Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2782 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.

What sessions do you want to see at GroupBy next month?

Last Updated March 3, 2019

Brent Ozar

GroupBy Conference

GroupBy.org is a free online conference run by the community, for the community. You get to pick the sessions by voting. Voting is open now through March 15 for the next event, happening April 11. Here are some of the sessions you can choose from: Just Enough Database Theory for Power BI Linux OS Fundamentals…

Can deleting rows make a table…bigger?

Last Updated February 15, 2019

Brent Ozar

Indexing

Michael J. Swart posted an interesting question: he had a large table with 7.5 billion rows and 5 indexes. When he deleted 10 million rows, he noticed that the indexes were getting larger, not smaller. Here’s one way that deletes can cause a table to grow: The rows were originally written when the database didn’t…

[Video] Demoing SQL Server 2019’s new Accelerated Database Recovery

Last Updated October 15, 2019

Brent Ozar

SQL Server 2019, Videos

Wouldn’t it be nice if rollbacks just finished instantly? Wouldn’t you love for startup times to be near-zero even when SQL Server crashed just as someone in the middle of a transaction? How much would you pay for all this? (Well, I’m a little afraid to ask that, since we don’t know yet whether this…

New Objects, Columns, and Messages in SQL Server 2019 CTP 2.3

Last Updated March 3, 2019

Brent Ozar

SQL Server 2019

Sure, there’s official documentation on what’s new in SQL Server 2019, but Microsoft’s notorious for slipping undocumented stuff in. Sometimes these new features become officially documented in subsequent preview builds, like CTP 2.2’s initial plumbing for Accelerated Database Recovery that went officially public in CTP 2.3, and other times they never see the light of…

SQL Server 2019 Result Set Caching?

Last Updated March 3, 2019

Brent Ozar

SQL Server 2019

Friday’s new CTP 2.3 added a few new fields to sys.databases: But the highlighted one has me all tingly inside, kinda like the first time I heard Winona Ryders use the word “chainsaw” in a sentence. (Bonus points for readers who get that reference.) I don’t have any answers yet, folks. I just have questions.

What was the first SQL Server concept that stumped you?

Last Updated February 25, 2019

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

What’s the first thing you remember struggling with on SQL Server? Your first memory of, “Dang, I just can’t figure this out,” and then you had a Eureka moment later when it was so much more clear?” I asked folks on Twitter, and the answers were great, so I had to round ’em up here…

Where do I file bugs and feature requests for Microsoft Data Platform products?

Last Updated March 17, 2022

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

It’s not just you: it’s hard for all of us to figure out where to go when we find a bug or want to add a feature. Here’s a quick rundown: Azure Data Studio – open an issue in the Github repo. While you open an issue, Github helps by searching the existing issues as you’re…

There’s a bottleneck in Azure SQL DB storage throughput.

Last Updated February 26, 2019

Brent Ozar

Azure SQL DB

As you pay more for Business Critical Azure SQL DB servers, they’re supposed to get more storage throughput. The documentation on this is kinda hard to read, but boiling it down, for every core you add to a Gen5 server, you’re supposed to get 2,500 IOPs. That should scale linearly: insert speed should go up evenly with…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Europeans, what do you want to see in a cloud-based monitoring product?

Last Updated February 19, 2019

Brent Ozar

SQL ConstantCare

About a year ago, with GDPR enforcement looming, we decided to hit the brakes on EU sales because we weren’t confident enough in the third party app ecosystem’s compliance capabilities, or the EU’s ability to police the regulation effectively. In the time since, it’s been interesting to see that: Few folks requested their data or…

What should you do about memory dumps?

Last Updated November 25, 2025

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.

Last Updated 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

Last Updated 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?

Last Updated February 18, 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

Last Updated February 17, 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

Last Updated October 15, 2019

Brent Ozar

Monitoring, sp_BlitzFirst, Videos

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?

Last Updated February 12, 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? (Updated)

Last Updated March 19, 2019

Brent Ozar

Microsoft Azure

Update March 19: Microsoft has since acknowledged a hidden limit, then documented it, then raised it – but it’s still disappointingly slow. 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…

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

Last Updated 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

Last Updated 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 CEIP Service Run On Your SQL Server?

Last Updated August 9, 2020

Brent Ozar

Monitoring

You’ve seen the CEIP Service on your SQL Server, and you’re wondering what queries it runs and how it sends that information back to Microsoft. I was wondering too, because I started seeing queries running that I didn’t expect: sp_WhoIsActivelyRunningTelemetryQueries (click to see full size) Ah-ha, the telemetry service, also known as SQLCEIP! Starting with…