Psst: “Vibe Ops” Isn’t a Thing…
February 27, 2026
I was maybe 12 years old the first time I really smelled ozone. Not from a thunderstorm. From a Radio Shack 200-in-1 electronics kit… the kind with the spring terminals and the little instruction booklet that made you feel like a real engineer. I forgot what I was supposed to be building, maybe a lap
To Kill a SPID or Not To Kill a SPID
October 24, 2025
Quick Summary We received an on-call call from a client who had noticed something was running slowly over the weekend and decided to issue a KILL command. The KILL command did what it does – it started the KILL/ROLLBACK process. They had done that once or twice before, they thought, and didn’t remember it taking
Temptation – When The Cloud Looks Like Heaven (but isn’t…)
October 21, 2025
A heaven? A gateway? A hope? Let’s continue the SQL Server Regrets series… The planned next post was about the cloud anyway, my reminder for this post was the really long day a lot of tech folks relying heavily on AWS experienced today… Another cloud-based DNS related outage/wave of interruptions. A heaven….. A hope?- Someone
SQL Server Backups and the Illusion of Safety: Confusion
October 14, 2025
With the recent data center fire and missing government data in South Korea, it felt like a good time to continue with the SQL Server Regrets series of blog posts. We’ll talk about the confusion of thinking you are covered for recoverability – when you just aren’t. This “Regret” comes up far too often when
SQL Server Vulnerability Alert: CVE-2025-49719
July 10, 2025
On patch Tuesday this week, Microsoft released an Important severity security update (a CVSS base score of 7.5) The details of this 0-day exploit are available to read at the NIST site, and the Microsoft security update site. In short, the exploit that Microsoft has discovered and subsequently fixed can allow information disclosure. (That’s the
How to Automatically Validate SQL Server Backups With Test-DbaLastBackup (Dbatools)
June 24, 2025
In this blog post, we will audit the dbatools command Test-DbaLastBackup. I will test, review, and evaluate the script based on a series of identical steps. Our goal is to provide insights, warnings, and recommendations to help you use this script effectively and safely. Test-DbaLastBackup is a powerful tool to automate the validation of a
How to Restore a SQL Server Database Using dbatools Restore-DbaDatabase
June 17, 2025
In this blog post, we will audit the dbatools command Restore-DbaDatabase. I will test, review, and evaluate the script based on a series of identical steps. Our goal is to provide insights, warnings, and recommendations to help you use this script effectively and safely. Restore-DbaDatabase is powerful tool to automate the restore of any database,
It’s The Data, Stupid
November 6, 2014
No Offense I mean no offense by the title. The title goes back to American election politics. Someone somewhere (James Carville said this in 1991 about the focus of the campaign he managed for Bill Clinton.. Forgot that, but I found it in about 8 seconds because of fast data in the cloud). I’m not
SQLU DBA Week – DBA Progress Report
March 4, 2011
This week was DBA Week At SQL University. We’ve seen two great posts from Robert Davis, a couple posts from me and some input from DBA Coach LaRock. Today we’ll lighten things up. It’s Friday so let’s close our notebooks and have a classroom discussion about our attitudes and learning. There are all sorts of
SQLU DBA Week – Set It And….
March 2, 2011
Welcome to the third day of DBA week at SQL University. On day one, I kicked off the “back to basics” journey I’ve chosen for fellow students with my post reminding you that you’re only as good as your ability to restore. Microsoft Certified Master Robert Davis brought us a good reminder on Day 2