Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2773 posts

https://www.brentozar.com

I make Microsoft SQL Server go faster. I love teaching, travel, cars, and laughing. I'm based out of Las Vegas. He/him.

DBA Candidates: Ask For A List of Servers

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Brent Ozar

Professional Development

When interviewing for a database administrator position, ask the manager for a list of database servers, the applications that rely on them, and who to contact when the server goes down. (The manager may express concern about the secure nature of the list, and that’s fair – I would say the same thing. If they…

SQL Server Consolidation: Plan for SQL Server 2008

Last Updated March 31, 2008

Brent Ozar

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…

DBA 101: It Takes Confidence

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Brent Ozar

Professional Development

A good database administrator projects confidence – without being a jerk. This positive yet firm attitude helps the DBA accomplish their job in tough situations: A programmer insists their code is fine, and it’s a database problem that the DBA needs to fix A manager asks the DBA how much to budget for server hardware…

Submitted my abstracts for PASS 2008

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass

The Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) group holds an annual summit for their members. I attended last year, and blogged about some of my experiences: PASS Summit 2007 Day One Notes PASS Summit 2007 Day Two Notes PASS Summit 2007 Day Three Notes While I was there, I remember thinking, “Man, I wish they…

SQL Server 2005 Setup Checklist Part 2: After The Install

Last Updated June 27, 2017

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

I’ve covered what needs to happen before you install SQL Server – now, let’s talk about what to do immediately after the setup finishes. Install not just the service packs, but also the cumulative updates. Starting with SQL Server 2005’s Service Pack 2, Microsoft releases hotfixes in cumulative packs. These updates do more than just…

DBA Job Transitioning: Disable Logins In Advance

Last Updated March 17, 2008

Brent Ozar

Database administrators touch a lot of servers in their day-to-day duties. We do a lot of troubleshooting, security testing, and run a lot of utilities for everything from performance monitoring to development servers. In a perfect world, the database admin changes their domain password frequently. When the password changes, the DBA knows pretty quickly if…

SQL Server Magazine post about the Quest SQL community

Last Updated March 12, 2008

Brent Ozar

SQL Server Magazine just posted an interview with Billy Bosworth about the Quest Association for SQL Server Experts. One of the quotes that stood out for me was: “We want real people who do real jobs . . . that can interact with us very early in the process of building a product. That helps…

Interviewing DBAs: Check their Business Decisionmaking

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Brent Ozar

Professional Development

When interviewing a database administrator, it’s not enough to check their knowledge of technical skills: we have to check their ability to make sound business decisions. DBAs are in a position to make a lot of architectural decisions with long-term ramifications, and in smaller shops with just one or two DBAs, these decisions won’t come…

Changing Companies

Last Updated March 24, 2008

Brent Ozar

When we moved from Miami to Houston for Erika’s new job as an air traffic controller, my employer wasn’t too sure whether or not telecommuting would work out. Southern Wine currently doesn’t have a pro-telecommuting policy by any means: one company exec stood up at a company meeting and said they would “never” allow it,…

Don’t specify IP’s in your SQL connection string

Last Updated February 29, 2008

Brent Ozar

In today’s SQL newsletter from SQL-Server-Performance.com I was horrified to find the following tip: When you specify a server in an ADO.NET connection string, use the server’s IP address, not the server’s DNS name. By using an IP address instead of a DNS name, name resolution does not have to occur, reducing the amount of…

Querying IBM Director 5.2 for firmware versions

Last Updated February 28, 2008

Brent Ozar

IBM Director is a decent tool to manage firmware & driver versions, but it doesn’t have a nice report to show the firmware & driver versions for things like the RSA, raid card, network cards, etc. I wrote the below T-SQL query to list out the most commonly needed versions & IP addresses after I…

SQL Backup Software: Part 5 – Justifying the Cost

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Backup and Recovery

I’ve talked about how a SQL backup compression program can help database administrators, but now it’s time to convince the boss. We have to sell management on why it’s worth the money. First, a few words about my approach to database administration, because I think it’ll help DBAs in general. Being a database administrator is…

SQL performance tuning: it’s about training too

Last Updated September 5, 2009

Brent Ozar

When developers and SQL Server database administrators work together to make an app faster, it shouldn’t just be the DBA working alone in the dark. If the DBA takes the slow code, goes into his cube, tweaks it (and indexes) and comes back out with a faster system, that fixes the problem once – but…

SQL Server 2008 new feature recap

Last Updated February 13, 2008

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

Brent Ozar

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

Brent Ozar

Backup and Recovery

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

Brent Ozar

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

Brent Ozar

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

Brent Ozar

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

Brent Ozar

Backup and Recovery

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…