[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About SQL Server in Cabo
I watched the sun rise from my balcony in Cabo this morning and answer your questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNAyaTqKIpo
Backup, Restore, and Database Integrity
Backup design, restore testing, integrity checks, and corruption response.
292 associated posts117 primary posts
[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About SQL Server
I'm back in San Diego, so let's sit out on the balcony, enjoy a tasty beverage, and go through your top-voted questions from PollGab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7xa7H2kqkQ
[Video] Office Hours in Cabo: Ask Me Anything About SQL Server
Let's get together at sunrise in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and talk through your highest-upvoted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw2v_TInvac
Production DBA
Check Your SQL Server Backup Performance & Safety with sp_BlitzBackups
Out of all of the scripts in our free First Responder Kit, sp_BlitzBackups is probably the one you've used the least. Let's talk about what comes out of it, and why you should use it more often.
First, let's define two terms:
[Video] Office Hours at Silver Strand State Beach: Ask Me Anything About SQL Server
It's a beach day! Let's hang out at Silver Strand State Beach and I'll take your highly voted questions from https://pollgab.com/rooms/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTocbvnQgFs
[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About SQL Server at Gulfoss
I stopped at a waterfall in Iceland to answer your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWguvLfHaNA
[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About SQL Server at the Volcano Hekla
I drove up the volcano Hekla in central Iceland - also known as the Gateway to Hell - and parked the Defender here:
While my travel companions hiked up higher (and took that photo), I set up the tripod and camera, then went through your highly-upvoted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
[Video] Office Hours at the Seltjarnarnes Lighthouse
You posted and upvoted SQL Server questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento, and I went out for a walk on the Seltjarnarnes peninsula to the lighthouse to answer 'em.
https://youtu.be/IB2EH2irD6s
[Video] Office Hours at the Eldfell Volcano Crater
You posted and upvoted questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento, and I ascended - well, drove into - the Eldfell Volcano in the Westman Islands to answer 'em:
https://youtu.be/dnD3qAuhBUE
[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About SQL Server
You've got questions, I've got answers. Welcome to another edition of Office Hours, where you post your questions here, upvote the ones you'd like to see me talk through, and I do your bidding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akg7fguhz2I
[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About Microsoft SQL Server
Got questions that aren't a good fit for DBA.StackExchange.com, and you want my opinion? Post them here and upvote the questions you'd like to see me talk through. This weekend, I hopped into my home studio and did a half-hour session because so many good questions had piled up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7XFeXcOZgU
Production DBA
Store Files in a File System, Not a Relational Database.
Since the dawn of time, database vendors have called out to developers, "Store everything inside the database. You know you want to. Here, we'll make it easy for you by adding data types like binary and features like filestream."
Ah, but this siren song leads you to your eventual doom.
Production DBA
How to Patch SQL Server
Microsoft releases SQL Server Cumulative Updates about every 60 days. This is a part of your job that you're going to be doing a lot, so let's get good at it! Here's the strategy I like to use.
Pick what patch you're going to apply. Generally speaking, you should be on the most recent Cumulative Update available for your version. (Years ago, folks only applied Service Packs, but starting with SQL Server 2017, Service Packs are gone. Microsoft only ships Cumulative Updates now.)
Production DBA
SQL Server Suddenly Frozen? You Might Be Snapshotting Too Many Databases.
Snapshot backup tools like Azure Site Recovery and Veeam are great for sysadmins. They let you quickly replicate a virtual machine to somewhere else without knowing too much about the server's contents.
To pull it off, they use the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service to do snapshot backups - often referred to as VSS snaps. In a nutshell:
3 Ways to Run DBCC CHECKDB Faster
In my last post, I talked about how you can get 43%-67% faster backups. Today, I'm using that same SQL Server setup to discuss how throwing more CPU cores might help you check for corruption faster if you've already got modern fast storage. I don't expect everyone to go to this level of detail by any means, but it's the kind of tuning you can do when you're facing multiple terabytes of production data per server and shrinking maintenance windows.
Production DBA
Back Up SQL Server 43%-67% Faster by Writing to Multiple Files.
Even if you're not writing to different physical drives, you can get faster backups with Microsoft SQL Server when you back up to multiple files. Your exact numbers are going to vary based on your server and your utter inability to rub two sticks together to make fire, but let's see how I do.
Here's the hardware I'm using:
Production DBA
SQL Server Problems We Don’t Have Anymore
I was cleaning out a folder of presentations and I realized there are a whole slew of problems that we had to worry about ten years ago, and they just hardly ever come up today. Virtual Log Files (VLFs) - it's been years since I've run across a server where this was an issue. I…
Production DBA
What Do You Do Better Than the Cloud?
It sounds like a trick question, but I'm serious.
If your company's management is just now starting to consider the cloud in 2020, your reaction shouldn't be to cast a shadow on cloud vendors. Instead, think of it as writing your own resume: what the capabilities that you and your team are really proud of?
Can I Offload DBCC CHECKDB To Another Server?
You want to check for corruption, but you don't want to slow down your primary production server.
In this post, I'm specifically talking about offloading the corruption checking process. I'm not talking about doing corruption checking on both the primary and other servers - that's wonderful, and if you're doing that, you should hug yourself. You're doing a good job. Who's a good dog? You are! Good dog.
SQL Server Doesn’t Encrypt Data By Default.
Create a table and insert a couple of rows:
Then back up the database without using compression, and open up the backup file with a hex editor:
