SQL Server

I’m a runner. I wasn’t always a runner. Three years ago, I couldn’t run a mile. I wanted to, but I wasn’t physically capable. So I started training with the Couch to 5K plan. Eventually, I ran a 5K – I did it! – even though I was a mess. I didn’t wear the best…

I’m really excited to share the news that Brent Ozar Unlimited® is now an Amazon Consulting Partner. The Amazon Consulting Partner program is a way for Amazon Web Services to identify consulting firms specializing in helping customers design, build, and deploy solutions in Amazon Web Services. Cloud computing is some seriously cool stuff and we’re…

Is your SQL Server slowing you down? Are bad queries giving your application a case of the blues? Before you go looking for help with SQL Server, make sure that you’ve done everything you can to solve the problems on your own. Many of SQL Server’s ills can be solved with some easy preventative maintenance,…

What’s slowing down production? It’s easy to find out in 60 seconds by running a simple plan cache query. See, in order to turn your beautifully written query into a set of results, SQL Server needs a plan – an execution plan. It caches these plans in memory along with statistics like the number of…

#SQLCruise Alaska: Class is In Session! The Brent Ozar Unlimited® crew sailed on SQLCruise Alaska last week. Brent, Jeremiah, and Kendra each taught a session (or two) on the cruise. There was much talk of transactions, performance killers, and SSDs. There were lessons on backups, PowerShell, and boat drinks. As a sponsor, we got to design…

Here at Brent Ozar Unlimited®, we offer a server performance checkup to clients. As the newest member of the team, I wasn’t sure what to expect when running one. I found out that it’s pretty cool. I pretend we’re Special Forces operatives, strapped into our parachutes, doing a HALO opening over client servers. (This homemade parachute…

Here at Brent Ozar Unlimited®, we’re very open to alternative viewpoints on information technology. We’d like to help broaden your horizons and introduce you to new possibilities for your servers, so we’re introducing a new Monday series – the Celebrity Guest Post. Our first guest is life coach Phony Robbins, an internationally renowned motivational speaker…

Happy holidays! Santa SQL comes bringing tidings of cheer with a new sp_Blitz® – but also doom and gloom about configuration problems in your servers.  Here’s some of the recent contributions from readers: John Miner suggested tweaking checkid 48 and 56, the untrusted constraints and keys, to look for is_not_for_replication = 0 too.  This filters…

Eventually we all run into a situation that makes us cringe: the users want to design their own reports. If this were something as simple as giving users a color picker and some visual layout tools, that would be one thing. Most of the time it’s more complex. Business users know their problem domain very…

These two technologies can make a very big — and very bad — difference in how your SQL Server performs. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get the real, honest lowdown from a virtualization administrator, a SAN administrator, and a DBA? Wouldn’t it be even better if one person had done all three, and…