Whitepaper on high-availability architectures published
The 20-page whitepaper I wrote this Spring for the SQL team has just been published. This whitepaper is titled Proven SQL Server Architectures for High
The 20-page whitepaper I wrote this Spring for the SQL team has just been published. This whitepaper is titled Proven SQL Server Architectures for High
(Look in the Misconceptions blog category for the rest of the month’s posts and check out the 60-page PDF with all the myths and misconceptions
(Look in the Misconceptions blog category for the rest of the month’s posts and check out the 60-page PDF with all the myths and misconceptions
As part of the 2008 DBA class we’re teaching down here in Melbourne, I did a demo of using predicates and file targets with extended
The 35-page whitepaper on high availability I wrote for the SQL team over the summer has been published on MSDN. It’s a 2-300 level whitepaper
Here's an interesting bug that surfaced recently, first reported by Bryan Smith on the MSDN disaster recovery/HA forum three weeks ago. One of the mechanisms I
A new whitepaper has been published that comprehensively covers the Resource Governor feature of SQL Server 2008, written by fellow MVP Aaron Bertrand and SQL
It's very commonly known that you can use the Script Wizard in Management Studio to script out tables or even an entire database. It's NOT
The SQLCAT team have published another excellent whitepaper – this time the long-awaited one on the SQL Server 2008 data compression feature. Thirteen people inside
Last week's survey was two-fold – what's the largest SQL Server database you manage, and how many SQL Server databases are you responsible for managing.
Another quickie today. If you're using Activity Monitor in SQL Server 2008, or Performance Data Collection with the Server Activity system data collection set, then you may
This short post is prompted by a question that came in through Twitter – I *knew* it was worth joining and spending time on it
[Edit 2016: This trace flag is required in all version of SQL Server up to and including SQL Server 2014. Every instance of SQL Server
In my previous posts on FILESTREAM I discussed the directory structure of the FILESTREAM data container and how to map the directories to database tables and
See http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=66ab3dbb-bf3e-4f46-9559-ccc6a4f9dc19 for the download, release notes, etc
Last week’s survey was on how you should store large-value character data in SQL 2005+ (see here for the survey). Here are the result as
The May 2009 TechNet Magazine is now available online, and it's the annual security issue. In there is an article I wrote highlighting 10 common
While I was teaching the MCM-Database class last week, we were discussing fragmentation and the effect of a high-order GUID key on an index. Without
A thread cropped up on SQLServerCentral involving IAM chain corruption (see Inside the Storage Engine: IAM pages, IAM chains, and allocation units for details of IAM
Last week’s survey was on what kind of regular index maintenance you perform (see here for the survey) as a way of kicking off a
Way back at the start of me blogging here I wrote a comprehensive description of ghost records and the ghost cleanup process – see Inside
I’m teaching the Microsoft Certified Masters – Database qualification this week here in Redmond, and in part of day one I discuss the FILESTREAM directory
Last week I kicked off the first weekly survey – on whether you validate your backups or not (see here for the survey). The results
After writing the FILESTREAM whitepaper for Microsoft, I’ve had lots of questions about the structure of the FILESTREAM data container. The FILESTREAM data container is
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Internals finally starts to roll off the presses at Microsoft Press today! For me this is the first time in
One set of features i haven't blogged about yet in SQL Server 2008 are the new security features: SQL Server Audit, Transparent Data Encryption, and
While trawling through the latest 2008 Books Online this morning to answer a question, I noticed a new section that I hadn't seen before, which
In the TechNet Magazine article I wrote on Advanced Troubleshooting with Extended Events, I mentioned the always-on event session called system_health. Jonathan Kehayias, a fellow
Cumulative Update 1 for SQL 2008 RTM contains fixes for two nasty FILESTREAM bugs (among a lot of other bug fixes). The first one concerns
Microsoft has released a PDF showing all the SQL Server 2008 system tables – very cool but you'll need a big printer to print it
The January 2009 issue of TechNet Magazine is now available on the web and has a new article I wrote on Advanced Troubleshooting with Extended
I was perusing the latest release of the SQL Server 2008 Books Online on MSDN (look, Kimberly’s in Dublin this week – what else am
During the PASS Community Summit, Rick Heiges did an interview with Thomas Grohser, the Senior Database Engineer at the bwin Interactive Entertainment AG, the world's
Today's post is based on a bunch of questions I've had around the various compression features in SQL Server 2008. Does turning on data compression
On Tuesday we had a look around our customer's data centers here in Austria – hidden away in the labryinthine bowels of a very large
During early SQL Server 2008 development, the Storage Engine team introduced additional minimally-logged functionality. And then it was removed again for RTM. Now it seems
The sparse columns feature in SQL Server 2008 is generating lots of interest from people looking to deploy extensible schemas. I've seen a few questions
The feature article on SQL Server 2008: Tracking Changes in Your Enterprise Database I wrote for the November issue of TechNet Magazine is live on the web. It
Just found out that the 25-page FILESTREAM whitepaper I wrote recently for the SQL team has been published on MSDN. You can get it
At the last Connections conference in April, the conference organizers tapped a bunch of speakers for interviews, articles, and other content to put into a
This is the second of the two sessions I recently recorded with Richard and Greg on RunAs Radio (the first one on being an “involuntary DBA”
I just heard today that the first whitepaper I’ve written for Microsoft has been published! The abstract is: SQL Server Replication: Providing High-Availability using Database
(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
When I started blogging, way back in 2006 :-), the third post I made on the old Storage Engine blog was about rebuilding the msdb
Over the last few weeks I’ve had lots of questions about FILESTREAM performance and how to coax NTFS into scaling nicely. I just finished writing
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
While we were at TechEd in June, Kimberly and I participated in an hour-long discussion panel (Leveraging SQL Server Technologies to Build a Solid High-Availability
Well, almost… Kimberly and I have agreed to co-author the upcoming SQL Server 2008 Internals book with our good friend Kalen Delaney. This is the
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