Posts by Brent Ozar

One of my articles just got posted up at SearchSQLServer. I cover some of the pros and cons of backing up data warehouses with SAN snapshots. I wrote that just after we got done with a NetApp deployment at Southern Wine. The funny part is that we deployed the QA environment pretty quickly, but months…

I moved my gear into my desk at Caroline Collective today – well, actually, it was more of a buy-and-move. Most of this stuff is a new copy of the gear I use at home. The grand opening will be Saturday, June 7th from 7pm til 10pm. The invite reads as follows: “We are (collectively)…

Junior DBAs, warm up your printers. The Microsoft SQL Customer Advisory Team, aka SQLCAT, has published a flowchart explaining how to troubleshoot performance issues with SQL Server. This is by far the best visual representation I’ve seen into how a senior DBA’s brain works: SQL Customer Advisory Team’s Troubleshooting SQL Server 2005/2008 Performance and Scalability…

Yesterday afternoon, I stopped by the Caroline Collective and signed a lease on my very own desk.  Sounds odd to lease a desk, eh?  Especially sight unseen – there’s no actual desks in the space, just a big empty room with concrete floors, white & blue walls, and fluorescent lights dangling from a low ceiling.…

I’m testing the new builds of LiteSpeed and Toad.  I’m not to the point where I’m using my L337 SQL skillz yet because I take a very basic ground-level approach to testing. I go through an entire program and click on every menu item. Everywhere that it lets me add something, I add it, and…

When DBAs ask where to go for simple, straightforward SQL Server tips, I usually point them to SQL-Server-Performance.com.  That site puts out a fantastic daily newsletter with SQL notes, questions & answers, and general tips. I’m not wild about daily email newsletters, but this one’s a gem.  It’s gotten even better since Peter Wardy started…

On my trip to DC this week, I ran across a couple of Nintendo Wiis in stock at Target.  For those of you who don’t follow video games, the Nintendo Wii is a notoriously hard-to-find game system.  It’s been out for months, but you still can’t walk into a store and just buy one.  Prospective…

My blog has been quiet the last few days because I’ve been in Washington DC visiting my Mom and my sister Emily.  I wanted to sneak in a quick visit between jobs.  I took the opportunity to redo both of their wireless networks and achieved a 0% success rate – I had to get two…

I have a new job, and lemme just tell you, it feels like my whole career has prepared me for this one. I spent several years at UniFocus, a hospitality software company that relied on SQL Server. I honed my SQL skills, but probably more importantly, I managed a small team of programmers. I worked…

The new Caroline Collective space is bringing coworking to Houston, and if my job hunt works out the way I hope this week, I’ll be one of the anchor tenants. People who telecommute can feel isolated without the fun personal interaction with creative, dynamic people.  Coworking aims to solve that by offering desks and offices…

Joe Webb gave a presentation on “Tips & tricks for writing better queries” for the Nashville PASS chapter, and it’s a great read.  Developers and DBAs should all read this for a clear, concise refresher. A video of the presentation would be even better, but for the most part, the slide deck speaks for itself. …

When you’re building a consolidation plan, stop to think about when each database will be migrated to a newer version of SQL Server. With SQL Server 2008 coming fast, some content owners will want to move their databases to 2008 as soon as it comes out in order to take advantage of things like the…