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
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 … Read more
Are Power Saving Settings Killing Your SQL Server Performance? [Quick Tip]
December 28, 2016
At Straight Path Solutions, we love performing SQL Server Health Assessments. These are our exams that dig quickly into the root of your SQL Server instance and find problems that you are currently suffering from. Then we give you an action plan to stop suffering from them today. Rather than just performing the checks and finding the … Read more
Check SQL Server Configuration – Free Script
November 25, 2016
I do a lot of SQL Server Health Assessments on SQL Server environments. I’m always checking sys.configurations to look for problematic instance level configuration settings. I almost always find configurations worth changing. But the approach I’ve always used is a bit manual and I wanted to fix it. So I finally wrote a script to … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
We’re (officially) Working with Tyleris Data Solutions
October 24, 2016
As my friend and fellow SQL Server MVP, Tim Mitchell pointed out in a blog post today – our companies are working together in a strategic way. Our clients should benefit from this relationship in a few ways. I wanted to chat about that here and why I’m excited about it. We’ve actually been working … Read more
PASS Summit – PASS Prayers – 8th Year
October 24, 2016
Quick note: From time to time I blog about the Bible here. I try to keep those posts on my personal blog – Open Mike – but sometimes it makes sense for a quick cross post over here. I always tag those posts with the Bible category and you are free to read or ignore … Read more
SQL Sentry Plan Explorer [Free DBA Tool of The Week]
August 5, 2016
In this continuing series, I’m blogging about Free tools for SQL Server DBAs. You can check the whole series out, here. This week we’re talking about and old standard – SQL Sentry Plan Explorer. SQL Sentry Plan Explorer I hope you look at SQL Server execution plans. If you do this in management studio using … Read more