{"id":479,"date":"2012-06-27T09:15:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T09:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/blogs\/jonathan\/post\/New-features-of-ALTER-SERVER-CONFIGURATION-in-SQL-Server-2012.aspx"},"modified":"2017-04-13T12:16:07","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T16:16:07","slug":"new-features-of-alter-server-configuration-in-sql-server-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/jonathan\/new-features-of-alter-server-configuration-in-sql-server-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"New features of ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION in SQL Server 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nWhile working on a chapter I am writing, I was going through the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sql\/t-sql\/statements\/alter-server-configuration-transact-sql\" target=\"_blank\">ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION<\/a> topic in the Books Online and noticed some really useful changes in the syntax that I hadn&rsquo;t seen before.&nbsp; Starting in SQL Server 2008 R2, ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION was introduced to allow for process affinity configuration and to replace the affinity mask sp_configure options for SQL Server, which were marked as deprecated at the same time.&nbsp; SQL Server 2012 extends the usage to also control diagnostic logging and failover clustering properties as well.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nDiagnostic logging in SQL Server 2012 is accomplished through the execution of sp_server_diagnostics, which Joe blogged about last year <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/joe\/under-the-covers-with-sp_server_diagnostics-data-part-i\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> and again <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/joe\/under-the-covers-with-sp_server_diagnostics-data-part-ii\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.&nbsp; It can be turned ON or OFF using ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION, and you can also specify the PATH, MAX_SIZE, and MAX_FILES options to control the logging location, file size, and maximum number of rollover logs to be created and maintained by SQL Server.\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\t&#8212; Disable Diagnostics logging <br \/>\n\tALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION SET DIAGNOSTICS LOG OFF;\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&#8212; Enable Diagnostics logging <br \/>\n\tALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION SET DIAGNOSTICS LOG ON;\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&#8212; Configure logging path <br \/>\n\tALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION SET DIAGNOSTICS LOG PATH=N&#39;C:\\SQLskills\\Logs&#39;;\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&#8212; Configure max file sizes <br \/>\n\tALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION SET DIAGNOSTICS LOG MAX_SIZE=100 MB;\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&#8212; Configure max number of files to keep <br \/>\n\tALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION SET DIAGNOSTICS LOG MAX_FILES=5;\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nThe flexible failover policy in SQL Server 2012 allows for more fine grained control of when a SQL Server Failover Cluster actually performs a failover of the instance.&nbsp; This is accomplished through the execution of sp_server_diagnostics and is based on the output of the health checks being performed by the procedure.&nbsp; The <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sql\/sql-server\/failover-clusters\/windows\/failover-policy-for-failover-cluster-instances\" target=\"_blank\">FailureConditionLevel<\/a> can be set by ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION, along with the HealthCheckTimeout value to control when a instance performs a failover or restart associated with an unhealthy condition.&nbsp; You can also set the logging level for the Failover Cluster, and a number of SQLDumper options as well.\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\t&#8212; Set failover on any qualified failure condition <br \/>\n\tALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION SET FAILOVER CLUSTER PROPERTY FailureConditionLevel = 5;\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&#8212; Set the health check timeout to 120000 milliseconds (2 minutes) <br \/>\n\tALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION SET FAILOVER CLUSTER PROPERTY HealthCheckTimeout = 120000;\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While working on a chapter I am writing, I was going through the ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION topic in the Books Online and noticed some really useful changes in the syntax that I hadn&rsquo;t seen before.&nbsp; Starting in SQL Server 2008 R2, ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION was introduced to allow for process affinity configuration and to replace [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,24,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-database-administration","category-failover-clustering","category-sql-server-2012"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - 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