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SQL Server

Reader Letter from Kelly J.

Brent Ozar
SQL Server, Virtualization
7 Comments
Hi Brent – I would imagine you get many of these notes of appreciation for what you do but I just couldn’t leave the office for the day without say “Thank you so much”.  I would have never have thought that my personal investment would have paid such dividends. Today, armed with the awesome information,…
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SQL Server Installation Best Practices Video

Brent Ozar
SQL Server, Videos
1 Comment
Wait! You only get one chance to do this right. Before you run setup.exe, there are some basic configuration steps that will make all the difference in performance and troubleshooting. Brent Ozar will explain his SQL Server Setup Checklist covering the page file, service accounts, memory settings, and hardware stress testing. We won’t cover scripted…
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Conference Speakers – Check Your Room Size

Brent Ozar
#SQLPass, SQL Server, Writing and Presenting
2 Comments
When you’re speaking at a conference, try to get the room schedules long before the event day.  Right now, the PASS Summit conference schedule is available, and each speaker’s room is listed. Then, check out the building’s floorplan – in this case, the Washington State Convention Center’s floorplans page.  Check out the seating capacity for…
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Recognizing SQL Server’s Warning Signs

Brent Ozar
SQL Server
15 Comments
It’s crucial for database administrators to recognize signs of pending doom.  Make sure you’re able to quickly spot problems in SQL Server Management Studio by studying these screenshots. Databases that haven’t been backed up in 24 hours Databases with old compatibility levels Databases running out of space on the C drive SQL Server with Priority…
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A Week of Conferences and Travel

Jeremiah Peschka
SQL Server
0
This week is a double conference extravaganza! That also means that this week is a double travel extravaganza, so you can expect to see a lot of moaning about airports over on twitter. Feel free to heckle me back as I travel across the country from Portland, to San Francisco, to Columbus, and back again.…
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Troubleshooting the Top Five Waits Occurring in SQL Server DBAs

Kendra Little
Humor, SQL Server
12 Comments
We’ve all been there: the SQL Server Database Administrator has been running slowly and everyone’s getting cranky. How can you tell what’s wrong and what steps you need to take to restore normal operations? Database administrators have great instrumentation. When asked, they’re happy to tell you about their bottlenecks in excruciating detail. Use this handy…
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Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Always On AGs at StackOverflow

Brent Ozar
Always On Availability Groups, SQL Server, Stack Overflow
25 Comments
I recently finished helping the StackExchange team migrate their SQL Server 2008 infrastructure to SQL Server 2012. These servers power StackOverflow, DBA.StackExchange.com, the new AskPatents partnership with the US Patent and Trademark Office, and hundreds of other Q&A sites that together form one of the biggest web site networks. It’s one of the most visible…
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SQL Gangnam Style

Brent Ozar
Licensing, SQL Server
3 Comments
South Korean musician Psy’s hilarious music video for Oppa Gangnam Style has been tearing up the charts: Sure, it’s catchy, but it turns out there’s a message behind it.  Gangnam is an absurdly wealthy area of South Korea, like America’s Beverly Hills meets The Hamptons meets Tokyo.  Just like anywhere else in the world, the…
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The Case for Core

Jeremiah Peschka
SQL Server
19 Comments
SQL Server 2012 was the first version of SQL Server to support being installed on Windows Server Core Edition (Windows without a GUI to the rest of the world). With the impending release of Windows Server 2012 there are a lot of people who are excited about running SQL Server 2012 on Windows Server 2012…
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Amazon Web Services Architect Training Recap

Brent Ozar
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Computing, SQL Server
6 Comments
Going into Amazon Web Services (AWS) architecture training last week, I expected to get whiteboard-level training for project planners, and it met expectations.  We spent time talking about how Amazon’s most popular services fit together and how they can be used to solve our business needs.  Nothing in the training itself was groundbreaking for me – I keep…
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Email Templates for Recruiters and Questions

Brent Ozar
SQL Server
13 Comments
I get a lot of email, and I’m zealous about staying at Inbox Zero using the Getting Things Done productivity techniques. One of my favorite ways to handle email fast is by using templates, or as GMail calls them, Canned Responses.  Email programs like Outlook let you set up multiple signatures, and I use those…
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Where’s Your Company’s #SQLHelp Resource?

Brent Ozar
SQL Server
7 Comments
If you’re a SQL Server data professional on Twitter, you’ve probably seen the #SQLHelp hash tag.  Here’s how to use it: To get help with a short, to-the-point question, post it on Twitter with #SQLHelp in your tweet. Keep Twitter open for the next 15-30 minutes and respond quickly. To give help, set up a…
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We’re Taking sp_BlitzUpdate Out to the Farm

Brent Ozar
SQL Server
9 Comments
Last year at the PASS Summit, one of my favorite moments in my Blitz session was showing off my new equivalent of Windows Update for stored procedures.  I demoed how to use OPENROWSET to connect your SQL Server to the cloud, fetch an updated version of our sp_Blitz® stored procedure, and apply the update automatically.…
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Potential Problems with Partitioning

Jeremiah Peschka
Partitioning, SQL Server
Getting started with table partitioning is difficult; there are many decisions to make after you’ve decided to partition data. Correctly configuring partitioning is critical to the long term performance and stability of the database from both a querying and data modification standpoint. There are three key considerations that database architects should devote time to before…
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