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…
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…
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…
We’ve just updated our First Responder Kit to include new versions of these tools: sp_Blitz® v41 – June 18, 2015: Added check 162 for CMEMTHREAD waits on servers with >= 8 logical processors per NUMA node. Added check 159 for NUMA nodes reporting dangerously low memory in sys.dm_os_nodes. Added check 161 for a high number of cached…
Ah, spring, when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of updating his DMV queries. sp_Blitz®, our free health check stored procedure, brings several new checks and a whole crop of fixes and improvements. I’d like to call your attention to one in particular. Julie Citro fixed check 1, THE VERY FIRST CHECK IN THE…
The latest version of our SQL Server health check stored procedure is out today. Here’s what we’ve added in the last couple of versions – big thanks to the folks who keep making this even better for the community: Changes in v33 – January 20, 2014: Bob Klimes fixed a bug that Russell Hart introduced…
Our free server troubleshooting tool, sp_Blitz®, just learned some new tricks. If you call it like this: EXEC dbo.sp_Blitz @OutputDatabaseName = ‘DBAtools’, @OutputSchemaName = ‘dbo’, @OutputTableName = ‘BlitzResults’ It will create the table DBAtools.dbo.BlitzResults (if it doesn’t already exist) and insert the results. The table includes columns for the server name and the check date,…
There’s a new version in town. v18 adds new checks looking for: Backups stored on the same drive letters as user databases (Thanks @AlinSelicean!) Agent jobs that don’t have failure notifications set up (Thanks @Thirster42!) Shows free drive space per drive letter if you pass @CheckServerInfo = 1 in. We don’t consider this a problem…
I don’t blog every release of sp_Blitz® (we pushed v15 out silently with a few bug fixes) but we added a lot of improvements and fixes in this version – and by we I mean you. After I blogged about v14’s release earlier this week, that encouraged a lot of people to come out of the woodwork…
Today, we’ve got a big one, and it’s all thanks to you. For the last couple of versions, I haven’t added any big features because I’d been focused on the plan cache improvements. Today, though, we’ve got a big one with all kinds of health-checking improvements – and they’re all thanks to your contributions. Lori…
When you send your beautifully hand-crafted organic T-SQL statement to SQL Server, the database engine takes a moment to appreciate the poetry of your work. Before it turns your request into results, it has to build an execution plan. SQL Server considers: Which tables it needs to join together What subqueries it needs to execute…
It’s crucial for database administrators to recognize signs of pending doom. Make sure you’re able to quickly spot problems in SQL Server Management Studio by studying these screenshots. What’s that? You can’t see the differences in the screenshots? That’s because SQL Server Management Studio doesn’t show you serious problems. The more I learn about SQL…
BACKUP LOG WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY is a dangerous command: it empties out the contents of your SQL Server’s transaction log without really backing it up. Database administrators sometimes run this command right before shrinking their log file with a DBCC SHRINKFILE command, thereby freeing up drive space. Why ‘truncate_only’ is not a recognized backup option. When…
