Weekly survey: maximum allowable downtime – target and actual
This week's survey is inspired by this morning's Kimberly+Paul hot-tub conversation around data-dependent routing vs. network load balancing, which then turned to SLAs. Yes, we
This week's survey is inspired by this morning's Kimberly+Paul hot-tub conversation around data-dependent routing vs. network load balancing, which then turned to SLAs. Yes, we
In last week’s survey I asked whether you’re ever tested your disaster recovery plan, and if so, what happened? (See here for the survey). Here
This week's survey is inspired from many stories I saw on the forums and Twitter this week – mostly bad, one good (someone I'm following
This week's been a busy one on the forums and Twitter, with lots of interesting problems people are hitting. One of the things I've noticed
This is a true story, and unfolded over the last few days. It’s deliberately written this way, I’m not trying to be patronizing – just illustrating
Hopefully all of you reading my blog already know to use the WITH ALL_ERRORMSGS option whenever you run DBCC CHECKDB (which is now the default
Last week’s survey was on what kind of backups you take, along with the recovery model used (see here for the survey). Here are the
In this week's survey I'm interested in what kind of backups you take, and also what recovery model you mostly use. If you have multiple
A couple of weeks ago I kicked off the latest survey, on what the physical layout of your databases are and why you have them
This week's survey is a little more complicated. I'm interested in the physical layout of your databases. I've got four surveys, for a variety of database
Just saw this on a forum – running REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS on msdb to cope with corruption. Yes, this will work but it's certainly not safe and
Last week I kicked off the first weekly survey – on whether you validate your backups or not (see here for the survey). The results
Well, we're back from vacation finally (only for 10 days and then off to India and Thailand for 3 weeks… phew) and I've got a
This blog post describes the demo "2 – NC Indexes" from my Corruption Survival Techniques conference session from various conferences in 2008. The links to
For those of you who couldn't make it to a conference this year where I presented my Corruption Survival Techniques session, the folks at TechEd
This blog post describes the demo “1 – Fatal Errors” from my Corruption Survival Techniques conference session from various conferences in 2008. The links to
Now, I’m very thick-skinned and I know there are always some people in a conference session who don’t agree with everything I say (that’s human
This blog post explains the demo scripts and databases I've posted to cover all the Corruption Survival Techniques and DBCC CHECKDB sessions I've presented at
It's been almost exactly a week since the last post – an unusually long time for me. Kimberly and I were teaching the first week
One of our customers (and friends!) sent us this last week – a stark reminder why hardware redundancy is a good idea! The controller
(Quickie post #3 while it's Kimberly's turn to lecture this morning – better pay attention now before I get into trouble) Gail asked a (paraphrased)
(Quickie post #1 while it’s Kimberly’s turn to lecture this morning…) I had a comment on my post dealing with suspect databases, saying that the
(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
When I started blogging, way back in 2006 :-), the third post I made on the old Storage Engine blog was about rebuilding the msdb
Now this one’s sure to spark some controversy… I was checking my RSS feeds of the SQL blogs that I follow and noticed an interesting
Moving databases around is pretty common, as is moving databases between servers running different Editions of SQL Server, especially during a disaster recovery situation. You
I've had a few follow-ups on my two posts about boot page and file header page corruption – asking if its possible to do single-page
As you may already know, instant file initialization is a way to prevent data (not log) file create and grow operations having to zero-initialize the
Today I presented my brand new session Surviving Corruption: From Detection to Recovery at TechEd. I had a lot of fun putting together the demos, presenting
(I’m actually on-stage here at TechEd doing the DAT track pre-con with Kimberly – she’s on now until lunch so I’m catching up on forum problems…)
So Seattle weather went from 50 degrees to 85 degrees overnight Friday and we all went from shivering to sweating! It's too hot to be
It seems that today is going to be one of those days where I get lost in forums and blogging – I can live with
Here’s an interesting question that came in to our questions line (questions@SQLskills.com – no guarantee of an answer – I check it every so often): I
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the three tracks of the SQL Server 2008 JumpStart course that SQLskills.com taught internally for Microsoft and
Almost a year ago to the day I asked a question on my old blog – how long does *your* CHECKDB take to run? Well,
While we were in Barcelona we sat down with Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes from RunAs Radio to record a 1/2 hour interview on SQL
Here’s a question that came up yesterday in our chalk-talk on database mirroring at TechEd IT Forum that Kimberly and I talked about this morning (here
In my previous post on interpreting DBCC CHECKDB output, plus in my DBCC Internals session at TechEd IT Forum in Barcelona yesterday, I mentioned there
This is a subject I posted about last year on my old blog but it came up at SQL Connections last week several times so
Last week at SQL Connections someone said that CHECKDB’s output is ‘useless’. Given that I wrote CHECKDB for SQL Server 2005 I was only mildly
After posting last week about a BACKUP feature that I don’t like (WITH NO_LOG – see here), I thought I’d do a quick post this
This has come up several times over the last few days, and is something that Kimberly and I discuss (and deplore) when we lecture –
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the new features for database mirroring in SQL Server 2008 is log stream compression. There’s a
This is another question that came up on the Disaster Recovery forum on MSDN. Paraphrasing – ‘ I have a backup file containing full backups
It’s common knowledge that SQL Server copes with daylight savings time (DST) correctly so why should you care? Well, it’s not so common knowledge that at
(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’
(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
(Check out my online training course: SQL Server: Detecting and Correcting Database Corruption.) In this post I want to describe the two worst things I
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