Let's say someone - not you, dear reader, because you would surely never be this sloppy - is building a personal web site or a diary or a company or whatever:
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Yes, they should be encrypting passwords, and not storing ages, and certainly never storing identifying information like social security numbers. Unfortunately, that's just often not how it goes in the real world, as any recent headline will tell you.
We've talked about how to do a free SQL Server health check, and then how to drill deeper with performance check.
After these two, management usually steps back and asks, "Wait a minute - how'd we get into this mess? And long term, strategically, what should we do next?"
Your client or boss just said, "Find out why this SQL Server is slow." You've already done a free SQL Server health check, and now you wanna investigate deeper.
Step 1: Download & run sp_BlitzFirst.
Start with wait stats, which tell you what the SQL Server has been waiting on since the service was last started, or since someone cleared wait stats with DBCC SQLPERF, whichever is more recent.
Your boss or client came to you and said, "Give me a quick health check on this SQL Server." Step 1: Download & run sp_Blitz. Go to our download page and get our First Responder Kit. There's a bunch of scripts and white papers in there, but the one to start with is sp_Blitz.sql. Open…
StackExchange users often ask, "Why is my server slow?" Here's a few tips to get better, faster answers. Server information You may have already included server information in your question, but it may not be sufficient. Run sp_Blitz to output a lot of server information fast. [crayon-6a66fa80c0ba7725682558/] Click on the XML mumbo jumbo and post the…
In our new 2-day hands-on lab course, Performance Tuning By Example, students have a series of performance tuning goals they have to accomplish. For example, in one scenario they have to fix the performance problem only using indexes, and in another they're only allowed to change code (but not indexes.) In each lab, they have…
Step By Step
When you think about setting up maintenance, a persistent fear is that tasks may step on each other. You probably don't want backups and CHECKDB and statistics maintenance running at the same time as statistics maintenance (notice I didn't say index maintenance, here, because you're smart and you skip it?). You may also throw in some other steps, like cleanup tasks something.
One of my most popular sessions is Watch Brent Tune Queries. I've updated it every year, tuning different queries, showing new tools like SentryOne's Plan Explorer, StatisticsParser.com, SSMS's plan comparison, and SSMS 2017's new scenario evaluation tool. One hour is never enough - there's so many tricks and tips I want to show in action, walking people through how I use them in a tuning scenario.
I'm speaking at the PASS DBA Fundamentals Virtual Chapter next Tuesday! Here's the topic: When the phone rings, you need a repeatable process to discern the symptoms, root cause, what will happen if you don’t take action, and based on that, what actions you should take. You’ll see Brent step through several emergency scenarios live,…
You’re a systems administrator or database administrator who wants to protect your production SQL Server. However, you don’t have a separate data center or another colo site.
You’re looking for instructions on:
Step 1. Run sp_Blitz and look for urgent warnings. sp_Blitz is one of the free scripts in our First Responder Kit. Just open the sp_Blitz.sql, run that to create the stored procedure, and type:
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It returns a prioritized list of things that are wrong, broken, or dangerous about your SQL Server. Focus on things in priority 1 through 50 - these are the big, urgent issues that can get you fired, or can cause showstopper problems:
Like a DBA batter's box
While we were hanging out in between webcasts at Dell, we got to talking about stuff we used to do before maintenance windows. Things that brought us good luck, warded off blue screens and failed patches, and just generally made us feel better about working well into the early AM on a weekend.
The instant you encounter corruption in a production SQL Server database, stop. Read this entire article first to understand the big picture, and then come back here to take action. First, understand that you shouldn't start by trying to repair the corruption. You may be facing a storage subsystem problem where your storage is corrupting…
The statute of limitations has passed, so this week on SQL Server Radio, I get together with Guy Glantser and Matan Yungman to talk about our favorite oops moments. I talked about my very first database disaster ever - done back when I was in my 20s and working for a photo studio, using Xenix, long…
HW - if all you do is rack & stack hardware, you can manage thousands of boxes. You see this at Facebook/Google type scales.
OS - when you're responsible for troubleshooting operating system problems (as opposed to simply re-imaging the box from scratch), you can manage hundreds of boxes or VMs.
I saw a DBA.StackExchange.com question and had to laugh out loud:
"Is there a cool way of performing CU updates for SQL Server on hundreds of machines?"
No, and it has nothing to do with technology.
When the DBA reports to you, ask yourself two questions:
"What would I fire the DBA for?"
"How can I prove that they're not doing that?"
Stop. Before you think about upgrading your existing SQL Server to the latest version, think it through.
Your hardware is old. Even if it's just a couple of years old, the latest advances in processors, memory, and storage mean it's practically an antique.
Servers are like milk cartons: both need an expiration date printed clearly on the outside.When a project needs a new database server, I ask the business users, "How long does this server need to last?"Inevitably somebody gives the flip answer of, "Forever." I laugh along with the group and then wait with a calm smile…
We write a lot about best practices, we teach customers best practices, and we publish popular references for best practices about all sorts of things like performance monitoring, SQL Server Setup, and Availability Groups. But the internet is a sea of information and many SQL Server instances have unique needs. How does a SQL developer…
