Cloud Computing

Database Performance Tuning is Getting Much Harder.

Last Updated July 16, 2021

For the last twenty years, SQL Server performance tuning has relied on a few facts: SQL Server provided a lot of performance metrics with thorough documentation from both Microsoft and the community. You could fetch those metrics in a variety of ways, like Perfmon counters and dynamic management views. Many of the metrics were cumulative…

Adding Managed Instances to SQL Server Distributed Availability Groups

Last Updated June 20, 2021

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, Managed Instances

SQL Server Always On Availability Groups help you build a more highly available database server by spanning your database across two or more SQL Server instances. When the primary goes down, the secondary can take over. You can also scale out reads to the secondary servers. Distributed Availability Groups take this a step further and…

Azure SQL DB Frequently Asked Questions

Last Updated April 14, 2021

Brent Ozar

Azure SQL DB

I’ve seen your search history. Let’s get you some answers. Is Azure SQL DB PaaS, IaaS, or SaaS? Azure SQL DB is platform-as-a-service (PaaS). Microsoft manages most common database tasks for you, and they act as your DBA. This also means that like a DBA, Microsoft will tell you “no” if you try to implement…

Free Webcast: Planning a SQL Server to Azure Migration in 2021

Last Updated February 25, 2021

Brent Ozar

Microsoft Azure

You manage database servers for your company, and they’re thinking about migrating everything to Microsoft Azure. You’ve searched the web for information and advice, but everything you’re finding is outdated. You just want a list of things to review on your servers, an overview of what won’t work in the cloud, and how to pick…

I Sat Down for an Interview with Forrest Brazeal.

Last Updated February 4, 2021

Brent Ozar

Cloud Computing

Here’s how the interview started: Forrest Brazeal: Brent, you’re a performance specialist who’s worked with massive SQL Server deployments; how does it make you feel when you hear cloud architects saying things like “relational databases don’t scale?” What do you wish they knew? “Time for a smoke break.” Brent Ozar: They’re right. Nothing scales worth a…

What Do You Do Better Than the Cloud?

Last Updated June 25, 2020

Brent Ozar

Cloud Computing

It sounds like a trick question, but I’m serious. If your company’s management is just now starting to consider the cloud in 2020, your reaction shouldn’t be to cast a shadow on cloud vendors. Instead, think of it as writing your own resume: what the capabilities that you and your team are really proud of?…

A Single Database View Cost Me $50/Day for Months.

Last Updated June 11, 2020

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Our SQL Server monitoring product, SQL ConstantCare®, uses Amazon Aurora on the back end. I blogged about our choice of database back in 2018, and at the time, I said: I know, I know. The Microsoft geek in you – and me – wants us to use SQL Server on the back end, but here’s…

[Video] Top 3 Pitfalls of Managing Your Azure SQL DB Costs

Last Updated June 23, 2020

Brent Ozar

Azure SQL DB, Videos

You manage servers, not invoices. Your company has started to move their databases into Azure, and they’re asking questions that you’re just not ready to answer. How big does your server need to be when you’re moving an existing database up to the cloud? How are servers measured? How do you measure to know if…

Upsizing the SQL ConstantCare® Database Servers

Last Updated December 7, 2019

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL ConstantCare

If you’re looking for SQL Server news, just skip this post. I’m going to talk about general business & capacity planning type stuff here today. Our SQL ConstantCare® customers install an app that polls diagnostic data from their SQL Servers and Azure SQL Databases, upload it to us daily, and then automatically get advice on…

New Free Azure and SQL Server 2019 Training from Microsoft

Last Updated August 5, 2020

Brent Ozar

Microsoft Azure

Folks often email me and ask, “Brent, why don’t you do training classes on Azure?” The answer is simple: the products change faster than I can recoup the cost of building the training material. By the time the class gets enough revenue to pay off the downtime for building an Azure (or AWS or Google)…

