Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2789 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.

[Video] Office Hours: San Diego Office Edition

Last Updated March 24, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

I’m back in the US at my home studio in San Diego, so I did a live Office Hours session. Post your questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the ones you’d like to see me cover. Office Hours: San Diego Office EditionWatch this video on YouTube Here’s what we covered today: 00:00 Introductions 00:41 WTF_SQLServer!?!: I…

[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything at Sunset on the Balcony

Last Updated March 21, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

Ah, sunset – time to kick back on the balcony, watch the ocean, and discuss SQL Server. You post questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento/, upvote the ones you’d like to see me answer, and I discuss ’em: Office Hours: Ask Me Anything at Sunset in CaboWatch this video on YouTube 00:00 Introductions 00:30 iAmGroot: Hello Brent, my…

Wanna Speak at the PASS Summit This Year? Move Fast.

Last Updated March 21, 2022

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass

The PASS Summit is November 15-18 in Seattle this year. This time around, it’s a hybrid conference, with both speakers and attendees in a mix between in-person and remote. I’m really excited to get back to in-person events. I recently attended SQLBits in London, and I actually got emotional at the sight of so many…

SQLDay Poland Workshop: How I Use the First Responder Kit

Last Updated March 18, 2022

Brent Ozar

Conferences and Classes

Watch and learn I’m presenting remotely at the upcoming SQLDay Poland on 9-11 May! I’m teaching a one-day workshop, How I Use the First Responder Kit. You’ve downloaded sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzIndex, and sp_BlitzCache from the First Responder Kit, and you’ve run them a few times. You know there’s a ton of advice in there, but…it’s kinda…

Live Office Hours Next Week

Last Updated March 18, 2022

Brent Ozar

Company News

Tuesday & Wednesday afternoon at 2PM Pacific, 5PM Eastern, I’ll be streaming Office Hours live in my Twitch channel. I’ll post the recordings on my YouTube channel. Post your questions and upvote the ones you’d like to see here. Here are calendar reminders for Tuesday and for Wednesday. I’ve been doing these disconnected – recording…

[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About SQL Server

Last Updated March 10, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

Ask me questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the ones you’d like to see covered. I can pretty well guarantee that your favorite question this time is going to be the last one I answered. Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About Microsoft SQL ServerWatch this video on YouTube Here’s what we discussed today: 00:00 Introductions 00:57…

[Video] Office Hours: Morning in Mexico Edition

Last Updated March 10, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

Got SQL Server questions? Post ’em at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the questions you’d like to see me discuss. Office Hours: Morning in Mexico EditionWatch this video on YouTube Here’s what we covered this morning: 00:00 Introductions 00:45 SQL Simian: Everybody loves free advice, but we want war stories. I have heard your 174 indexes story…

Announcing Quest Database Training Days 2022

Last Updated March 12, 2022

Brent Ozar

Conferences and Classes

Wanna learn for free? On April 13, I’m doing a session called My Cloud Database Costs are Too High. You’ve moved to the cloud, and now management is asking questions about your monthly bills. They’ve asked you to cut costs. Now what? In this webcast, Brent Ozar will examine the top expense-causing configurations and workloads…

SQLBits 2022 Day 1 Keynote

Last Updated March 10, 2022

Brent Ozar

SQLBits

Conferences are back, baby! I’m in London for SQLBits 2022, the biggest Microsoft data conference in Europe. This year’s theme is classic video games, and it’s been really cool to see the 8-bit logos and games all over the ExCel Center. Today is the Microsoft keynote. It’s called Level Up with Azure Data, hosted by…

[Video] Office Hours: Cabo Home Studio Edition

Last Updated February 24, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

Got questions about SQL Server? Post them at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the ones you’d like to see me cover. This episode was the first live one I shot in my home studio in Cabo: Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About Microsoft SQL ServerWatch this video on YouTube Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Introductions 02:19 Nullpointer:…

