SQL Server Max Memory Best Practices
February 8, 2017
In this Straight Up SQL Server Tips series, we’re going back to basics, focusing in on SQL Server memory, specifically talking about setting SQL Server MAX memory. Many of these are findings in our SQL Server Health Checks or things I bump into on the forums and Q&A sites when I’m out answering questions. Today
How To Manage The SQL Server Transaction Log File
February 5, 2017
“Help! My SQL Server transaction log file has run out of space on my SQL Server!”, “Why is my SQL Server Log file so big?”, “How do I shrink my SQL LDF?” – I hear these questions all the time. I’ve been blogging since 2009 and way back then I wrote some posts about shrinking,
Optimize For Ad Hoc Workloads – Enable or not?
January 30, 2017
With today’s Straight Up SQL Server tip, I want to talk about a setting I have so far only ever recommended to enable: Optimize for Ad Hoc Workloads. Rather than just make a suggestion, I want to keep in the spirit of the tips for beginner approach to the series and describe a little of
SQL Server Corruption – Read Before it Happens
January 24, 2017
SQL Server Corruption is a rather complex topic. As a consultant, I’ve been called in many times to help a client suffering from SQL Server corruption in some form or another. As a forum post answerer I’ve helped some pretty sad situations and tried to help. There have been times when I’ve reached out to
DBA Questions To Ask Software Vendors
January 17, 2017
Do you buy software from independent software vendors? Does it run on SQL Server? Are you responsible for supporting that software? Here are some questions that you can ask a software vendor about the way they use SQL Server. It’s best to ask these questions before you are a customer, too; you’ll have a bit
SQL Server Version Numbers – Do they matter?
January 17, 2017
It’s a trick question, yes. Your SQL Server version matters! In this post I’ll tell you how to check your version, talk about what makes up the version number and talk about why it matters so much and why you should get a plan in place to regularly upgrade or update SQL Server. This post is part of
Introducing Straight Up SQL Server Tips
January 16, 2017
An Introduction and a Why. . . I’ve been blogging about SQL Server since 2009. Over the years I’ve blogged about many topics and levels. For some reason, I’ve most loved writing the posts to beginner and intermediate levels though. Things that trip folks up day to day, etc. While I’ve been an independent consultant
Remote DBA Benefits – After Hours Support
November 23, 2016
2016 has proven to be a busy year for Straight Path! We launched our DBA On Demand  Service. This is a Senior level Remote DBA offering – the basic premise being “what if you had access to world class Senior level talent, and paid for only what you needed from them?”. We’ve on boarded several
SQL Server 2016 Standard – Your Cake. You Can Eat it too.
November 16, 2016
Today Microsoft just made a huge announcement. All of the features you can build into your databases in SQL Server (well the vast majority at least) are no longer just included in Enterprise Editions. There are some exceptions… But the main point here is – you can be on SQL Server Standard – and you can use
Create a SQL Server Baseline with the PAL Tool
July 18, 2016
When we do a SQL Server Health Assessment, we quickly dive into SQL Server performance and Windows/Physical/Virtual resource usage counters. During our kick off interview  we always ask if you have a SQL Server baseline from the past to compare. Usually the answer is no, unfortunately. Like monitoring and alerting, many of the tools vendors make automated baseline collection tools. Also like alerting, though,