SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 was retired and became an “unsupported service pack” back on September 17, 2012. Despite this, I have been running into a lot of systems lately that are still running SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 or older lately, so I thought it made sense to follow up my previous [...]
Glenn Berry
Semi-random musings about SQL Server performance
Performance and Stability-Related Fixes in All SQL Server 2008 SP2 Cumulative Updates
Posted on: May 22, 2013 11:45 am
Performance and Stability-Related Fixes in All SQL Server 2008 SP3 Cumulative Updates
Posted on: May 21, 2013 6:13 pm
Even though there are two newer, major releases of SQL Server available, there are still many organizations running SQL Server 2008, which was a good, solid release of the product, with many improvements over SQL Server 2005. SQL Server 2008 (and SQL Server 2008 R2) are scheduled to fall out of mainstream support on July [...]
SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 Cumulative Update 11
Posted on: May 21, 2013 5:57 am
Microsoft has released SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 Cumulative Update 11, which is Build 10.0.5840.00. There are six hotfixes in the public fix list. There is no corresponding cumulative update for earlier service pack levels for SQL Server 2008, since they are retired. If you are on SQL Server 2008, you really should be [...]
A SQL Server Hardware Tidbit a Day – Day 15
Posted on: April 15, 2013 3:08 pm
For Day 15 of this series, I will be covering a few tools that can be used for hardware identification. Since quite a few database professionals do not have direct access to their database servers (i.e. they cannot login to their database server via RDP), I will talk about what you can learn about your [...]
Estimating Data Compression Savings in SQL Server 2012
Posted on: April 12, 2013 12:30 pm
SQL Server Data Compression (which was first introduced in SQL Server 2008, and is an Enterprise Edition only feature) lets you compress individual indexes with either ROW or PAGE compression. It can be a huge win for many SQL Server workloads, by letting you reduce both your required disk I/O and your memory usage at [...]
How to Find Out About the Latest SQL Server Service Packs and Cumulative Updates
Posted on: April 3, 2013 3:12 pm
Since someone asked me about this today, I thought I would write about it. Aaron Bertrand (blog|twitter) and I sort of have a friendly competition to be the first to blog when a new SQL Server CU is released. I don’t know of any e-mail notification service for Service Packs and Cumulative Updates from Microsoft. [...]
Important Hotfix for SQL Server 2008 and Newer
Posted on: January 10, 2013 1:46 pm
Microsoft recently released a hotfix for a memory leak leak issue that affects SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, and SQL Server 2012. This memory leak only occurs if the have the AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS_ASYNC database level setting enabled for any of your databases. Here is how Microsoft describes the issue in the hotfix KB article: [...]
Performance and Stability-Related Fixes in Recent SQL Server 2008 SP3 Cumulative Updates
Posted on: December 19, 2012 2:04 pm
Even though I like to talk about the most recent major releases of SQL Server, there are still plenty of organizations running SQL Server 2008, which was a good, solid release of the product, with many improvements over SQL Server 2005. Lets assume that you have been pretty diligent about keeping your SQL Server 2008 [...]
How to Create SQL Server Agent Alerts for Critical Errors
Posted on: September 27, 2012 3:33 pm
One necessary part of being a responsible DBA is to try to configure your SQL Server instances in such a manner so they will be as reliable as possible. This begins with how you initially install and configure the operating system and SQL Server, and what you do over time to maintain and monitor your [...]
How to Obtain and Install SQL Server Service Packs and Cumulative Updates
Posted on: June 19, 2012 6:38 pm
If you are in charge of one or more SQL Server instances, whether they are on your laptop, or a large Production data center, you should be aware of how SQL Server updates and fixes are released, and how you can obtain them from Microsoft. First, a few definitions: RTM means Release to Manufacturing. It [...]
How to Perform a Rolling Edition Upgrade While Using Database Mirroring
Posted on: June 7, 2012 4:45 pm
Imagine that you are using synchronous database mirroring with SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition, but you want to upgrade the instances on both sides of the mirroring partnership to SQL Server Enterprise Edition so that you can take advantage of some of the valuable [...]
