SQL Server 2016 – the Final Countdown: Features Deprecated and Discontinued Since SQL Server 2016
June 10, 2026
This post is part of a series we are calling “SQL Server 2016 – The Final Countdown.” If you’re planning on upgrading from SQL Server 2016 to the current version of SQL Server 2025, it would be helpful to note some of the features from versions since 2016 that are no longer supported. By that … Read more
SQL Server 2016 – the Final Countdown: What End of Support Means and Why You Should Care
June 3, 2026
Many of us have been working with SQL Server long enough to remember when SQL Server 2016 was shiny and new. It’s unquestionably a milestone of a version with Query Store being introduced, availability groups finally working, lots of features eventually added to Standard Edition, and more. But now it is old enough that Microsoft … Read more
SQL Server: Database or Data Platform?
May 29, 2026
I’ve been working with technology for a very long time. Long enough that I have seen the words “data base” mean exactly that: a base body of data. The term implied no specific format, no particular layout, or even an engine to process it. Just raw data used for a given storage of information. Just … Read more
SQL Server Log File Full at 2 TB Max with CDC: How We Recovered
May 15, 2026
Quick summary For several versions of SQL Server, the maximum log file size was noted at 2 TB. If you ever reach that limit you could find yourself in a Disaster Recovery scenario. Context We received an emergency call from a client that noted that their SQL Server instances was unresponsive. (This was an Amazon … Read more
Updates for all sp_Check tools – April 2026
April 30, 2026
It’s time again for our monthly updates of our FREE sp_Check stored procedures, so here are the April updates. This month we have way more updates than in March, including recommendations from the Issues section of GitHub, so thank you to all who contributed! We also have been working on the content pages referenced by … Read more
From “Keep it Running” to “Make it Valuable”: Why Your SQL Skills Aren’t Enough Anymore
April 10, 2026
You’ve spent a long time learning about tuning indexes, fighting deadlocks, and keeping the green lights on the physical systems and cloud deployments. You’ve got scripts that could shame half the Stack Overflow answers GPT hasn’t scraped. You know the difference between CXPACKET and CXCONSUMER without Googling. But here’s the kicker: your CIO doesn’t care … Read more
SQL Server Case of the Week: A Broken Backup Chain Blocks Migration to Azure SQL Managed Instance
April 10, 2026
A client was preparing to move databases from on-prem to Azure SQL Managed Instance. The backup and restore process was going smoothly, full backup restored, differential restored, first log backup restored, everything lining up. Then the next transaction log restore failed due to a mismatched LSN error. The backup chain was broken. The migration was … Read more
Data Contracts: The Agreement Your Pipeline Has Been Missing
April 9, 2026
“Data quality is not a technical problem. It’s an accountability problem…”
Free SQL Server Health Check with dbatools
April 2, 2026
After a longer break than expected, I am back to the dbatools for SQL Server DBAs blog series, and this one is a monster! In fact, this project is so big that I think it will be better to release it incrementally. This will allow you clone the repository, test and modify it in your … Read more
Updates for all sp_Check tools – March 2026
March 31, 2026
As promised last month, we are planning for (at least) monthly updates of our FREE sp_Check stored procedures, so here are the March updates. This month we did change the “ReadMore” URL links in the results of all tools to not use redirects. This might have been causing issues for folks who just wanted some … Read more