Research Paper Week: Constant Time Recovery in Azure SQL DB

Last Updated August 11, 2019

Brent Ozar

Azure SQL DB, Backup and Recovery

Let’s finish up Research Paper Week with something we’re all going to need to read over the next year or two. I know, it says Azure SQL DB, but you boxed-product folks will be interested in this one too: Constant Time Recovery in Azure SQL DB by Panagiotis Antonopoulos, Peter Byrne, Wayne Chen, Cristian Diaconu, Raghavendra…

Research Paper Week: Automatic Indexing in Azure SQL DB

Last Updated August 11, 2019

Brent Ozar

Architecture, Azure SQL DB, Indexing

Before I give you the link to the next research paper in this week’s series, I wanna give you a few questions to think about: If you had to build something to automatically add indexes to SQL Server databases, where would you start? What data would you use to make your decisions? How would you…

Now is the time to sharpen your cloud database skills. Here’s how to start.

Last Updated June 10, 2019

Brent Ozar

Microsoft Azure

Many of us DBAs have been able to put off dealing with the cloud. That time is quickly coming to an end. But when was resistance to change ever a great career strategy in a tech field? Besides, two or three or four years from now, you might not have much choice in the matter.…

Developers: Azure SQL DB Serverless can save you money.

Last Updated July 8, 2019

Brent Ozar

Azure SQL DB

If you’ve got a database that doesn’t need to be on all the time, Azure SQL DB Serverless is in public preview now. It makes a lot of sense for those development databases you have to keep around, but don’t really want to pay for. If your database doesn’t get any queries for 6 hours,…

Fixing Performance By Throwing Cloud At It

Last Updated April 22, 2019

Brent Ozar

Cloud Computing

Your databases are hosted in the cloud – either in VMs or in a database-as-a-service – and you’re having a performance emergency that’s lasted for more than a day. Queries are slow, customers are getting frustrated, and you’re just not able to get a fix in quickly. Just ask management if they want to throw…

Building a SQL Server app? Start with Azure SQL DB.

Last Updated April 2, 2019

Brent Ozar

Azure SQL DB

No no, April Fool’s was yesterday. Hear me out. Azure SQL DB’s feature limitations are a good thing. It doesn’t support everything that SQL Server supports, like CLR, cross-database transactions, database mail, linked servers, and OPENQUERY, but…frankly that feature-limitation page reads like a list of my favorite things to tell developers to avoid. You shouldn’t…

Pop quiz: what do these things cost?

Last Updated March 9, 2019

Brent Ozar

Cloud Computing, Hardware, Licensing

It’s been a few years since we’ve stopped in for a sanity check. Quick: without searching the web for prices, put these items in order. Do it on a scratch paper, guessing how much you think each one costs, then arrange ’em. SQL Server 2017 Standard Edition licensing for 4 cores SQL Server 2017 Enterprise…

In Azure SQL DB, what does “The connection is broken and recovery is not possible” mean?

Last Updated March 1, 2019

Brent Ozar

Azure SQL DB

All it really means is, “Click Execute again, and you will be fine.” If I had a dollar for every time I saw this error message in SQL Server Management Studio: The connection is broken and recovery is not possible. The error says: The connection is broken and recovery is not possible. The connection is…

There’s a bottleneck in Azure SQL DB storage throughput.

Last Updated February 26, 2019

Brent Ozar

Azure SQL DB

As you pay more for Business Critical Azure SQL DB servers, they’re supposed to get more storage throughput. The documentation on this is kinda hard to read, but boiling it down, for every core you add to a Gen5 server, you’re supposed to get 2,500 IOPs. That should scale linearly: insert speed should go up evenly with…

What does Azure SQL DB Automatic Index Tuning actually do, and when?

Last Updated February 18, 2019

Brent Ozar

Azure SQL DB, Indexing

Azure SQL DB’s Automatic Tuning will create and drop indexes based on your workloads. It’s easy to enable – just go into your database in the Azure portal, Automatic Tuning, and then turn “on” for create and drop index: ENGAGE Let’s track what it does, and when. I set up Kendra Little‘s DDL trigger to log index changes, which…