Over the past few weeks, I’ve been contacted by multiple customers experiencing the same frustrating issue. Applications and SSMS sessions that had been rock-solid for years suddenly started throwing errors when connecting over VPN: Naturally, everyone assumed it was a SQL Server problem – which is why they called me. On the server side, though, […]
Category: SQL Tuning
DBCC CHECKDB: Why It Matters and What It Means for Your Azure SQL Environments
Hey everyone, Tim Radney here. Over the years I’ve seen far too many organizations learn the hard way what happens when you ignore database integrity checks. In traditional SQL Server environments—whether on-premises or in IaaS—running DBCC CHECKDB regularly is non-negotiable. It’s your frontline defense for verifying the logical and physical integrity of every object in […]
How to Troubleshoot a Runaway Transaction Log File
Part of being a DBA is dealing with transaction logs that grow uncontrolled for some reason. This often gets raised to the DBA in the form of a drive space issue on the disk that contains the transaction log. Troubleshooting this can go a few different directions depending on the environment. Is the database in […]
SQL Server 2025: What’s New and Why It Matters
SQL Server 2025 is Generally Available
SQL Server 2016 End of Extended Support
Many organizations are still running SQL Server 2016 in production. Sadly, many are running versions older than 2016 as well, however with SQL Server 2016, the end of extended support runs out very soon. July 14th, 2026, to be precise. After this date, there will be no additional updates unless you have an agreement for […]
The “Kill” Command: What to Consider Before Stopping a SQL Server Process
Whether you’re troubleshooting on-premises SQL Server, Azure SQL DB, Managed Instance, or Amazon RDS, you will eventually encounter a “lead blocker”—that one high-cost, long-running session holding every other process hostage. While your first instinct might be to issue a KILL command, the consequences vary wildly depending on what that session is actually doing. Here is […]
SQL Server Best Practices
Many technologists dislike the term ‘Best Practice’ because what works for one environment might not work for another. I prefer the term ‘Industry Best Practice,’ prefaced with the caveat: ‘For most environments, this is a solid starting point and a widely accepted standard.’ With that in mind, here are several key configurations I wish every customer would […]
SQL Server error 18456
Working with thousands of instances of Microsoft SQL Server, I often encounter users having issues. A common error is 18456 which indicates a login failure.