[Video] What Every Developer Needs to Know About Databases

Last Updated February 24, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

I had the pleasure of sitting down with David Giard virtually and discussing what developers need to know about databases. I always have fun talking with David – he’s a great follow on Twitter – and I think it shows in this conversation: Brent Ozar on What Every Developer Needs to Know About Databases [TECHNOLOGYANDFRIENDS 694]Watch…

Office Hours: 7 Questions for You to Answer Edition

Last Updated March 2, 2022

Brent Ozar

Architecture

Sometimes, I see questions and go, “You know, I’d rather let other people answer this.” And today, I’m gonna let you do it. My blog post this week about PollGab.com and about its data model brought out all kinds of interesting Office Hours questions. I’ve selected 7 of them that I don’t wanna answer –…

Building PollGab.com: February’s Hosting Bill: $1.85.

Last Updated March 3, 2022

Brent Ozar

PollGab

Earlier this week, I wrote about how we designed the database for PollGab.com. Because we went with AWS DynamoDB for the database storage and AWS Lambda for the processing work, costs are really, really low: That is not a typo: that’s $1.85 USD. Richie puts the business logic in functions, and those functions run in AWS…

Who’s Hiring in the Database Community? March 2022 Edition

Last Updated March 28, 2022

Brent Ozar

Who's Hiring

Is your company hiring for a database position as of March 2022? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let’s set up some rapid networking here. If your company is hiring, leave a comment. The rules: Your comment must include the job title, and either a link to the full…

Building PollGab.com: Designing the Data Model

Last Updated March 1, 2022

Brent Ozar

PollGab

In the last post, I talked about how Richie and I sketched out the goals of PollGab.com, the site where you can post questions for other folks to answer during their live streams. I challenged you to decide: What data needs to be stored to make all this work? What database or persistence layer should…

Building PollGab.com: Design a Database for Live Session Questions

Last Updated March 1, 2022

Brent Ozar

PollGab

Years ago when we did online presentations or live Office Hours webcasts, attendees would type their questions into the “Questions” section of whatever webcast platform we were using – WebEx, GoToWebinar, Zoom. This sucked because: People would put questions all over the place (Questions, Chat, email, etc) It was hard to keep track of which…

Big Data Clusters: Out of Aces

Last Updated March 1, 2022

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

When this feature was announced in 2018, I wrote: <sarcasm> It’s like linked servers, but since they don’t perform well, we need to scale out across containers. </sarcasm> I just didn’t get it, and I continued: I like that Microsoft is making a risky bet, planting a flag where nobody else is, saying, “We’re going…

Meme Week: Setting Fill Factor to Fix Fragmentation

Last Updated February 19, 2022

Brent Ozar

Index Maintenance

I just shake my head when I see people setting fill factor in an attempt to “fix” fragmentation. The default fill factor is 100%. That means during an index rebuild, SQL Server packs 100% of your 8KB pages with sweet, juicy, golden brown and delicious data. But somehow, some people have come to believe that’s bad,…

Meme Week: NOLOCK? NOSQL.

Last Updated February 19, 2022

Brent Ozar

Locking, Blocking, and Isolation Levels

When you find yourself using NOLOCK, consider NOSQL instead. NOLOCK has 4 big problems: Your query can see the same rows twice Your query can skip rows altogether Your query can see data that was never committed Your query can fail altogether If you’re okay with all 4 of those, and you find yourself REGULARLY…

Meme Week: SET DEADLOCK_PRIORITY HIGH

Last Updated February 19, 2022

Brent Ozar

Locking, Blocking, and Isolation Levels

Hey, this seems harmless. Seriously, don’t SET DEADLOCK_PRIORITY HIGH. Even setting it to low can be a bad idea. I’ve heard people say, “Well, I’ve got a big process that runs nightly, but if it gets in anybody’s way, I would rather just kill my process than slow someone else down.” Keep in mind that…