Posts by Brent Ozar Unlimited Team

This week Brent, and Richie discuss validating backups using the backup set table, how to figure out if you’re a Mid-Level or Senior DBA, rollbacks, compatibility modes while upgrading SQL Server versions, MAXDOP settings, and Brent’s car purchasing tip. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/1/3 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated January 8, 2018

This week Brent and Richie discuss the latest big Intel CPU security flaw, distributed transactions, rebuilding indexes, SQL Server health check, GDPR regulations, Availability Groups issues, improving server performance, patching for instances that share DBs from multiple applications, using heaps, and more… Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/12/20 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated December 23, 2017

This week Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss truncating & repopulating, failed logins, their choice for high availability, PowerBI, read committed isolation, parameter sniffing, database mirroring, extended events and failing queries and re-indexing large tables. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our podcast to listen on the…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/12/13 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated December 16, 2017

This week Tara, Erik, and Richie discuss virtualization, replication & mirroring, switching SQL service logins to an AD account, temporal tables, tempdb issues, migrating from SQL 2015, and Richie’s outdoor adventures in “Breath of the Wild.” Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our podcast to listen…

Database History: The Inventor of the Data Page

Last Updated December 1, 2017

Database History

Do you ever wonder about the history of the systems you rely on every day? They didn’t teach us database history in school. Instead, we got calculus and art and interpretive dance. Fat lot of good that did us, right? So from time to time, we’re taking it upon ourselves to bring you the history…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/12/6 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated December 9, 2017

This week Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss filestream waits, what to use instead of filestream, Availability Groups & clusters, implicit data conversion, using snapshot backups, MERGE statement bugs, deadlocks, the future of on-prem servers, Erik’s new sp_Blitz lock, and if the SQL Server knowledge base “Virtual Assistant” can answer DBA interview questions. Here’s the video…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/11/29 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated December 9, 2017

This week Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss whether you need to know T-SQL to be a Senior DBA, if you should use SQL Server 2017 for production, monitoring tools, C# vs Powershell, IO_COMPLETION waits, DBA jobs, and SQL Operations Studio. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/11/22 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated November 26, 2017

This week, Brent and Richie discuss the new Power BI Dashboard for DBAs, designing a new backup structure, creating SSRS reports, the difference between row and page compression, using EMC Avamar SQL agent for backing up databases, SQL Server and other books to check out, Veeam Backup for SQL Server, and how to best manage…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/11/15 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated November 20, 2017

This week Brent, Erik, Richie, and Tara discuss Docker, writing to different servers in different locations, SAN Replication, reducing the size of a database, patching Availability Groups, getting rid of failover cluster instances, long-term backup storage options, VLF numbers, and more. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/11/08 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated November 11, 2017

This week, Richie and Tara discuss Richie’s current projects, Availability Groups, offloading reads and backups, applying service packs, whether production should ship agent jobs to production recovery server, security checks and scans in SQL Server, CPU performance issues upgrading to SQL Server 2016 and 2017, database backups and restores, whether there’s currently a DBA shortage,…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/10/25 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated October 28, 2017

This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss database corruption, multi-instance clusters, career advice, whether you should transition from contract work to full time, VMware vMotion, reducing failover time with AGs, query tuning, and more. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our podcast to listen on the…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/10/11 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated October 15, 2017

This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss the new Extended Events Profiler, using SQL audit vs a trigger to log what people do, log shipping, migrating from on-prem to cloud, best practice for a database owner, SQL Server performance improvement, the difference between simple, bulk-logged, and full recovery models and when to use them, tools…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/10/4 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated October 7, 2017

This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss what they think about having no more service packs for SQL Server 2017 and newer versions, shrinking log files, how many servers can one DBA manage, log backups, mirroring vs Availability Groups vs log shipping, and their next company retreat location. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/09/13 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated October 7, 2017

Note: this is coming to you from the past due to technical difficulties. This week, Brent and Erik discuss Availability Group issues, database diagram tools, AWS vs Azure, diagnosing async io waits, troubleshooting deadlocks, extended events, using same login credentials for everyone in the company, adjusting and more. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/09/27 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated October 1, 2017

This week, Richie and Erik discuss altering database columns, separating log files, encryption, NOLOCK issues, developing new skills and experience, troubleshooting deadlocks, Oracle, calling C# method from a stored procedure and the type of headset Erik uses. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our podcast to…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/09/20 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated September 25, 2017

This week, Brent, Tara, Richie, and Erik discuss a most excepted solution for SA and securing an instance, how many VLFs should a database have, merge replication issues, query tuning tips, database restores, and Larry Ellison’s self-driving database. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our podcast…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/08/30 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated September 5, 2017

This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss Availability Groups, versions of sp_BlitzIndex™, SQL Server installation issue, backing up SSRS reports, SQL Server on Linux, failovers, detaching/attaching databases, extended events, career progression of a DBA, and more. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our podcast to listen…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/08/23 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated August 28, 2017

This week, Brent, Erik, Tara, and Richie discuss index fragmentation, Azure disk speeds, Availability Groups, database restores, optimize for ad hoc setting, forced parameterization, BI consultants, index views, SPN registrations, and more. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our podcast to listen on the go. Enjoy…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/08/02 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated August 6, 2017

This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss unit testing, tSQLt, availability groups, duplicate indexes, reporting services 2016 on availability groups, troubleshooting Entity Framework queries, joining views in tables, SQL Server caching issues, and why procedures have plans inside the cache. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or…

[Video] Office Hours 2017/07/29 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated July 29, 2017