Why should you patch your SQL Server instances? Compliance, stability, security, reliability, functionality, and more. Microsoft regularly releases updates to SQL Server known as Cumulative Updates (CUs). Cumulative updates often contain security updates that address vulnerabilities in additional to performance and reliability improvements to SQL Server. There are also bug fixes that are often included […]
Category: SQL Tuning
Why Aren’t You Monitoring SQL Server
I repeat the phrase “If you aren’t monitoring it, you can’t measure it” all the time. Through my IT career, this has been a constant. If you don’t have a baseline or know what normal looks like, then how can you quantify what isn’t normal when a user starts complaining of performance issues. For SQL […]
Stop Using Balanced Power with SQL Server
The OS default Power Plan for Windows is Balanced Power. This can cause degraded overall performance for SQL Server. Balanced Power is a great concept to help conserve energy by scaling the processor performance based on current CPU utilization, however it isn’t conducive to SQL Server workloads. For SQL Server, I always ask organizations to […]
Reasons Why SQL Servers Don’t Get Configured to Industry Best Practices
Throughout my career, I’ve worked on a LOT of different SQL Servers. Many that were installed and configured by application administrators, developers, vendors, and data professionals. I’ve seen servers with straight defaults and others with various industry accepted best practices applied. One of my favorite sessions I present is “Common SQL Server Mistakes and How […]
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Error
I came across an issue with SSMS not loading properly recently. Regardless of launching from the start menu with or without administrator, SSMS would error out. Due to this error, I also could not uninstall SSMS to try a repair. After much trial and error and Google/Bing searches I was able to correct the issue […]
SSRS Management for the DBA
Things a DBA should know about SSRS
Common Issues with SQL Server Backups
I absolutely love talking about SQL Server backup and restores. It is one of my favorite sessions to give at user groups and conferences all over the world. I’ve also written a couple of books on the topic. Over the many years of working with Microsoft SQL Server, I tend to see the same mistakes […]
Query Store for Azure PostgreSQL
Query Store is not just for Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL Database anymore. Microsoft announced back in Oct 2018 that Query Store was available in Public Preview for PostgreSQL. How cool is that! As Microsoft continues to expand the Azure Data Platform with including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and others, features that we know and love […]