In the United States, we have our Thanksgiving this month. This is a time where families come together for a huge meal. For many, it is a time to see family and friends they haven’t seen in months and to reflect on what they are thankful for. For some families, it is time for them […]
Msg 3140 – Could Not Adjust the Space Allocation for File
I often need to shrink database files. I know, ‘shrinking is bad’, however there are situations where it is very much needed. In my line of work, I come across databases that have been collecting data for year after year after year. One of the things I check for is the largest tables in databases. […]
Why You Need a SQL DBA or Consultant
Many organizations do not have in-house DBAs. This can be due to a number of reasons. Most commonly it is smaller organizations that cannot justify a full time DBA. Others are larger organizations that do more development work or organizations that run a lot of vendor supported software that don’t understand the value of having […]
Your SQL Server is Slow, What To Look At
As a data professional, you’ll often get a phone call, email, or trouble ticket that says “SQL Server is slow, my query is slow, or things are slow”. This is the dreadful comment that we all receive from time to time and it never provides any detail of ‘what’ is slow. Where do you start […]
Risk with Not Patching and Upgrading SQL Server
Working with SQL Server over the past 25 years for various organizations all over the world, I usually always find a database server that is well outside of support. I’d be willing to be that anyone reading this blog post in 2024 knows of a SQL 2000 or SQL 2005 instance out there. I hear […]
Purging SQL Server Backup History
It seems like every few weeks I come across a database server with a very large msdb. After a small amount of investigation work, I determine that the largest tables consuming the most space are all related to backup history. I typically only keep 30 days of backup history but I’ve seen as little as […]
Getting Error 64 When Trying To Connect to SQL Server or Azure
Often times when working with a client, I’ll run into issues or get emails from a client with a message like the following: A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the pre-login handshake. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 – The specified network name is no longer available.) (Microsoft […]
Why Test SQL Server Backups
For a lot of us data professional types, this seems like a silly topic, however I constantly hear of companies that aren’t testing their backups by restoring them, or don’t have proper backups at all.