A good news for those who manage SQL releases, now CU updates are backed by Microsoft and one should not wait for SP releases, CU should be applied as early as possible,   https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlreleaseservices/announcing-updates-to-the-sql-server-incremental-servicing-model-ism/   Updates to Cumulative Update Messaging and Guidance: Over the years, as we released CUs (Cumulative Updates), you have become familiar with a certain type of deterrent messaging around those updates. Examples like the below messages often lead DBA’s to plan […]

TDE (Transparent Data Encryption) is an inbuilt encryption feature of SQL Server Enterprise Edition introduced by Microsoft from SQL server 2008 onwards, this comes in handy when someone has to secure the PII (Personal Identifiable Information) from prying eyes, as it is Enterprise Edition feature only hence comes with a premium price. So while I got a request to analyze implementation of it on more than 200+ SQL standard edition then first thing which has […]

Came across following links relevant to Virtual NUMA, read for additional knowledge,     Vmware: https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.resmgmt.doc%2FGUID-A80A6337-7B99-48C8-B024-EE47E2366C1B.html     Hyper-v https://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/dn282282.aspx

I Policy-Based Management is a very useful feature of SQL Server 2008 and later, if you like to audit certain parameters or enforce certain restriction on particular SQL Server/s, but first this to notice is will there be any overhead on current performance of SQL Server or not, basically the answer depends upon the way you are going to use it,   Q. What is the overhead of Policy-Based Management on my SQL Server? A. […]

Text Reference: http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/19870/how-to-identify-which-query-is-filling-up-the-tempdb-transaction-log Some tips for minimizing tempdb utilization 1. Use fewer #temp tables and @table variables 2. Minimize concurrent index maintenance, and avoid the SORT_IN_TEMPDB option if it isn’t needed 3. Avoid unnecessary cursors; avoid static cursors if you think this may be a bottleneck, since static cursors use work tables in tempdb – though this is the type of cursor I always recommend if tempdb isn’t a bottleneck 4. Try to avoid spools […]

If you are a DBA and you need to track the current release of SQL Server build then this link will come handy, use it at your wish as it’s not official page but a blog community page, http://sqlserverbuilds.blogspot.ca/ Excerpt as of writing this article, Quick summary:   RTM (Gold, no SP) SP1 SP2 SP3 SP4 SQL Server 2012codename Denali 11.00.2100.60 CTP       SQL Server 2008 R2codename Kilimanjaro 10.50.1600.1 10.50.2500 10.50.4000     […]

You may see 1001 n/w connection error when trying to connect remote sql server from ssms, I have compiled some best troubleshooting steps I am aware and few collected from various references,   First try to use one of five ways to connect SQL Server using SSMS, (for e.g. let’s say server name is ngmssql and instance name is sql001 and domain is ad.in.com and port is 1433 and ip address is 10.26.27.28)   • […]

When you try to connect to SQL Server OLAP services hosted on a server from your desktop or client machine then it will require appropriate drivers to connect to SQL Server Analysis services.

While searching for t-sql script which can check replication agent status came across a good script which works well for all versions of SQL Server i.e. 2000/2005/2008/2008R2 and above…

Today while troubleshooting a SQL authentication issue, came across following error: Login failed for user ‘sa’. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 58) When I use SQL Server Authentication to connect server. This was authentication issue, hence first checked the authentication mode and found that it is configured as Windows Authentication instead of Mixed mode (SQL + Windows) authentication Once I modified the authentication mode to mixed mode, it requested me to restart […]