kCura Relativity Archives - Brent Ozar Unlimited®

Production DBA

sp_AllNightLog: Creating Jobs Like I’m The President

August 10, 2017

Look, we need these things
The setup for sp_AllNightLog creates jobs for four separate activities

1 job to poll for new databases to back up (primary)
1 job to poll for new databases to restore (secondary)
10 jobs to poll for backups to take (primary)
10 jobs to poll for restores to... whatever (secondary)

sp_AllNightLog: Poll Vaulting

July 21, 2017

Carry on

It turns out that the only thing harder than checking for new databases restored to a SQL Server, is checking a folder for a backup of a database that doesn't exist on another SQL Server.

Production DBA

sp_AllNightLog: ¿Por que los queues?

July 7, 2017

Building stuff

I sometimes really hate coming up with ideas, and much prefer someone to just say "I want this" so I can go out into the world and figure out how to do that. Occasionally though, I realize that I'm not going to get all that much direction. That's what happened with sp_BlitzQueryStore.

Production DBA

Introducing sp_AllNightLog: Log Shipping at Scale, Open Source

June 29, 2017

In our Faux PaaS project, we need a backup plan - or rather, a restore plan.

On each SQL Server instance, clients can create as many databases as they want, anytime they want, with no human intervention. We need those databases covered by disaster recovery as quickly as practical.

Production DBA

Building a Faux PaaS, Part 3: What the Ideal Engineering Team Looks Like

May 25, 2017

Background: I'm working with kCura to build a Faux PaaS: something akin to Microsoft's Azure SQL DB, but internally managed. You can catch up with what we've discussed so far in Part 1 and Part 2 of the series.

In the last post, I talked about measuring backup and restore throughputs across different instance types, regions, storage configs, and backup locations. It's a lot of work to answer questions like "How should we configure our new SQL Server VMs?"

Production DBA

Building a Faux PaaS, Part 1: The SQL Server DevOps Scene in 2017

May 9, 2017

In the cloud, treat your servers like cattle, not like pets.

In the cloud, systems administration is very different than the on-premises stuff you're used to. When you build VMs in the cloud with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS, meaning AWS EC2, GCE, or Azure VMs), you expect them to die. It's just a matter of time. If you're lucky, it'll be years from now, but if you're unlucky, it'll be tomorrow.

Why I Love kCura RelativityOne Even Though I Don’t Use It

October 12, 2016

At RelativityFest this week, kCura showed more details about how their upcoming software-as-a-service hosted in Microsoft Azure works. I really like where they're going with it.

I've blogged about Relativity before, especially about how it uses SQL Server, but here's a quick recap:

Psst… Hey buddy, you want some E-Discovery?

March 29, 2016

One year ago today!
Well, sort of one year ago. Who knows when this thing will get published? Only God and Brent. And part of the calendar year fell during a leap year, which was just plain cruel, like a two part Buffy episode where the second part is the first episode of the next season DAMN YOU JOSS WHEDON!

What kCura Relativity Best in Service Means for SQL Server DBAs

November 10, 2015

kCura Relativity is a legal e-discovery application that hosts its data in SQL Server. You can host it yourself, or hire a hosting partner who specializes in hosting it for you. The best hosting partners compete for Best in Service status, an award that means what it says on the tin. Starting this year, kCura's…

I’m Presenting at kCura Relativity Fest 2015 in Chicago

July 27, 2015

This sounds really cheesy, but I'm honestly excited to be presenting again this year at kCura Relativity Fest 2015. Here's what I'll be talking about: How to Check Your SQL Server's Health The Abstract: You're a system or database administrator responsible for the uptime and performance of Relativity's SQL Servers, but you've never received professional…

Databases Need a Kosher Certification

May 8, 2015

As I picked up a nutritious breakfast from my favorite bakery (love ya, Magnolia), I noticed a sign in the window saying they were certified Kosher. As I usually do, I thought about how that kind of thing applied to databases. The Star-K symbol on food products or restaurants means that the ingredients and processes have been…

What Is Commodity Hardware?

December 11, 2014

You may have heard the term "commodity hardware" thrown around when describing solutions like Redis, Elasticsearch, or kCura's new Data Grid.

Commodity hardware refers to cheap, standardized servers that are easy to buy off the shelf from any vendor. Here's a typical example of a 2u, 2CPU commodity hardware server:

Building a Reliable SQL Server for kCura Relativity [Video]

October 20, 2014

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 budget.

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

October 13, 2014

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.…

I’m Speaking at kCura Relativity Fest 2014 about SQL Server

August 22, 2014

I'm very proud to announce that kCura selected me to speak again this year at Relativity Fest, the annual gathering of e-discovery professionals. I've been doing a lot of Relativity work (here's a recap of my blog posts about it) and I really like working with the company and the product. Heck, I even attended end-user training recently because I wanted to be able to better speak the language of the lawyers.

The SQL Server Components of kCura Relativity

July 23, 2014

kCura Relativity is a software product for law firms to find interesting stuff to help their case. To get you up to speed on what it does, here's some of the posts I've written about Relativity in the past:

Performance Tuning kCura Relativity - explains what the product is for and how DBAs can help make it faster

Tiering kCura Relativity Databases (Or Any SaaS Product)

May 1, 2014

When you're the database administrator working with a software product that stores every client's data in a different database, the sheer number of databases can be intimidating. As you grow from dozens to hundreds to thousands of databases, you can't treat all of them equally.

Start by making a graph of the database sizes - here's an example from one of my clients with 58 databases on a server (certainly not a big number, but just easy to digest in a blog post):

How to Use Partitioning to Make kCura Relativity Faster

February 27, 2014

kCura Relativity is an e-discovery program used by law firms to find evidence quickly. I've blogged about performance tuning Relativity, and today I'm going to go a little deeper to explain why DBAs have to be aware of Relativity database contents.

In Relativity, every workspace (case) lives in its own SQL Server database. That one database houses:

Performance Tuning kCura Relativity

October 7, 2013

In the e-discovery business, kCura Relativity is the big gorilla, and I've been working with kCura and their clients since 2011. I think it's one of the most interesting businesses I've ever worked with - up there with StackOverflow - and like Stack, they're really open with their customers. Today marks my second year being…

kCura Relativity DBAs – Meet Me at RelativityFest

October 15, 2012

I've been doing a lot of work lately with kCura Relativity, a legal discovery tool with a SQL Server back end. I really enjoy working with George Orr, Scott Ellis, Mike Kolek, and the rest of the team at kCura because they're fun people solving cool technology problems. It's not too often that you hear…