Sandra Delany

Sandra started with Straight Path in April as a Senior SQL Server Consultant. She started her career supporting Local Area Networks, troubleshooting network, hardware and software problems. She decided to take classes learning Oracle and got certified. Around that same time, she had the opportunity to learn SQL Server and stayed with it ever since. She has many many years of SQL Server database experience as an application DBA/developer and production DBA in the private and public sector supporting multiple clients. She has experience with SQL Server 7.0-2019 (SSIS, SSRS, SSAS) and Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010. She recently received her Microsoft Certified Professional Cloud Platform certification.

Troubleshooting SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance Weirdness

November 21, 2025 by Sandra Delany

Case of the Week: Quick Summary Two of the four clients’ SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances (FCIs) did not fail over to the secondary node. Context This is a SQL Server 2019 with four load-balanced FCI’s running on two physical servers with 64 CPUs, 4TB of memory, and a Pure Storage array on the backend. … Read more

Should a SQL Server DBA Know Windows Clustering?

November 7, 2025November 5, 2025 by Sandra Delany

Should a SQL Server DBA know how a Windows cluster works, and or how to create a Windows cluster, or troubleshoot a cluster? Or should we, as DBAs, stay in our lane? In some organizations, a line is drawn between what a DBA can and can’t do and the System Administrator (SA) has the Infrastructure … Read more

Curious Case of SQL Server Shutting Down Whenever a Job Runs.

October 23, 2025October 17, 2025 by Sandra Delany

This is a post in our new Case of the Week series — short write-ups from the real SQL Server issues our team of 17 SQL Server experts helps clients solve every day. Case of the Week: Quick Summary A client reported that their SQL Server service was “randomly shutting down”. They would restart SQL … Read more

SQL Just Stops When Running OPENROWSET Query

October 15, 2025October 15, 2025 by Sandra Delany

Sometimes people install Office onto a SQL Server to get the drivers for the ability to import data from Excel into SQL Server Tables. This should never be done on a production, or any, server because it can cause many other problems for SQL, one of which is the purpose of this blog. For example, … Read more

How to Setup a Standalone SSRS Server As Part of an Availability Group

August 16, 2023August 9, 2023 by Sandra Delany

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a useful tool that can be installed on a standalone server (a license is required), or it can be installed on an existing SQL Server host (this shares the existing license of SQL Server). This blog post covers how SSRS is installed on a standalone server and how to … Read more