Posts by Brent Ozar

Okay, I, uh, forgot to unmute the microphone for this one: So here are the answers in text form instead. <sigh> Thank goodness it was a speed round! Mike: When Brent Ozar’s certification exams for SQL Server will be available? Looking forward to having exams like “Fundamentals of QT”, “Mastering Server Tuning” etc, so you…

Who’s Hiring in the Microsoft Data Platform Community? October 2022 Edition

Last Updated September 18, 2022

Who's Hiring

Is your company hiring for a database position as of October 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…

Erik Darling’s Month of Free Tools Training

Last Updated October 3, 2022

Over the past month (plus or minus a couple days), Erik Darling churned out dozens of posts to show how he uses different SQL Server Community Tools that are free and open source to troubleshoot SQL Server issues. You should read all of them. I did. (I also shamelessly copy/pasted this intro, plus the below,…

October is Free Fundamentals Month – And The Training Starts Now.

Last Updated October 8, 2022

Indexing

Every weekday during the month of October, one of the modules from my Fundamentals classes will be absolutely free to watch. But you gotta watch it that day – you snooze, you lose. This week is Fundamentals of Index Tuning. To follow along with the labs this week & next week, you’ll need SQL Server 2017…

[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything at the Mediterranean Sea

Last Updated September 28, 2022

On the last day of my Israel trip, I went through the highly upvoted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento and answered ’em, standing in front of the beach. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:37 AllThePartyPeople: On our server, MAXDOP=1 (not my choice); we had a poor performing SP call (called as dynamic SQL; again not my choice);…

Vegas Home Office Tour

Last Updated September 28, 2022

Home Office

I’ve been teaching online from home for years, and you’d probably think my office would keep growing and growing – but actually, my setup has gotten a lot smaller since the last time I blogged about it. I don’t really need space in order to work, and I kinda wanna incentivize myself to get out of the…

Free Live Webcast: Why is One Query Sometimes Slow and Sometimes Fast?

Last Updated September 28, 2022

SQL Server

Sometimes the exact same query goes slow out of nowhere. Your current fix is to update statistics, rebuild indexes, or restart the SQL Server. It works, but you don’t know why. The single most common reason is parameter sniffing. SQL Server “sniffs” the first set of parameters for a query, builds an execution plan for…

Buckle Up: October is Free Fundamentals Month!

Last Updated October 7, 2022

Company News

How about some completely free SQL Server training? Every weekday during the month of October, one of the modules from my Fundamentals classes will be absolutely free to watch. But you gotta watch it that day – you snooze, you lose. To prep, block out a 30-minute window on your calendar, right now. Put a label…

[Video] Office Hours: Six-Minute Speed Round

Last Updated September 19, 2022

The morning after the Data TLV Summit in Tel Aviv, I stood out on the balcony and answered a few of your questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento, rapid-fire style: Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Intros 00:47 cyrpl: Hi Brent from PEI, Canada. A support person told me today that when creating a table, an ID column…

[Video] Office Hours in Tel Aviv, Israel

Last Updated September 19, 2022

Before speaking at the Data TLV Summit, I sat by the Mediterranean Sea and discussed the top-voted questions you posted at https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:55 Manikandan GS: As postgres being one among the RDBMS lane, do you think postgres is having more features and flexibility compared to MS-SQL Server? 02:46 PaginationWoo!:…

New Online Class: Running SQL Server in AWS and Azure

Last Updated October 4, 2022

Cloud Computing

You’re used to managing your own SQL Servers in VMs, but now they’re asking you to work with the cloud. You’re already comfortable installing, backing up, and performance tuning “regular” SQL Servers, and you just need to catch up with what’s different about the cloud. You don’t want hype – you just want honest opinions…

Office Hours: Gif Reactions Edition

Last Updated September 17, 2022

Some of the questions y’all post at https://pollgab.com/room/brento are open-and-shut cases. I was going to do a one-word-answers edition, but I think this is even better: gifs. GI Joe DBA: Thoughts about IT professionals Unionizing? IT professionals are in demand. Because of our demand, should we use this leverage to unionize, raise the bar, force…

Most DBAs Say They’re Encrypting Personally Identifiable Data. Most.

Last Updated September 11, 2022

Despite the continuous stream of data breaches, ransomware, and GDPR violations, some companies still aren’t encrypting personally identifiable information (PII) inside our databases or backups. I see this all the time when working with clients, but I can’t exactly talk about that or give numbers, so I decided to take a highly unscientific poll on…

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

Last Updated September 11, 2022

Got questions about the Microsoft data platform? Post ’em at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the ones you’d like to see me cover. Today’s episode finds me in my home office in Vegas: 00:00 Intros 02:10 GeorgeDAX: Hello Brent, I’m a dealing with a huge sales table which contains around 500 columns with 50m rows. Business asks…

Community Tools Month: Using sp_WhoIsActive to Catch ASYNC_NETWORK_IO

Last Updated September 11, 2022

Monitoring

When your SQL Server’s top wait stat is ASYNC_NETWORK_IO, that indicates SQL Server is waiting on the app to ask for the next part of the result set. This is a real pain in the rear to troubleshoot because often these waits happen for really short duration each time – think milliseconds, not seconds. It’s…

[Video] Office Hours: Hotel Balcony Edition, Part 2

Last Updated September 5, 2022

Post your questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the ones you’d like to see me cover. In today’s episode, I sit down on a quiet hotel balcony and talk through a bunch of interesting questions: Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Introductions 00:59 Haydar: What tools do you like to use when troubleshooting azure sql db query…

[Video] Office Hours: Hotel Balcony Edition, Part 1

Last Updated September 5, 2022

Post your questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the ones you’d like to see me cover. In today’s episode, I sit down on a quiet hotel balcony and talk through a bunch of interesting questions: Here’s what we covered today: 00:00 Introductions 00:25 Kebros: Hi Brent.My manager wants me to summarize sql health into a number…

Community Tools Month: Choose Your Character

Last Updated September 5, 2022

Professional Development, Tools

This month on the blog is Community Tools Month, and I’m going to be talking about some of the most useful and influential tools out there. You can’t learn them all – *I* can’t learn them all – because there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do your work, keep your skills sharp,…

Office Hours, Short Text Answers Edition

Last Updated September 5, 2022

Not all of the questions y’all post at https://pollgab.com/room/brento require long, thought-out answers. Some are just one-line specials, like these: F’legend: Hi Brent, in reply to a question talking about database restores for 1TB+ you also touched on scrubbing or synthetic data as a way to populate dev environments. Are there any resources/tools you would…

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

Last Updated October 4, 2022