Today, I am introducing a series of articles on troubleshooting various components of SQL Server. My experience has been largely with the SQL Engine (“proper” SQL Server), but there are so many additional products that have become part of SQL Server. They are available under the same licence and unfortunately, the expectation is that…
This month, the T-SQL Tuesday invitation is from Rob Volk. Rob has asked for an Analogy that you use to describe concepts. This works well for me as I use analogies a lot, today I’ve gone with… “I drive the truck” I once put together a presentation on the subject of “what is a DBA”.…
How many times do you ask someone to do something and get the response “I’m not doing that – there’s no point”. Turns out SQL Server does that sometimes too – as I was reminded recently. After spending time examining query plans using SentryOne Plan Explorer, I was faced with the following improbable Plan…
An issue was reported with one of my SQL Servers that required it to be rebooted. After the reboot, I logged on to SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to check the SQL ErrorLog to ensure that all was well. Unfortunately, I was met with an error when I tried to open the ErrorLog: “Failed to…
I had a great time on Friday at Data Relay in Bristol. This article is about what I learned. I have tried to include links, either to presentations, slides or just example of the speakers previous work. I will update with further links as and when I get them. Data Relay (formerly known as SQL…
It’s no secret that I’m keen to investigate new technologies. While my job is almost completely related to “on premises” versions of SQL Server, I’m hugely interested in what the future brings. Learning about new technologies can be difficult without a project in mind or specific manufacturer training. Trawling through Youtube for training can be…
Patching a large SQL Server estate can be a big job. Where possible, tools such as Ivanti HEAT can be used to deliver and install patches, but this doesn’t always work. Some patching needs to be done manually – e.g. where applications or users need to be managed or when dealing with High Availability situations…
While closely monitoring a query that I was running, I observed some strange behaviour by another query. This other query quickly beat mine in terms of Pages read, which is fine, no competition. It went on to exceed it 4 x. The thing that stuck out was the “Degree of Parallelism” that it used –…
Recently, I had a situation where a lot of data needed to be deleted. This was caused by a Monitoring system which was incorrectly configured. When Monitoring, you should Monitor just the information that you need, but no more. In this case, far too much information was being monitored and recorded, causing the Database that…
I’ve recently been getting more familiar with Power BI, thanks to an excellent on-site training course delivered by Stuart and Alison from Burning Suit training. It was great to be supported by my employer with some on-site training, especially in a product that holds so much potential. Power BI has been of interest to me…
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