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SQL ConstantCare

Building SQL ConstantCare® Version 2: Easy-to-Afford Monitoring

Last Updated February 17, 2019

SQL ConstantCare

tl;dr – SQL ConstantCare® is now just $59 per month, or $495 per year. As we were building SQL ConstantCare®, I wanted it to be mentoring, not monitoring. I wanted to take daily data samples, trend them over time, and give you big-picture advice on what tasks you should focus on to make your SQL Servers faster…

Brent Ozar reading

A Lot of Your SQL Servers Are Unsupported.

Last Updated November 19, 2018

Production Database Administration, SQL ConstantCare

I’m almost afraid to look into the SQL ConstantCare® client base to see the answer to this, but let’s put on a pair of rubber gloves and go find out. SQL Server 2016: <1% out of support. I LOVE YOU PEOPLE. However, you’ve had the luxury of time here: SP1 came out in November 2016,…

SQL ConstantCare

How Much Memory is “Normal” for SQL Servers?

Last Updated September 23, 2019

SQL ConstantCare

When I look at a SQL Server, one of the first things I check is, “How much memory does this thing have relative to the amount of data we’re hosting on here?” I’ve long used some seat-of-the-pants numbers, but armed with data from SQL ConstantCare® users who opted into public data sharing, let’s do a…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: You Should Probably Learn Power BI. I Did.

Last Updated September 2, 2018

SQL ConstantCare

When I was prepping for the PASS Summit last year, I wanted to unveil something awesome and free that would help you analyze your SQL Server’s performance. I ended up building the Power BI Dashboard for DBAs, an easy way for you to visualize your server’s wait stats. When we started building SQL ConstantCare®, our…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Updating ConstantCare.exe

Last Updated August 24, 2018

SQL ConstantCare

When we started designing SQL ConstantCare® (back before we had a name for it), I listed out the main components at the beginning of the design doc: The beginning of a giant to-do list The collector (which later became ConstantCare.exe) was the only piece that would run client-side. I wanted to keep end user support…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Now Free for Consulting Customers

Last Updated August 13, 2018

SQL ConstantCare

We’re kinda like an emergency room for SQL Server: we specialize in a 3-day SQL Critical Care® where we work side by side with you, talking about your database pains, showing you the root cause, and then teaching you how to get permanent pain relief. That works really well, and we’ve kinda got it down…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: What Mentoring Is (and Isn’t)

Last Updated July 19, 2018

SQL ConstantCare

When we built SQL ConstantCare® as a mentoring – not monitoring – product, I really meant the word mentoring. A lot of us are loners – the only SQL Server person in the office. Nobody really understands what we’re doing, and … we’re not even sure we understand, either. We were self-taught, and we didn’t…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: What Cloud Hosting Costs

Last Updated December 7, 2019

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL ConstantCare

In our behind-the-scenes posts about building SQL ConstantCare®, I’ve written about how we picked serverless architecture for the application layer, and how we picked AWS Aurora for the database layer. Hosting costs were a big driving factor in those decisions – so how has that worked out? Presented for your enjoyment, here are our total…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Analyzing Query Plans

Last Updated June 24, 2018

SQL ConstantCare

XML Delenda Est Last week, I talked about how we’re going to be collecting query plans from users who opt to have us do so (and only users who opt in! No surprises, here) by leveraging code we already have written in sp_BlitzCache, and how we’re going to do the XML analysis on our end using…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Collecting Query Plans

Last Updated June 24, 2018

SQL ConstantCare

Coming Soon In an upcoming release, we’ll start collecting query plans from your servers. Since this may result in the transmission of PII, it will be opt-in only. We won’t be getting this by default, because we don’t want anyone to be uncomfortable with the level of data we’re collecting from their servers. This is…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: How We Use Feature Toggles

Last Updated June 14, 2018

Development, SQL ConstantCare

In SQL ConstantCare®, you send in your SQL Server’s diagnostic data, our systems analyze it, and we email you a list of tasks you should perform to make your SQL Server faster and more reliable. Some recommendations are really straightforward: for example, hey, you should turn off Priority Boost. It’s really easy to determine if Priority…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Why People Aren’t Using Query Store

Last Updated June 11, 2018

Query Store (QDS), SQL ConstantCare

When Microsoft first talked about Query Store, I was wildly excited. It’s basically a black box flight data recorder for SQL Server, tracking which queries run over time, how much work they do, and how their execution plans change. And then it came out, and…hardly anybody used it. We thought it was a good idea,…

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Building SQL ConstantCare®: Adding Daily Emails and Recognizing Your Work

Last Updated May 21, 2018

SQL ConstantCare

When we first launched SQL ConstantCare®, the workflow was: You sent in data about your SQL Servers daily Our systems sent us (not you) recommendations on what to do Once a week, we reviewed those recommendations, made sure they made sense, adapted them when necessary, and then forwarded ’em on to you Over time, we became…

Brent Ozar reading

Building SQL ConstantCare®: I Love Unit Tests

Last Updated May 14, 2018

Development, SQL ConstantCare

You know what my biggest regret is about sp_Blitz? No unit tests. Seriously. Back then, I wrote a bunch of T-SQL checks to see if a server had memory configuration errors, corruption, obscure trace flags, etc. Over time, sp_Blitz got bigger and bigger, and we started getting code contributions from strangers. Things got even more challenging…

Availability Groups Bug with Indexed Views

Last Updated May 7, 2018

Breaking News, SQL ConstantCare

The short story: if you drop an index on an indexed view, queries on the Always On Availability Groups replicas that point to that indexed view will cause memory dumps. The long story: to reproduce – AND DO NOT DO THIS IN PRODUCTION – on the primary, create a couple of tables, an indexed view,…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Refining Our Recommendations

Last Updated April 29, 2018

SQL ConstantCare

One of the fun things about building SQL ConstantCare® as a cloud-based service is that we can iterate fast, making improvements based on the data we find. We can assess the population as a whole, figure out what people are doing well, and look more closely at the rules they’re struggling with. What checks are…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Why We Avoided Graphs

Last Updated April 23, 2018

SQL ConstantCare, Wait Stats

When we started building SQL ConstantCare®, one of my early decisions was to focus on a text-based interface. I wanted to just simply tell you what I’d do in your shoes. If users wanted to see more evidence behind the recommendations, I’d show it – but otherwise, I’d hold off and let them ask. The experience has…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: The Database

Last Updated December 7, 2019

SQL ConstantCare

I bet, dear reader, that this is the post you’ve been really curious about in my behind-the-scenes posts. Back in the post about the data we collect, you may remember that our initial goal was to analyze high-priority issues like missing backups or corruption check, priority boost on, offline NUMA nodes, etc. To do that,…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: 10% of you have Priority Boost on.

Last Updated April 10, 2018

SQL ConstantCare

One of my favorite things about my job is being able to take the pulse of how real companies are managing their databases. I don’t wanna be locked in an ivory tower, preaching down to you, dear reader, about how you should be doing five million things a day – when in reality, you’re struggling…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: The Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Last Updated April 10, 2018

SQL ConstantCare

When you wanna build something, how early do you let the public in? Where do you draw the lines with the features you absolutely have to have – versus the stuff you just want? Code is never really done. The lines are so blurry these days with labels like Alpha, Beta, Private Preview, Public Preview,…