When you take over a new SQL Server instance one of the things you might consider doing early on is finding SQL Agent jobs that have no email notification set up. These will be jobs that could fail and they will never alert anyone. I am of the opinion that if a job is worth … Continue reading Finding Jobs With No Email Notifications
If you are using Log Shipping, there have probably been times that you have discovered that the Log Shipping Secondary is not up to date. Perhaps you found out by right clicking on your SQL Server instance and running the performance dashboard report for Log Shipping Status. If you are not familiar with this … Continue reading Steps to Catch Up Log Shipping Secondary
Ever had a situation where a small in-house application written for a small group of employees needed some permissions in the database? How do you handle that? I want to walk through the scenario and provide three reasons that using a Database Role might be the answer you are looking for. Let’s first cover, at … Continue reading Three Reasons to Use a Custom Database Role
Sp_who and sp_who2 have been some very popular T-SQL commands. What if I told you that you could get more and better information from DMVs that have been around since SQL Server 2005? With the advent of SQL Server 2005 came along new objects called Dynamic Management Views, also known as DMVs. One of … Continue reading Retiring sp_who and sp_who2
There are many consistently hot topics around SQL Server. One such topic is, “How does a DBA obtain the latest information on updates?” In this post, I will discuss three places that I frequent for information on SQL Server updates. The first link I want to discuss is http://sqlserverbuilds.blogspot.com/. This site gives you a very … Continue reading Three Places to Get Information On New Updates for SQL Server
You may occasionally have the need to relocate database files. What are some reasons that may prompt the need for this type of change? First, someone might have discovered that the database files are on the same drive as the operating system. For a discussion of why you don’t want to do this see this … Continue reading Moving Database Files to Another Drive
Configuring the min and max server memory settings for SQL Server has a number of things to consider prior to making changes. Before we jump into those considerations, let’s learn what the min and max server memory options do. What does the min server memory option do? The min server memory option specifies the minimum … Continue reading Setting Min and Max Server Memory Setting
Ever come across a SQL Server that had 5, 10, or more individual logins for users in it? I have a few times and it made me wonder if whoever had done such a thing realized how much harder they were making the administration of the server by doing this. I suppose some folks start … Continue reading Three Reasons to Use Windows Groups to Manage SQL Server
In an earlier post I listed three tips for using the SQL Server Management Studio user interface. I want to offer three additional tips for SSMS. I think you will find that these ideas will bring additional efficiency and functionality to your use of the interface. The first tip is related to getting more viewing … Continue reading 3 Additional Tips for Using SQL Server Management Studio
I have encountered a Log Shipping error that I want to detail as an encouragement for staying current on SQL Server cumulative updates. First, a little background. The environment is SQL Server 2014 Standard edition with a physical machine as the primary and two secondaries, both virtual machines backed by a flash storage system. … Continue reading You Really Should Stay Current on Cumulative Updates