I am honored to be a Guest Blogger at SQLPerformance.com. As a member of the SentryOne Product Advisory Council (PAC) I will be writing occasionally for the site. You can catch my first blog post It’s Not You It’s Me (I/O Troubleshooting) through simple changes. SQLPerformance.com is about providing innovative and practical solutions for improving SQL Server performance. Whether you are running a 3rd party application database where very little can be changed, or you are a DBA at a site where getting the application developers to change anything is next to impossible, they cover both the “how” and the “why.”
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I am ecstatic to say I have joined Denny Cherry and Associates Consulting. Lone No More I am happy, excited, and nostalgic to announce that I am hanging up my Lone DBA hat and becoming a consultant. Yep, you read that correctly, I’ve decided after 16 years that I am going to change things up a bit. I am switching gears and will be helping those who are Lone DBAs and others by lending them a hand with their work loads. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love being a Lone DBA. So, I will continue to speak on the topic and mentor others in that boat, but it’s time…
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Since becoming a Database Administrator I’ve always looked at Microsoft MVP’s as the giants in our field. I never once thought I could be among them. I am very humbled to be recognized as a Microsoft Data Platform MVP for 2017. Thank you to those that deemed me worthy enough to nominate me. What is an MVP? According to Microsoft, the MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft. Microsoft MVPs represent a highly select group of experts. MVPs share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. How…
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I recently had the pleasure of being a guest on a Podcast episode with the SQL Data Partners Carlos Chacon (B|T) and Steve Stedman (B|T). If you haven’t had a chance to attend one of my sessions on Survival Tips for the Lone DBA, this is great insight into it. I share via questions and answers how it is to be a Lone DBA. http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/03/28/episode-89-lone-dba/
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I didn’t know about this little gem, so I shared it with my team and they didn’t know about it either. Then I tweeted about it and found others who didn’t know about it, so I decided I should write a short little blog. Denny Cherry (B|T) posted a blog on twitter telling everyone to blog as much as possible no matter how small the topic, so I figured why not do this one. So What Is It? Windows PSR “Problem Steps Recorder”. It’s a nifty tool that helps you trouble shoot a computer problem by recording step by step what the user is doing. How to: Go to Start…
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We have all made mistakes in our careers, I thought I’d share one of mine as a quick tip to others so that you don’t make the same one. Everyone has their SQL Alerts setup right? If not, I have included the script below and here is the MSDN link to find out more (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms180982.aspx). For those who have setup their alerts, how many of you have remembered to set the DELAY BETWEEN RESPONSES setting? When I worked at the Port of Virginia, I was a little less experienced in SQL and didn’t notice this lovely little option. I of course failed to set it. Can anyone guess what happened?…
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How many of you actually have a “Hit-by-the-Bus” handbook? What is that, you ask? It is a document that explains how to execute all your jobs and SSIS packages. In addition, I preference mine with all key elements someone might need, like where passwords are stored, architectures, backup times, where are backups stored, etc… then dig into the job steps. The purpose of this document is so that someone with some SQL skills could step in if needed. You never know when you will be hit by a bus or win the lottery and someone has to take over for you. Important things to note: Step by Step with Pictures…
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Ever had users come to you and request another version of a report just to add another field and group data differently? Today, was such the day for me. I really don’t like have multiple versions of the same report out there. So, I got a little fancy with the current version of the report and added a parameter then used expressions to group the data differently and hide columns. For those new to SSRS I’ve embedded some links to MSDN to help you along the way. Current Report The report gives summarized counts by invoice date. It currently has a ROW group using date_invoiced and the detail row is…
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Ok everyone; here goes my first crack at replying to a T-SQL Tuesday. For those that don’t know what it is, it’s a Monthly blog topic hosted by a member of the SQL Community. It was started originally by Adam Machanic (t | b) This month’s topic hosted by Andy Yun (t | b) is on Growing New Speakers, which I find to be a perfect topic for me to leap off from, since this was my first year speaking and blogging. How did I get started? I 100% blame Derik Hammer (t | b) whom at the time was running my local user group. After attending just one meeting I was “volun-told” I would be presenting…
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My life for the last 2 years has been a constant battle of putting out fires with system performance; finally user complaints have moved getting this resolved as my top priority. Let’s see how I tackled the problem… Symptoms: Very High Disk Latency as high as 300,000 milliseconds (ms) is not unusual Average: 900 – 15,000ms Memory Pressure Slow User Experience Problem: Bad hardware Over-provisioned VM Hosts (what happens on one VM effects the other) Old NetApp SAN No infrastructure budget for new hardware Challenge: Make the system viable with no hardware changes or tweaks Step 1: Brain Storming (in no particular order) Reduce I/O I can probably tune a ton…
