Routine health assessment, risk identification, and operational readiness.
42 associated posts42 primary posts
When there's a performance emergency, a lot of us perform the same manual tasks over and over. We run sp_BlitzWho or sp_WhoIsActive, look for blocking, long-running or out-of-control queries, and kill them. I'm going to build a new sp_kill for the First Responder Kit to make that easier, faster, and safer, and I want your…
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, I made myself a highball and went through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NLtbul3Nyc
First things first: pick up that filthy keyboard, take it over to the trash can, turn it upside down, and give it a good, vigorous shake.
Next, go to your biggest SQL Server and run:
I originally took these questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento poolside at the Trixie Motel (really), but I forgot to use the good microphone, so I re-recorded 'em from my home studio when I got back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8booXqUYY-Y
On a pleasantly mild morning, I sat down on the patio and took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4chYaiYUaSk
You posted a lot of great questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and I spent almost an hour covering these:
https://youtu.be/hBoAhZd6M4s
We headed up to the mountains to get away from the Vegas heat. Before the sun rose, I took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xy8oRRVntg
I'm on a boat! I'm on a 10-day Panama Canal cruise, and I stopped (well, not the boat) off the coast of Florida to answer questions y'all posted at https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLxaHT5tdUU
I've got a really sensitive lens (Sigma 16mm f/1.4) on my camera, so often when I record these at sunrise, it's already too bright for you to see the sun. This time, I went down to the beach a little earlier, and through the video, you can see the light really pick up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcPyx-5jWGM
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.)
sp_Blitz is a free health check script that gives you a prioritized list of things to fix on your SQL Server. Here's what the output looks like: Most of the time, you'll want to work through the warnings in the order that they show up in the results, in priority order. How to Skip Checks…
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…
AH-HA! You didn't know there would be one of these, did you, hotshot? You've been reading along in the series, just smiling and nodding, pretending you're keeping up, but not really doing the homework. BUSTED! Put your books away and get your pencils out.
Backup & Recovery Questions:
In the last episode of the DBA Training Plan, we talked about what's inside the MDF file: a series of pages that store a database's tables. Now, it's time to check out the contents of YOUR database to understand what's using the most space, what's getting used the most often, and what you might be…
At your company, walk into the VP of Sales's office and ask them how many salespeople they have. NO, I mean, don't actually DO that, because he's going to ask you why the sales app is so slow. But I mean, imagine if you COULD walk into his office and ask him that. I bet…
A SQL Server monitoring tool is warning you that you're getting memory dumps, and you're wondering what that means.
This isn't normal: you're encountering a situation where SQL Server is so freaked out that it's unable to proceed normally with a query. In order to help you (and really, Microsoft) debug the problem, it's calling a time-out, writing the contents of some of its memory to disk, and then proceeding.
You're responsible for managing and troubleshooting SQL Server.
Good news: you're not alone. The SQL Server community has banded together and built a bunch of cool stuff to help you do your job easier. In a one-hour session today for the PASS DBA Fundamentals online user group (free to join, of course), I showed some off.
This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss splitting large database files across multiple files, security auditing solutions, what Brent is currently teaching at the client location, SQL Server in containers, heap index maintenance, contained databases, extended events, the difference between a junior and Senior DBA, page file sizing, and more.
Here’s the video on YouTube:
This week, Brent, Tara, Erik, and Richie discuss whether you should keep autoshrink on, AG multisite failovers, next version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2017 Vulnerability Assessment, SELECT INTO vs INSERT INTO, using Node.js with SQL Server, Using PowerShell for DBA tasks, the future of SQL Server for Linux, memory gateway query compile, VB.NET, patching, and more!
1. Are backups and CHECKDB being done? Before I step out on the wire, I want to know if there's a safety net. If there's a recoverability risk, I don't stop here - I keep looking because the rest of the answers affect the safety net we're going to put in place. 2. How's the…
