Backup design, restore testing, integrity checks, and corruption response.
292 associated posts117 primary posts
This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss the lack of backward compatibility for SQL Server backups, deploying SQL Server on VMs with shared SAN storage, query tuning, replication, full-text indexes, backup and restore, saying "no" to your superiors as a DBA, clearing your transaction log, and much more.
Here’s the video on YouTube:
This isn't about having a sucky job, this is about you sucking at your job. There's a big difference. You could be sucking at your job because you hate your job and just don't care. I get that. In that case though, you know better but choose not to do better.
I've encountered some people that have Senior DBA as their job title but don't really have senior-level experience. I've seen some very questionable things in my career.
Signs you aren't a Senior DBA
This week, Tara, Erik, and Richie discuss 3rd-party tools for object-level restore, patching, stringing multiple CTEs, Meltdown and Spectre, instance stacking, organizing DBA teams, DBCC checks, moving local databases to Amazon RDS, CTEs vs temp tables, and backups and restores.
Here’s the video on YouTube:
This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss a simple way to fill tempdb, tools for retrieving data from transaction logs, tools for diagraming server architecture, their favorite counters for checking if SQL server on VMWare has sufficient memory, SSRS subscription issues, change requests, thread pool issues, best practices for SELECT * into, failover SQL Server vs failover SAN, backups, and more.
This week Brent, and Richie discuss validating backups using the backup set table, how to figure out if you're a Mid-Level or Senior DBA, rollbacks, compatibility modes while upgrading SQL Server versions, MAXDOP settings, and Brent's car purchasing tip.
Here’s the video on YouTube:
There's no Latin word for Robot
I'm all for automation, especially when it comes to the boring stuff. As awesome as the automation routines we have for that are, I still see people messing it up.
Right now, there's no Clippy/HAL mashup glaring at you, telling you that what you're doing is a bad idea.
So much, so often
Ah, backups. Why are they so tough to get right?
You start taking them, you find out you're not taking enough of them, or that they're not the right kind, or that you're not using checksums or compression, or that you're not storing them in the right place, or that the storage isn't redundant.
Clientele
Most of out customers are on slightly (ahem) older (AHEM) hardware, and they have big questions:
How do we know what kind of hardware we need?
How do we load test it?
How do we know what to change to make it better?
There's a lot that goes into a Disaster Recovery plan. One of them is offsite backups. There are some businesses that don't have backups going offsite, let alone a Disaster Recovery plan.
This conversation has taken place more than I thought it would.
This week, Brent and Richie discuss the new Power BI Dashboard for DBAs, designing a new backup structure, creating SSRS reports, the difference between row and page compression, using EMC Avamar SQL agent for backing up databases, SQL Server and other books to check out, Veeam Backup for SQL Server, and how to best manage monitor over 20 SQL servers.
This week Brent, Erik, Richie, and Tara discuss Docker, writing to different servers in different locations, SAN Replication, reducing the size of a database, patching Availability Groups, getting rid of failover cluster instances, long-term backup storage options, VLF numbers, and more.
Here’s the video on YouTube:
This week, Richie and Tara discuss Richie's current projects, Availability Groups, offloading reads and backups, applying service packs, whether production should ship agent jobs to production recovery server, security checks and scans in SQL Server, CPU performance issues upgrading to SQL Server 2016 and 2017, database backups and restores, whether there's currently a DBA shortage, and Richie's favorite board game.
You've been such a good database administrator.
You followed the setup checklist in our First Responder Kit. You ran sp_Blitz. You set up email alerts for common issues. You run CHECKDB as frequently as practical - weekly, or maybe even daily.
This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss the new Extended Events Profiler, using SQL audit vs a trigger to log what people do, log shipping, migrating from on-prem to cloud, best practice for a database owner, SQL Server performance improvement, the difference between simple, bulk-logged, and full recovery models and when to use them, tools for transferring databases from one server to another, VSS Snapshot backups, encryption and more.
This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss what they think about having no more service packs for SQL Server 2017 and newer versions, shrinking log files, how many servers can one DBA manage, log backups, mirroring vs Availability Groups vs log shipping, and their next company retreat location.
Here’s the video on YouTube:
This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss Availability Groups, versions of sp_BlitzIndex™, SQL Server installation issue, backing up SSRS reports, SQL Server on Linux, failovers, detaching/attaching databases, extended events, career progression of a DBA, and more.
Here’s the video on YouTube:
In our work as consultants, we see a lot of shops that have a monitoring tool, and yet they're still not able to get to the root cause of a SQL Server performance or reliability issue. In many of these cases, the problem isn't the people: the problem is that they bought a tool that doesn't do what they think it'll do.
Cash Rules
Most people, when they get through paying for Azure, and SQL Server Enterprise Licensing, are left with a hole in their wallet that could only be filled with something that says "Bugatti", and has a speedometer with an infinity sign at the end.
This week, Brent, Erik, Tara, and Richie discuss index fragmentation, Azure disk speeds, Availability Groups, database restores, optimize for ad hoc setting, forced parameterization, BI consultants, index views, SPN registrations, and more.
Here’s the video on YouTube:
Step By Step
When you think about setting up maintenance, a persistent fear is that tasks may step on each other. You probably don't want backups and CHECKDB and statistics maintenance running at the same time as statistics maintenance (notice I didn't say index maintenance, here, because you're smart and you skip it?). You may also throw in some other steps, like cleanup tasks something.
