SQL ConstantCare

The short story for this quarter: SQL Server 2022 adoption rates have stalled, even backtracked, and it doesn’t appear to be due to the cloud, either. For the long story: ever wonder how fast people are adopting new versions of SQL Server, or what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates? Let’s find out…

Why Are Y’all Changing the Compat Levels on Master?

Last Updated June 16, 2023

One of the things I love about SQL ConstantCare® (which happens to be free this month, by the way) is that I can keep in touch with what y’all are actually doing on your production servers. Today’s lesson was a complete shocker to me: some of y’all are changing the compatibility level on the master…

The SQL Server Advice You Don’t Wanna Hear

Last Updated May 25, 2023

One of the big principles of our SQL ConstantCare® monitoring product – which happens to be free this month – is that we only wanna tell you things you’re actually gonna take action on. Anytime we email you advice, there a few “Mute” links that you can click on to never hear this advice. You…

AWS Aurora Cut Our Database Costs for SQL ConstantCare® – Again.

Last Updated May 25, 2023

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL ConstantCare

In May, Amazon brought out a new Aurora I/O Optimized Serverless instance type. By switching to it, we cut our database costs by 43% overnight, saving us about $1,200 per month. No strings attached. Just lower prices. So what’s the magic? Well, customers of our SQL ConstantCare® service send us diagnostic data every day for…

Announcing 30-Day Free Trials for SQL ConstantCare®. Check Your SQL Servers Now.

Last Updated August 4, 2023

You’re responsible for the health and performance of your company’s SQL Servers. You can’t afford most monitoring products because they’re priced per-server. Your manager just can’t justify spending tens of thousands of dollars. Besides, monitoring tools just spam you. You end up with an Outlook rule that dumps all their emails into a folder, and…

SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Spring 2023

Last Updated July 7, 2023

Ever wonder how fast people are adopting new versions of SQL Server, or what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates? Let’s find out in the spring 2023 version of our SQL ConstantCare® population report. Out of 3,002 monitored servers, here’s the version adoption rate: The big 3 versions are all within 1% of…

SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Winter 2022

Last Updated December 25, 2022

Ever wonder how fast people are adopting new versions of SQL Server, or what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates, hardware sizes, or numbers of databases? Let’s find out in the winter 2022 version of our SQL ConstantCare® population report. Out of 3,679 monitored servers, here’s the version adoption rate: The big ones:…

SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Summer 2022

Last Updated August 29, 2022

Ever wonder how fast people are adopting new versions of SQL Server, or what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates, hardware sizes, or numbers of databases? Let’s find out in the summer 2022 version of our SQL ConstantCare® population report. Out of the 3,151 servers sending in data recently, the most popular version…

SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Summer 2021

Last Updated July 12, 2021

Ever wonder how fast people are adopting new versions of SQL Server, or what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates, hardware sizes, or numbers of databases? Let’s find out in the summer 2021 version of our SQL ConstantCare® population report. Out of the 3,808 servers sending in data recently, the most popular version…

New SQL ConstantCare® Feature: One Serious Query to Tune

Last Updated February 20, 2021

Our monitoring tool, SQL ConstantCare®, is different. Some monitoring tools send you a whole bunch of emails for every little thing that’s happening on every one of your server – and having you end up just creating an Outlook rule to dump them all into a folder that you never read. PAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY IS…

SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Fall 2020

Last Updated December 7, 2020

Ever wonder how fast people are adopting new versions of SQL Server, or what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates, hardware sizes, or numbers of databases? Let’s find out in the summer 2020 version of our SQL ConstantCare® population report. Out of the 3,650 servers sending in data recently, the most popular version…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: What Database Growths Do You Care About?

Last Updated October 15, 2020

SQL ConstantCare® alerts you when your databases have unusual growths. No, not like that one on your neck. And you should really get that checked out. No, I’m talking about a database that suddenly jumps in size, making you suspicious about whether somebody created a backup table or built a set of ridiculously large indexes.…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Warning You About New Large Tables & Indexes

Last Updated September 24, 2020

When I’m doing a SQL Server health check, one of the things I like showing clients is a list of their top tables by size. Inevitably, there are a bunch of tables that: Tables whose names start with “temp” or “backup” or “just_in_case” Tables with no clustered index that were clearly created with a select-into,…

SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Summer 2020

Last Updated August 31, 2020

Ever wonder how fast people are adopting new versions of SQL Server, or what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates, hardware sizes, or numbers of databases? Let’s find out in the summer 2020 version of our SQL ConstantCare® population report. The most popular version of SQL Server is 2016. The combination of 2014,…

What SQL ConstantCare® Has Been Finding In Your Servers Lately

Last Updated July 28, 2020

SQL ConstantCare® analyzed over 3,000 of your SQL Servers this month. Here are the things we check for and the number of servers where we found this problem this month: Backup Back Up Your TDE Certificate – 137 servers affected Take a Full Backup – 370 servers affected Take a Log Backup – 353 servers affected…

SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Spring 2020

Last Updated June 1, 2020

SQL Server Population Report, Videos

Ever wonder what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates, hardware sizes, or numbers of databases? Let’s find out in the spring 2020 version of our population report. Our SQL ConstantCare® service lets users send data in about their SQL Servers and get health & performance advice via email. Users can opt in to…

SQL ConstantCare® Now Tells You Which Indexes to Drop.

Last Updated May 25, 2020

Indexing, SQL ConstantCare

Indexes slow down data changes. SQL Server doesn’t have the concept of asynchronous indexes – copies of the data that it could update later when it’s bored. It has to keep every nonclustered index up to date, every single time you change data, like a delete/update/insert. Mo’ indexes, mo’ problems. That’s why in my Mastering…

Things to Consider When SQL Server Asks for an Index

Last Updated March 1, 2020

Indexing, SQL ConstantCare

One of the things I love about SQL Server is that during query plan compilation, it takes a moment to consider whether an index would help the query you’re running. Regular blog readers will know that I make a lot of jokes about the quality of these recommendations – they’re often incredibly bad – but…

SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Winter 2020

Last Updated May 30, 2020