Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2448 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.

Who’s Allowed to Add Indexes to ISV Apps?

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Indexing, ISV and SaaS Database Design, SQL Server

Performance tuning of independent software vendor (ISV) databases is a little tricky. To understand who does what, let’s think through all of the work required with building and hosting a database application: Who adds indexes and tunes queries? Typically the two parties involved – the vendor and the customer – start at opposite ends of…

Brent’s Bad Idea Jeans [Video]

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Bad Idea Jeans, Humor, SQL Server

Over the years, I’ve come up with some rather “interesting” answers to SQL Server problems including: Warming up SQL Server’s buffer pool by selecting all the data from all the tables Creating indexes with triggers Adding nonclustered indexes to clustered columnstore indexes Compressing backups the hard way Putting databases on a RAM drive In this 20-minute…

How Would You Change Always On Availability Groups?

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, SQL Server

SQL Server 2012 introduced AlwaysOn Availability Groups, a way to achieve high availability, disaster recovery, and scale-out reads. SQL 2014 brought some improvements around higher uptime and more scale-out, and all signs point to continued improvements in the next version of SQL Server, too. (I love it when Microsoft brings out features like this and…

Reading the New Fast Track Reference Architectures from HP & EMC

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Hardware

James Serra caught three new SQL Server 2014 Fast Track Data Warehouse Reference Architecture designs released by EMC, HP, and Lenovo. I love reading these because they show each vendor’s state-of-the-art storage infrastructure. Two of them have remarkably similar goals – to hold a 28 TB data warehouse: From HP: HP DL380 G8 with local PCI Express…

Why Core-Based Licensing Matters for Performance Tuning

Last Updated July 19, 2020

Brent Ozar

Licensing, SQL Server

If you don’t license all of your SQL Server’s CPU cores, you need to pay particular attention to your server hardware. Say you’re using an HP DL580 with four CPU sockets, each of which has a Xeon processor plugged in with 10 cores. That’s a total of 40 real cores, or 80 logical processors if you’ve enabled…

#SQLPASS #Summit14 Keynote LiveBlog: Dr. Rimma Nehme

Last Updated November 6, 2014

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass, SQL Server

8:25AM Pacific: Goooood morning Seattle! It’s time for day 2 of the PASS Summit, and this morning we’ve got a technical keynote lined up. I’m a much bigger fan of these than the day 1 marketing keynotes. Dr. Rimma Nehme from the Microsoft Gray Systems Lab is talking Cloud Databases 101. Here’s the abstract: Cloud…

Announcing the 2015 #SQLPASS FreeCon (and taking applications)

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass, SQL Server

Four years ago, we put on the FreeCon: a free invitation-only pre-conference event before the PASS Summit here in Seattle. The FreeCon was like a pre-conference session focused on your career and the SQL Server community. The goal was to spark fires, encourage people to reach for new levels of community contribution, and build connections to help…

#SQLPASS Summit 2014 Keynote LiveBlog

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass, SQL Server

10:03AM – Ranga back onstage to finish things up. Thanking Pier 1 for letting them share the exploratory work. And we’re out! 10:00AM – Power BI adding a new authoring and editing mode. James removes the pie chart and replaces it on the fly. Now that is knowing your audience – nice job. 9:58AM –…

SQL Server Query Store

Last Updated December 19, 2017

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass, Execution Plans, Query Store (QDS), SQL Server

Execution Plan Hell I spend most of my day tuning SQL Server to make it go faster. I’m usually called in after the fact, when the app has become intolerably slow. One of the first things I ask is, “What’s changed?” Nobody ever knows with any sense of accuracy. I understand – until now, SQL Server hasn’t…

Announcing Two New Classes in Boston & Copenhagen

Last Updated January 17, 2019

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

We’ve added two new one-day pre-conference classes to our 2015 calendar: SQLSaturday Boston Pre-Con: Developer’s Guide to SQL Server Performance – You’re stuck with a database server that’s not going fast enough. You’ve got a hunch that the biggest bottleneck is inside the database server somewhere, but where? In this one-day class, you’ll learn how to use powerful…

Building a Reliable SQL Server for kCura Relativity [Video]

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

kCura Relativity, SQL Server

Your users want Relativity to be up at all times. What’s the first step? How much work is involved? What will it all cost? I’ll give you a simple worksheet to get management and the IT team on the same page, and then show you how to turn those specs into a rough project plan and…

Announcing sp_Blitz v36: New Database Checks, Hekaton, Azure Files, More

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

In-Memory OLTP (Hekaton), SQL Server

The latest version of our free SQL Server health check adds some nifty new stuff: Checks for non-default database configurations like enabling forced parameterization or delayed durability Looks in the default trace for long file growths or serious errors like memory dumps Checks Hekaton memory use and transaction errors Warns about database files on network…

Announcing kCura Relativity 9, Data Grid, Elasticsearch, and SQL Server

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

kCura Relativity, SQL Server

Today at Relativity Fest in Chicago, kCura Relativity 9 introduces the option to move some text storage out of Microsoft SQL Server and into kCura’s new Data Grid, a tool built atop the open source Elasticsearch. Is kCura abandoning SQL Server? No, but understanding what’s going on will help you be a better database administrator and developer.…

User Group Leaders: Here’s a Thank-You.

Last Updated October 18, 2014

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

If you lead a local SQL Server user group, and you’re coming to the PASS Summit in Seattle next month, we’d like to say thanks. We’re giving away 5 seats to our Make SQL Server Apps Go Faster class that runs on Monday/Tuesday before Summit. We know you probably have duties you need to attend…

Why We Love Our New SQL Critical Care® Video

Last Updated October 8, 2014

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

We’re really excited about our new video because Epipheo managed to capture our work and our personalities. Here’s our favorite parts: Brent Loves the Beer Pong My favorite part is almost a throwaway gag – the database emergency is over, and our hero is moving on to other things: Back to Work It’s only on…

Why We Made a Video About SQL Critical Care®

Last Updated October 16, 2014

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

Yesterday, we unveiled our 106-second video about our SQL Critical Care® service. Today, let’s talk about why we did it. Our web site explains who we are. It’s our storefront. The vast majority of our clients find us in Google, get to know us by reading our blogs, start to trust us by using our…

So What Exactly Does Brent Ozar Unlimited® Do, Anyway?

Last Updated October 14, 2014

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

We’ll sum it up in a 106 second video about our SQL Critical Care®: In tomorrow’s post, we’ll talk about why we made a video. In the meantime, enjoy. I know I certainly do – I’ve re-watched this dozens of times, and I still giggle. It’s on our home page, and we can’t wait for everyone to see…

I’m on the latest RunAs Radio Podcast

Last Updated October 1, 2014

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

I love going on the RunAs Radio podcast because Richard Campbell is so much fun to talk to. In this show, we talk about the amazing new hardware that has come out lately for SQL Server. Dell and HP have brought out some amazing gear – support for 1.8″ SSDs, 64GB DIMMs, and more. The…

The Third Concern for SQL Server Virtualization: Capacity Planning

Last Updated September 17, 2014

Brent Ozar

Virtualization

Our first two concerns in this series were virtualization licensing and recoverability. It’s not enough to have answers for these questions today, though – we have to think about how long the server will be in place. The server’s expiration date isn’t dictated by IT. If it was up to us, we’d never run an old,…

How SQL Server Licensing Works [Video]

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Licensing, SQL Server, Videos

You have a sneaking suspicion that your servers aren’t all paid for, and you need to get a rough idea of how SQL Server licensing works. You’ve never bought a box of SQL Server before, and you have no idea where to get started. Microsoft Certified Master Brent Ozar will break it down into a…