First Responder Kit

Execution Plans, Microsoft Azure, sp_BlitzCache

Better than nothing Yesterday it was announced that global temp tables were available in public preview for Azure. That means that unmodified versions of sp_BlitzCache (which uses a global temp table to hold a whole bunch of information) will be compatible up there. This is a nice addition for Azure, and an even nicer addition…

Introducing sp_AllNightLog: Log Shipping at Scale, Open Source

Last Updated June 30, 2017

Backup and Recovery, First Responder Kit, kCura Relativity

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. SQL Server’s newer disaster recovery options – Always On Availability Groups and…

First Responder Kit Release: Weather Is Here, Wish You Were Wonderful

Last Updated July 5, 2017

ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN WHO DO WE APPRECIATE? No one. Appreciate doesn’t rhyme with seven. Special thanks to @JohnKNess, @jsetliffe, @rabryst, @gdoddsy and @SOlsonFAC for various levels of contribution. I’ve made a $10,000 donation in each of your names to the Erik Darling Home For Little Wanderers. Very thoughtful of me. You…

Introducing sp_BlitzQueryStore

Last Updated November 16, 2017

Execution Plans, First Responder Kit, Query Store (QDS), sp_BlitzQueryStore

Oh, so you’re the one While SQL Server 2016 adoption is still pretty low, and 2017 still quite isn’t out yet, that’s no reason to not invest a few days of dev time into a stored procedure that is only usable by the smallest portion of SQL Server users. Right? Look, someone around here has…

First Responder Kit Release: Now With 50% MORE Double Checking

Last Updated June 3, 2017

So many things happen in mid-Summer. Dreams. Death. Pit stains. And FRK updates! Special thanks to @digitalohm for once again taking the axe to sp_DatabaseRestore. You are the only person on our email list who isn’t getting a Box O’ Tripe® You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #872 @MosesOfJ pointed out that,…

Announcing sp_BlitzBackups: Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself.

Last Updated May 26, 2017

If one of your SQL Servers went down at some point over the last week: What’s the most data you could have lost? What’s the longest you would have been down for? To find out, Erik and I (mostly Erik) wrote sp_BlitzBackups (sure, blame me for everything. –ED). Download the latest First Responder Kit including the…

First Responder Kit Re-Release: The Hubris Of Titles

Last Updated May 2, 2017

The Gods of the Copy Book Headings Frowned Upon Me So yesterday, I pushed out a new FRK. You could say I FRKed up, and you’d be right. Not so much See, before I push stuff to master, I do a round of testing in our AWS lab to find version-specific bugs and make sure…

First Responder Kit Release: Ça plane pour moi

Last Updated May 1, 2017

Ah, May. Spring has sprung, and young people’s minds turn towards seasonal allergies. Special thanks to @digitalohm for the Differential Restore code and general sp_DatabaseRestore spiffiness. May you live to an age that can only be described in Unix. You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #857 Do you have any idea how much…

First Responder Kit Release: Now With 100% More Working Code Than The Irish Space Program

Last Updated April 7, 2017

Every April I think about this girl I grew up with named April who smelled like Cheez-Wiz. She died tragically in a home for the blind on Taco Tuesday. Special thanks to @jeffrosenberg , @mrthomsmith , @rwhoward for contributing this month. Your complimentary oxygen is now available. The rest of you can go download the First…

sp_BlitzCache Tip: Cutting Through Heavy Dynamic SQL Use

Last Updated November 16, 2017

First Responder Kit, sp_BlitzCache, T-SQL

It keeps me up at night Out of the box, sp_BlitzCache will give you enough stuff to work on in your server’s plan cache to last a month of leap days. This is great for most people, but if you use a ton of dynamic SQL in stored procedures, it can make things difficult. What’s…

sp_DatabaseRestore: Open Source Database Restore Stored Procedure

Last Updated April 15, 2023

Tara Kizer

Backup and Recovery, First Responder Kit

You use Ola Hallengren’s maintenance scripts to do your database backups on SQL Server 2016 or newer, and you want to do things like: Restore the most recent database backup Test it for corruption Initialize restores to get ready for log shipping or replication That’s where the open source sp_DatabaseRestore comes in, from our free…

Crappy Missing Index Requests

Last Updated November 16, 2017

Execution Plans, Indexing, sp_BlitzIndex

When you’re tuning queries It’s sort of a relief when the first time you get your hands on it, you get the plan and there’s a missing index request. Even if it’s not a super high-value one, something in there is crying for help. Where there’s smoke, there’s a bingo parlor. But does adding missing…

A Tourist’s Guide to the sp_Blitz Source Code, Part 1: The Big Picture

Last Updated November 16, 2017

First Responder Kit, sp_Blitz

sp_Blitz is our open source free SQL Server health check script. From a really high level, here’s what it does: Create #BlitzResult, a temp table to hold its output Check something on your SQL Server, and if it’s found, insert a row into #BlitzResult Check something else, and insert a row if it’s found Do that…

First Responder Kit Updates: So Many Updates, Brent Quit

Last Updated February 13, 2017

I got 128 GB of RAM just to develop sp_BlitzCache with! Also, thanks to @RichBenner @BrentOzar and @douglane for code, and @LitKnd and @HenrikStaunPoulsen for great ideas! Grab the newly updated First Responder Kit, and here’s what’s in it: sp_Blitz Improvements #677 Finally! A bug that isn’t ours! Microsoft forget to let SE clean up…

Analyzing Temporary Stored Procedures with sp_BlitzCache

Last Updated November 16, 2017

First Responder Kit, sp_BlitzCache, TempDB

All the cool kids Know that when you’re trying to figure out why a stored procedure is slow sometimes, you should use a temporary stored procedure instead of pulling the code out and running it ad hoc. We frequently point people to Erland Sommarskog’s “Slow in the Application, Fast in SSMS“, because it’s an excellent…

Things I Would Love to Put In sp_BlitzCache

Last Updated April 21, 2017

Execution Plans, First Responder Kit, SQL Server

This is my favorite script to work on Getting stuff to work sp_BlitzCache is so rewarding because XML querying is so ridiculous. I wish Mikael Eriksson would write a book already; it’d make my life a whole lot easier. Along the way, I see a lot of things that I would love to warn people…

First Responder Kit Updates: New Checks Across the Board

Last Updated February 13, 2017

It’s the December to Remember Script Event, and we’ve got updates to everything. Shout out to our contributors this month: @BlitzErik, @RichBenner, @runamuk0, @SQLMonger, and @BrentOzar. Grab the newly updated First Responder Kit, and here’s what’s in it: sp_Blitz Improvements #591 – add check for 2016 Standard installed without Service Pack 1 (coded by @RichBenner) #615…

Updated First Responder Kit: sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex

Last Updated November 15, 2016

These improvements go great with cranberries. The food, not the b – actually, they go pretty well with the band, too. sp_Blitz Improvements #568 – @RichBenner added a check for the default parallelism settings sp_BlitzCache Improvements by @BlitzErik #495 – add warning for indexed views with missing stats #557 – bug fix – don’t alert…

Silent Demo: The Plan Cache

Last Updated November 16, 2017