How to examine IO subsystem latencies from within SQL Server
(New for 2020: we’ve published a range of SQL Server interview candidate screening assessments with our partner Kandio, so you can avoid hiring an ‘expert’ who
(New for 2020: we’ve published a range of SQL Server interview candidate screening assessments with our partner Kandio, so you can avoid hiring an ‘expert’ who
My latest feature article for TechNet Magazine has just been published in the April edition. It focuses on planning an HA/DR strategy within the confines
After a discussion on Twitter this morning, my good friend Steve Jones (blog|twitter) said it would be great to have a survey polling people on
A couple of week ago I kicked off a survey about common causes of performance problems – see here for the survey. Firstly I asked
(In this post I'm not going to name-and-shame, as I'm sure the problems will be fixed in time.) I want to warn you about unthinkingly
[Edit 2014: there’s an additional bug in SQL Server 2012/2014 – see this post for details.] More details are in KB article 919142, which was
In this week's survey I've got four mini-surveys for you, all to do with in-depth performance analysis. I'd like to know whether you've ever used
I came across an excellent blog post on twitter today: 10 ways you know you’re with smart people. Go read it. If the top-10 describes you then you
A few weeks ago I kicked off a survey about disaster recovery testing and how the plan copes with human factors. You can see the original
The March 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
This survey follows on from the survey results I just blogged about, and is particularly apt given we're here in Dallas this week teaching our
About a month ago I kicked off a survey asking what you look for when first analyzing a plan for a poorly performing query. You
The Immersion Event on Internals and Performance in London, UK from 20-24 June, 2011 is now open for public registration! It’s been open to SQLskills Insiders
I just about beat my fists against my laptop this afternoon while updating a couple of demo scripts for our Performance class in Dallas this
The recent earthquake in New Zealand and this morning's devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan set off a lot of discussion on twitter about
(Check out my online training courses: SQL Server: Detecting and Correcting Database Corruption and SQL Server: Advanced Corruption Recovery Techniques. We can also help you with disaster recovery.) Yesterday on
A few weeks ago I kicked off a survey about tempdb configuration – see here for the survey. I received results for more than 600
From my alter-ego – the other half of my degree is in electronics – I usually blog this stuff on my separate electronics blog but this is so
A few weeks ago Kimberly did a blog post survey about which city in the US you'd like to see us come to with our
It's been a while since I blogged about hobby stuff so I thought I'd share a few photos of recent Lego models I've made –
There was an interesting discussion on Twitter this morning (started by my good friend Erin Stellato (blog|twitter)) about in-place updates for index records where the
Back at the end of January I kicked off a survey about the relationship between your DBA and dev teams. See here for the survey.
Today is a very exciting day for us here at SQLskills.com as we take the first step at growing as a company instead of solely
Last Friday our great friends Richard Campbell (who MC'd our wedding) and Greg Hughes invited us to record their 200th RunAs Radio podcast with them –
In this week's survey, I want to know how you've got tempdb configured compared to the number of processor cores SQL Server thinks it has.
Last week I kicked off a survey about the size of the largest single SQL Server database in your company – see here for the
Continuing our musical theme this week is the The Clash with their classic '79 album London Calling… Which incidentally, is what's been happening to
I've been a big fan of Genesis since as long as I can remember, and I especially like their 1986 album Invisible Touch with the
A few days ago one of my new blog readers (a pretty smart cookie, as you'll see) sent me a tale of database catastrophe and
Back when I was at Microsoft, I witnessed Steve Balmer doing his mad "Developers, developers, developers, developers!" mantra a few times. (Checkout this video of
In my survey this week I'd like to find out how large the largest single SQL Server database is at your company (how much space
It's all very well hearing about how cool our training classes our from *us*, but what do attendees like you think? I recently did an
Last week I kicked off a survey about network latencies and database mirroring. See here for the original post. Here are the results of the
In my survey for this week I'm interested in what you look for first when analyzing a query plan. I'll report on the results around
Last week I kicked off a survey about how you monitor your database mirroring sessions. See here for the original post. Here are the results
I'm going to do two surveys this week. In this one I want to know what the relationship is like between the DBA team and
In my survey for this week, I'd like to know what you what the network latency is between your mirroring principal and mirror servers, and
I was doing some research this morning for some query tuning on a client system and I came across a couple of blog series with
(Edit 7/11/13: We’ve given out all our current user group swag – thanks) Anywhere in the world? If you do and you’d like a SQLskills
Wow! We had 35 entries in 5 days for our competition to win a free seat at our Master Immersion Event on Internals and Performance
In my survey for this week, I'd like to know what you monitor if you're using database mirroring. [Edit: The survey has closed now. See
Just before Christmas last year I created a survey to ask you what your job title is and additionally, if you wanted, what you actually
We’re really excited about the classes we’ve got coming up and to say ‘thank you’ to the SQL community for all your support of SQLskills.com
The January 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
PASS 2010 was a resounding success – the best ever PASS according to most. We at SQLskills.com have even more reason to celebrate as it
The spring conferences are creeping up on us and there will be four of us at SQL Connections in Orlando, March 27-30 (me, Kimberly, Bob, and
I’ve been doing a lot of performance tuning work over the last couple of months and this weekend found something that’s very pervasive out in
At the end of December I showed you how to discover if power saving is enabled on your server, which can lead to variable and
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