Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2452 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.

Learn to Use sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzFirst, and sp_BlitzIndex with These Tutorial Videos

Last Updated September 22, 2020

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit, sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzFirst, sp_BlitzIndex

There have been so many improvements lately to our First Responder Kit scripts that it was time to update our tutorial videos. Each of these is about ten minutes long and shows how to use ’em: How to Use sp_Blitz for a Health Check How to Use sp_BlitzCache to Find Slow Queries How to Use…

[Video] 500-Level Guide to Career Internals

Last Updated October 1, 2020

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass, SQL Server

This week , I was honored to give a session about hacking your career. Here’s the abstract: This is not yet another career session that tells you to be friendly and network. Forget that – this is about using your IT skills to reinvent the way you get paid. I’ll explain how I went from DBA to…

First Responder Kit 2016-09: sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex Improvements

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit, SQL Server

First, thanks to 5 community volunteers for contributing code this month. In addition to lots of bug fixes, small stuff, and a new Github issue template (thanks, Konstantin Taranov) here’s the big improvements: sp_Blitz Changes @OutputServerName writes output to remote server (Haris Khan) – for years, these stored procs have had an @OutputServerName parameter just waiting to…

Upcoming SQL Server 2019 Features

Last Updated April 11, 2019

Brent Ozar

Humor, SQL Server 2019

If you think that’s big, you should see the size of the drink I happened to be in Seattle this week after finishing up an Alaska cruise, and I had the chance to sit down with some of the PMs responsible for upcoming SQL Server features. It turns out they’re already deep in development with…

Learn T-SQL with the StackOverflow Database

Last Updated August 28, 2016

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

Background: a company came to us with a request: they had a lot of smart people who wanted to learn the basics of T-SQL in a day. Could we build an intro-to-T-SQL course that didn’t suck? Well, sure – as long as we could give it away free on the site. So here it is: You work for a…

How to Run DBCC CHECKDB on a Log Shipping Subscriber

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Backup and Recovery, CHECKDB and Corruption, Log Shipping, SQL Server

At first glance, if you set up log shipping the way most folks do, it looks like you can’t run CHECKDB on a subscriber: Database cannot be opened. It is in the middle of a restore. Please close the bathroom door. On SQL Server Enterprise Edition, you can try working around it by creating a…

Bad Idea Jeans Week: Dynamically Generating 999 Indexes on a Table

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Bad Idea Jeans, Humor, Indexing, SQL Server

Let’s say, just theoretically, you wanted to demo a query that takes SQL Server a long time to compile. And in order to make SQL Server’s job tougher, you wanted to create the maximum number of indexes possible on a table. You might do something like this: Transact-SQL SELECT TOP 999 'CREATE INDEX [IX_' +…

Bad Idea Jeans Week: Dynamically Generating Long Queries

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Bad Idea Jeans, Humor, SQL Server

As part of an experiment, I needed to build a really long query. (Don’t ask.) From another recent experiment, I know that SQL Server won’t let a query return more than 65,535 columns. I set about writing a one-line query that would return 65,535. I’m a big fan of writing the simplest reproduction scripts possible –…

Bad Idea Jeans Week: Building a Fork Bomb in SQL Server

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Bad Idea Jeans, Humor, SQL Server

Somewhat different than a sex bomb, a fork bomb is a denial-of-service attack that just starts a process that replicates itself, thereby starting more and more processes until the service goes down. Wikipedia’s fork bomb page lists examples on most operating systems (including Windows). I’ve always found fork bombs funny because of their elegant simplicity, so…

Bad Idea Jeans Week: Prevent the Use of the Database Engine Tuning Advisor

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Bad Idea Jeans, Humor, SQL Server

Every now and then, we put on our bad idea jeans in the company chat room and come up with something really ill-advised. We should probably bury these in the back yard, but…what fun would that be? Bad ideas are the most fun when they’re shared. One day, after seeing enough horrific but well-meaning indexes created…

Query Tuning Week: How to Run sp_BlitzCache on a Single Query

Last Updated August 29, 2020

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, Parameter Sniffing, sp_BlitzCache

The most popular way of using sp_BlitzCache® is to just run it – by default, it shows you the top 10 most CPU-intensive queries that have run on your server recently. Plus, it shows you warnings about each of the queries – if they’re missing indexes, experiencing parameter sniffing issues, running long, running frequently, doing…

Query Tuning Week: What’s the Difference Between Locking and Blocking and Deadlocking?

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Locking, Blocking, and Isolation Levels, SQL Server

If Erik takes out a lock on a row, and no one else is around to hear it, that’s just locking. There’s nothing wrong with locking by itself. It’s perfectly fine. If you’re the only person running a query, and you have a lot of work to do, you probably want to take out the…

How to Start Troubleshooting Parameter Sniffing Issues

Last Updated May 26, 2020

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, Parameter Sniffing, SQL Server

When a query is sometimes fast and sometimes slow, for the same input parameters, and you swear nothing else in the environment is changing, that’s often a case of parameter sniffing. After SQL Server starts up and you run a stored procedure, SQL Server builds an execution plan for that proc based on the first set…

Query Tuning Week: How to Start Troubleshooting a Slow Stored Procedure

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, SQL Server

When you need to find out why a stored procedure is running slow, here’s the information to start gathering: Check to see if the plan is in the cache. Run sp_BlitzCache® and use several different @sort_order parameters – try cpu, reads, duration, executions. If you find it in your top 10 plans, you can view…

What kind of hardware can you buy for one core’s worth of Enterprise Edition?

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Licensing, SQL Server

Dell R730 Microsoft charges $14,256 for a 2-core pack of SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition. So how much hardware can we get for $7,128? I started with one of the more common 2-socket server models, a Dell PowerEdge R730, and then optioned it with: Chassis – up to 8 2.5″ drives (because 2.5″ drives aren’t…

Bad Idea Jeans: Dynamically Generating Ugly Queries and Task Manager Graffiti

Last Updated April 1, 2019

Brent Ozar

Bad Idea Jeans, Humor, SQL Server

Say you’re at Dell DBA Days, and you want to build a really ugly query, fast. You want to generate a StackOverflow database query that will take a long time to compile, and maybe demand a huge amount of memory to run, but not actually take any time to execute. You might start by building…

Announcing Training Class Instant Replay, Plus New Classes in Philly, San Diego, and Online

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

Graduation Day in Philly When we ask students for feedback about our in-person classes, they said one thing over and over: “It’s just so much information. Can we get an easier way to refer back to everything?” Now you can, with Instant Replay: starting with classes this month, you can watch an online recorded version…

Windows Update Now Delivers SQL Server Cumulative Updates

Last Updated August 6, 2016

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

When the SQL Server Release Services team said they were going to start treating cumulative updates just like service packs, you may not have expected this part: Windows Updates This means if your Windows admins approve and install patches, they may also be patching your SQL Server a little more frequently than you’re used to. Cumulative…

An Introduction to Query Memory

Last Updated May 26, 2020

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, Memory Grants, Parameter Sniffing, SQL Server

Microsoft has been quietly making some amazing improvements for performance tuners in SQL Server 2012, 2014, and 2016. This week, we’re going to introduce you to just how awesome they are. (They being the improvements, not Microsoft. You already knew they were awesome.) Using the freely available StackOverflow database, let’s start with a simple query…

Dell DBA Days Prep: Country Songs About Databases

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Humor, SQL Server

I travel a lot, and I’ve seen a lot of things, but even I was surprised this week when I sat down in a Cracker Barrel Restaurant that had the oddest soundtrack. It turns out there’s an entire sub-genre of country music that specializes in database songs. While I was sitting there eating my Uncle…