Over the years, I’ll admit, SQL Server has come a long way in making life easier for database administrators and with each version it keeps getting better and better. The installation process bakes in more best practices than ever, default settings are smarter, and cloud offerings like Azure SQL and managed instances take a lot of the heavy lifting off our plates. Backups, high availability, patching—all of these are more streamlined than they used to be. It’s tempting to think this means DBAs don’t need to know the “nuts and bolts” or “how things work under the hood” anymore. But here’s the problem: I am seeing a real gap in…
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I regularly deliver a presentation called “Mastering TempDB”. I wrote it based on what I wish I knew about TempDB “growing up” in my career as a SQL Server DBA. It really is a breakdown of what TempDB is, how it is used, what problems actually occur within it, and how to best configure it. With advice from my colleagues, I have decided to break that down into this article to educate you. What is TempDB? TempDB is a global resource used by everyone and everything inside SQL Server. Think of it as a dumping ground for anything that doesn’t fit in memory. It is always database_id number two in…
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Sometimes as a DBA, I am lazy and want the ability to execute all of my tasks in one place. Lucky for me I discovered the other day that I can change my Azure SQL Database Service Level Object options within SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) without ever having to go to the Azure Portal. By right clicking on your database properties and choosing the Configure SQL page you can change your Subscription and Azure Location. Even more and what is really cool is I can also scale up and down my Edition (which is generally referred to as Service Tier outside of SSMS), Size and Storage Tiers as well.…
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I’ve seen many people go through the trouble of setting up database mail and configuring SQL Agent Alerts only to realize it’s not working. The reason in the cases I’ve seen is because they have simply neglected to assign a mail profile to SQL Agent. This is way more common than you would think, thus I wrote this quick blog. This check box and drop down can sometimes lead to hours of troubleshooting if you don’t know where to look. In order to receive the alerts, you must enable a mail profile. This would be the profile created during the Database Mail configuration process. To configure SQL Server Agent to…
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I saw this again recently and see it too often in environments so wanted to take a second to remind everyone to cycle their error logs on a regular basis. SQL Server keeps error logs and when you reboot or restart SQL Server services the logs are cycled and a new one is created. Depending on how many logs you have configured for SQL Server to have this may include removal of the oldest log as well. Since many of pride ourselves on keeping our SQL Servers up and running, reboots may be few and far between thus our logs get large in size. When they grow out of control…
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Quite often I see database administrators set SQL Server max server memory thinking everything related to SQL Server uses this shared memory pool. This is a mistake. There are many things that rely on memory that are not part of SQL Server. Best practices state that you should leave memory allotted for the operating system. However, did you know that if you are running services like SSIS, SSAS or SSRS on the same server as the database engine that it does not use the same memory you have allocated for SQL Server? If the Max Memory setting is not configured correctly, these other serves could incur memory pressure. While the…
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Starting in SQL Server 2012 and in Azure SQL Database, Microsoft introduced the concept of a contained database. A contained database is a database that is completely un-reliant on the instance of SQL Server that hosts the database including the master database–theoretically this makes a database much easier to move between servers (you’ll note the absence of SQL Agent jobs from this post, that’s a difference problem.). One of the biggest benefit is that it allows database level authentication, so there no need to have user logins on server level. Contained database now enables us to make a database more portable. I can backup and restore to any instance of…
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Ever seen the below error? Until this week I hadn’t. So, I figured I’d take a little time and introduce it to those that had not. Error Description: Length of LOB data (65754) to be replicated exceeds configured maximum 65536. Use the stored procedure sp_configure to increase the configured maximum value for max text repl size option, which defaults to 65536. A configured value of -1 indicates no limit We ran into an issue with a customer this week, this error was flooding the error log. After a little digging I found it had to do with transactional replication (also applies to Change Data Capture) they had setup which included…
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What is the GO statement and why is it so important to use? When do I have to use it? When do I not use it? These are questions that have passed through my head from time to time while writing T-SQL within SQL Server. First What Is It and When Should I Use It? The GO statement lets SSMS (the interface) know when it’s the end of the batch. It basically defines the scope of what you are trying to send to the Database Engine. The below example sends two separate statements. The first statement changes the database context to run the next statement under, followed by the execution of…
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I ran across a client the other day that had these Backup and Recovery options set like the picture below because it is defaulted this way. The Database Administrator didn’t know what they should configure them as so he left them alone. I find this is the case with a lot of options. For the most part leaving the defaults can be just fine, but other leaving others cause leave you missing out on some good features. Let’s start from top to bottom. Default backup media retention in days. Now the first things that comes to my mind is that “hey this is a cleanup job” SCORE! Thinking that maybe…
