Grumpy Old DBA - Beware the darkside !

Not obvious then ?

2013-01-10T12:49:00Z

I requested that we service pack a third party app - here's the response I have received a reply back from Engineering that SP4 is certified now with WLE 7.x. Engineering ran some tests against SP4 and it runs fine and doesn't introduce any obvious problems....(read more)

You couldn't write it - Expired SA account

2012-11-11T16:28:00Z

This is the stuff of DBA nightmares ! email trail: Q. Can you reset the SA account on server XXXXX, we think it has expired and now no-one can work. Connect to Server: Surely no-one would set up a Server with an sa account which expires? Thankfully not. Find sa password and change connection to use SA account. Connect without issue. Me. Have checked Server and account is fine. A. Thanks that's great, you've fixed it we can all work now....(read more)

You Couldn't Write it - Houston we have a problem!

2012-10-29T21:16:00Z

Note identities changed to protect the innocent (sic ). In a datacentre I have an iscsi san which provides storage for a SQL Cluster. It developed a fault and required replacement of a few parts, all hot swappable. Although we had suppport/warranty this did not include onsite so we arranged to have the parts delivered. The datacentre did not want to carry out the work so we had to arrange for the manufacturer to send an engineer. Times were arranged and interested/concerned parties put on standby...(read more)

You Couldn’t Write it !! ( part 1 )

2012-10-23T19:41:00Z

This post was inspired by a developer and I think illustrates the gulf that can sometimes exist between IT and the business. I should point out that this post is the diplomatic version! Initially I was sent a simple search for a person with a question about why the query plan showed a sort when there was no sort in the query and why did the sort show it was 40% of the query. ( The point about the sort belongs to another post some time. ) Easy answer to the duration was that this was a leading wild...(read more)

Performance issues due to Inactive Terminal Server Ports

2012-03-12T15:03:00Z

This is an interesting post and although I don't have any direct issues of performance with any of my Servers I can see the build up in the registry as described. If you make extensive use of DPR / TS sessions you might want to check this out http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2012/03/06/performance-issues-due-to-inactive-terminal-server-ports.aspx...(read more)

We all read the instructions first - right ?

2012-02-09T20:08:00Z

I've been working with the bare metal Hyper V and it's been an interesting time, if you haven't ever encountered windows core then it's a bit of a culture shock, as I understand it SQL Server will be running on windows core very soon - or maybe I read it wrong? Anyway having built my Hyper V server I decided that I'd build a cluster on it, for this you need some shared storage and one way to achieve this is to use Windows Storage Server which in effect creates an iscsi san. So...(read more)

x64 Memory Issues - revisited

2012-01-26T08:19:00Z

It's funny how things seem to bob to the surface every so often, a bit like revivals of Musicals or the fact you know it's christmas becuase ET is on the TV again. Blake Morrision from the Ask the Performance Team has blogged about issues with working sets and SQL Server, http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2012/01/25/real-life-sql-working-set-trimming-issue.aspx ( If you don't subscribe to this blog then you're missing a useful source of help ) I blogged about this back in...(read more)

Q. When is a HEAP not a HEAP ?

2011-12-15T20:56:00Z

A. When it’s on SQL Server. A very important part of Business Analysis is understanding the perceptions of users even if they haven’t clearly stated a requirement, so a SQL Server table without a clustered index is known as a heap ( in fairness I could say that a table with a clustered index is an ordered heap ), programmers understand heaps as a last in first out “store” ( LIFO ) so if I posed this question " If I put 200 rows of data into a SQL Server table which has no indexes and then select...(read more)

A follow up to yesterday

2011-11-22T22:02:00Z

As I have been asked, here to tidy up yesterdays post is the procedure my startup procedure calls along with the logging table deployed in the DBA database. Just to muddy the water further I have routines for remotely calling the DBAMessages table through a remote server to send out email from a central server!! Just to explain that I have been ( previously ) limited to only using one Server to send email alerts for multiple Servers so I attempt to code to deal with all possible circumstances...(read more)

Hello it’s your server calling

2011-11-21T20:12:00Z

This is nothing exciting but I've always found this startup procedure very useful. All this simple procedure does is send you an email if the SQL Service Starts. If your Server is a cluster it will tell you which node you're on. -- On it's own this procedure can't actually be used as I route the output through another procedure, dbasp_SendMessage, this procedure routes a passed message to either a smtp email or a log table or both, the destination is set in a server config table...(read more)