You are Free: Career Lessons from a farm fence
May 11, 2017
When I put Database technology down, I run a 20-acre farm with my family. I love it. It’s fun watching the kids learn from the experience. Learning my life lessons and illustrations from the chores and animals is fun. A farm scare today made me think of you. There is a lesson for us all … Read more
SQL Server Security Basics
February 15, 2017
This isn’t the complete guide to securing a SQL Server, but these are some of the more common things I bump into and wish I wouldn’t when it comes to SQL Server Security. Read these practices, understand them by searching the web or come here and ask me for questions or advice. If it means … Read more
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 … Read more
How To Manage The SQL Server Transaction Log File
February 4, 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, … Read more
DevOps: Don’t Forget The Ops
February 1, 2017
I want to commend the team at GitLab.com – they had an issue that took down a key database and everything else with it effectively and when they came back, there was data not coming back. This happens. This happens in “Traditional” 1.0 IT companies (ask my usual airline, Delta, they’ll tell you two stories … Read more
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 … Read more
Dr. Cloud-Move or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cloud
January 27, 2017
With apologies to Mr. Kubrick for my title, I’ll give you a little honest backstory. I’ve been working with SQL Server for 17 years now. Mostly in the box, on-premises. I’ve done all sorts of things with SQL Server. Always heading back to DBA, performance tuning, high availability, etc. My career owes a lot to … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more