Three weeks ago I kicked off a survey about using database snapshots – see here - because I don't really know how much they're used or not out in the wild. Here are the results: The "Other" values are: 13 x "No – not at the moment." 10 x "In our test environment for reverting [...]
Paul S. Randal
In Recovery...
Using database snapshots
Posted on: July 26, 2011 10:59 am
SharePoint 2010 database maintenance whitepaper
Posted on: July 26, 2011 8:52 am
As you may know, I've been teaching the SQL Server portion of the SharePoint MCM since it started. The old database maintenance whitepaper for SharePoint 2007 had all kinds of things wrong with it and the publishing of the updated whitepaper for SharePoint 2010 was eagerly awaited by the community. Unfortunately it too had a bunch [...]
SQLskills at PASS and Connections in October
Posted on: July 24, 2011 11:30 am
The Fall conferences are a little earlier this year – October rather than November – and we'll be at both PASS and SQL Connections. We hope to see you there! PASS Summit This year's PASS Summit is in Seattle again from October 11-14 – see here for registration details. Kimberly and I decided not to submit [...]
TechNet Magazine: July 2011 SQL Q&A column
Posted on: July 21, 2011 3:11 pm
The July edition of TechNet Magazine is available on the web now and has the latest installment of my regular SQL Q&A column. This month's topics are: Deferred log truncation from concurrent data and log backups Database mirroring monitoring Multiple transaction log files Best use of SSDs in a SQL environment (high-level) Check it out [...]
OT Survey: internet browsers and mail readers
Posted on: July 20, 2011 12:57 pm
This survey is off-topic and was suggested by Justin Dearing (blog|twitter) and I'm curious about the results too so I agreed to run it. We're interested to see what internet browsers are most commonly used my members of the database community, along with which email clients. People are often fanatic about one browser/client or another [...]
Photos: Japanese Garden at Seattle Arboretum
Posted on: July 18, 2011 1:25 pm
Earlier today I took my Mum and Dad to walk around the beautiful Japanese Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum (part of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens) and I took along my camera to play around with leaves and light. Below are a selection of photos, all taken with a Canon 5D Mark II plus a Canon [...]
It depends. It really, really does.
Posted on: July 14, 2011 9:56 am
This is almost our catch phrase. In every class we teach Kimberly and I always say that the answer to every question about SQL Server *starts* with "It depends" – except one: "should auto-shrink be enabled?" :-) Seriously though, there's a bit of an unnecessary backlash against the phrase "it depends" and I'd like to clarify [...]
New DBA, dev, BI classes for Fall in Chicago and Atlanta
Posted on: July 13, 2011 11:23 am
We’ve just finalized our Fall line-up of classes, and we’re very excited to introduce two new classes on development and business intelligence. This means SQLskills.com now covers the full spectrum of SQL Server technologies with master-level classes taught by five of the most highly-respected and deeply-qualified instructors in the world. We don’t allow anyone else [...]
Capturing wait stats for a single operation
Posted on: July 11, 2011 9:00 am
This is a performance tuning post that's been on my to-do list for quite a while. Wait stats analysis is a great way of looking at the symptoms of performance problems (see my Wait Stats category for more posts on this) but using the sys.dm_os_wait_stats DMV shows everything that's happening on a server. If you [...]
Survey results on rebooting – is it good or bad?
Posted on: July 6, 2011 4:26 am
About a month ago I kicked off a survey around regularly rebooting SQL Server (see here). There is much debate about rebooting SQL Server (or Windows Server hosting SQL Server), regularly or even at all so I've been looking forward to the results. My view is that there are circumstances where rebooting, even regularly, is [...]
Survey: do you use database snapshots?
Posted on: July 4, 2011 11:31 am
As I was writing a quick SQL Server Magazine blog post on database snapshots while waiting for my coffee to brew, I figured it would make an interesting survey to see whether people are making use of database snapshots at all. I don't expect to see much activity on this until tomorrow as it's July [...]
New whitepapers on latches and spinlocks published
Posted on: July 1, 2011 8:13 am
Over the last few months I've been blogging occasionally about some pretty deep performance tuning topics, namely latches and spinlocks (see my blog categories Wait Stats, Latches, and Spinlocks). Ewan Fairweather and Mike Ruthruff of the SQLCAT team have written some really excellent whitepapers on interpreting and dealing with latch and spinlock issues, which I [...]
