elbow grease. “Go through the log and find out who ran this query.” “Apps sometimes…

Announcing the Consultant Toolkit: Now Available in the European Union, too

January 30, 2019

Brent Ozar

Consultant Toolkit

Yesterday, I got a barrage of emails and LinkedIn messages that went like this: Hey Brent, about your new consultant toolkit: I really love that idea and would want to get my hands on it. Unfortunately i originate in the EU. I know about your reasoning around not selling to EU members and I don’t…

Announcing the Official Release of the Consultant Toolkit

January 29, 2019

Brent Ozar

Consultant Toolkit

You’re a consultant, and you need to get diagnostic data from your clients’ SQL Servers. You’ve been copy/pasting queries and results from SSMS, trying to save execution plans one by one, wasting time doing manual labor. That stops right now. For years, we’ve had our own slick in-house utility that makes the process way easier.…

Updated First Responder Kit with Your January Code Resolutions

January 28, 2019

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit Updates

I have a sneaking suspicion that a bunch of you made New Year’s Resolutions to contribute to open source, because y’all got started with a bang this year. We’ve even got improvements from Microsoft folks for Azure Managed Instances! You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Changes Improvements: skipping checks on Azure SQL DB Managed…

How to Think Like the Engine – 2019 Edition

January 25, 2019

Brent Ozar

Indexing, SQL Server, Videos

You’re a developer or a DBA, and you’re comfortable writing queries to get the data you need. You’re much less comfortable trying to design the right indexes for your database server. In this series of videos, you’ll learn how the SQL Server engine looks at your indexes and builds your query results. In 90 minutes…

Posts by Brent Ozar