It’s Still Not Your Emergency
August 4, 2026
A message hit our Teams “Lounge” channel where we talk about anything in life, sometimes work. One of our DBAs was worried about a client’s data – some rows that didn’t look the way they should look with a likely data issue, and a growing question about how far back the problem went hit her.
SQL Server database states for people in a panic
July 9, 2026
I’ve recently been asked by some folks about different states for SQL Server databases. Questions like “what’s the state of a database with log shipping?”, “can I fix a database in (whatever) state with a restart?”, and “which is the bad one, RECOVERY or RECOVERY PENDING?” Hopefully you don’t have to try to figure out
SQL Server Log File Full at 2 TB Max with CDC: How We Recovered
May 16, 2026
Quick summary For several versions of SQL Server, the maximum log file size was noted at 2 TB. If you ever reach that limit you could find yourself in a Disaster Recovery scenario. Context We received an emergency call from a client that noted that their SQL Server instances was unresponsive. (This was an Amazon
AG Failure After Patching Secondary Node
March 13, 2026
Quick Summary After patching the secondary node of a two-node SQL Server Availability Group, the secondary databases stopped showing as part of the AG entirely, without errors, even though normally an issue would be indicated by the databases reporting an unhealthy state. Was there a patching error? A configuration problem? Something worse? We pulled up
SQL Server Untrusted Domain Login Error When NTLM Is Blocked and SPNs Aren’t Registered
February 27, 2026
We were setting up a brand-new SQL Server 2022 instance and couldn’t connect remotely using valid Windows credentials. Every attempt gave us the same error: “Login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication.” The client only has one domain. Permissions and firewalls checked out. Local connections with domain accounts worked
SQL Server Case of the Week: Repetitive Login Failures from Local Computer Account
February 20, 2026
Summary – Repeated Login Failures in SQL Server At Straight Path, we regularly inherit SQL Server environments after someone else completes the initial install. Most of the time the server configuration just needs a tweak or two and everything is good to go. Other times, we encounter odd behavior that sends us down a research
SQL Server Case of the Week: When Availability Group Replica Communication Issues Cause Log Drives to Fill
February 13, 2026
Summary – Log File Filling up on the Availability Group Networking firewall changes made over the weekend resulted in the client’s three disaster recovery (DR) replicas to not be able to communicate with the three High Availability (HA) replicas in their SQL Server Always on Availability Group (AG). This resulted in log files growing out
SQL Server Case of the Week: Login Complexity When Using Contained Availability Groups in SQL Server 2022
January 30, 2026
Summary of the Login Issue After building a contained availability group in SQL Server, a customer was experiencing intermittent issues connecting to their primary database. Our investigation revealed that the SQL Authentication login being used had been created both within the context of the contained AG as well as directly on the primary node but had different SIDs in
SQL Server Case of the Week: The tempdb Data File That Couldn’t Be Removed
January 23, 2026
Summary of tempdb data file issue It’s important to keep the data files in tempdb equally sized, because SQL Server’s internal algorithm wants to use tempdb files that have the most space. Equal sizes help you get equal distribution across all files, reducing the likelihood of contention on a single file. Context: Mismatched tempdb data