Starting Windows 2012, Windows cluster supports asymmetric disks which is required for Cluster participating in Always ON technology hence is a useful concept to be aware of,   http://www.sqlserverfaq.net/2012/09/16/when-do-we-need-asymmetric-storage-with-alwayson-fci-and-availability-storage/   https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/493bf438-eb9d-405c-81c5-42aaa31eef8a/configure-asymmetric-storage-for-crosssite-windows-failover-cluster?forum=winserverClustering  

As a DBA we encounter situations when CPU is high on a DB server but DB is not consuming any CPU, we can see the processes consuming high CPU but don’t know how to identify that what process is doing causing issue and in cases where process is an encapsulated process like wscript.exe or any other system process we generally recommend server reboot but that generally washes out all logging; now as a DBA we […]

After struggling a lot and working with vendor, identified list of exclusions for SQL Server related to Anti Virus Software (McAfee, Symantec, etc.), the details can be found in this link, last one is important as it impacts performance.   https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/309422/how-to-choose-antivirus-software-to-run-on-computers-that-are-running-sql-server   Directories and file-name extensions to exclude from virus scanning When you configure your antivirus software settings, make sure that you exclude the following files or directories (as applicable) from virus scanning. Doing this […]

Issue: While trying to restart SQL Service, it failed and following error found in error logs,   yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.xx Server Error: 17182, Severity: 16, State: 1. yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.xx Server TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0xd, status code 0x10. Reason: Unable to retrieve registry settings from TCP/IP protocol’s ‘IPAll’ configuration key. The data is invalid.   yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.xx Server Error: 17182, Severity: 16, State: 1. yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.xx Server TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0xd, status code […]

While deleting a task in task manager, received following error reported by my team,   Error: “transaction support within the specified resource manager is not started or was shutdown due to an error”     We tried multiple options to modify job and delete but nothing worked, On further google search found that issue is similar to found on following forum,   http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/transaction-support-within-the-specified-resource/fba64f34-4c16-4551-82d7-f22169be0d97?auth=1   Executed following command on server, fsutil resource setautoreset true c:\   […]

Came across a unique issue on a friend’s laptop where he has high resolution screen but when trying to remote desktop any server then the remote server also inheriting the same resolution and text looks very small, MSTSC settings, desktop resolution settings, etc. everything is tried what possible but it didn’t fixed the issue. To resolve this, he found following solution to fix. Note: I am writing this post to keep a record of this […]

While re-installing SQL server, got below error,       To fix this execute below commands with elevated access in command prompt so that permissions get applied to respective path,   Eg: takeown /F c:\Windows\system32\drivers /D y /R    In our scenario commands are provided below:   Here path is “F:” which is a parent folder.   takeown /F F: /D y /R   cacls F: /E /T /C /G “<<<user_AD_account_name>>>“:F

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

When trying to take Microsoft SQL Server database backup to a network shared disk then receiving following error,     Error text: Cannot open backup device “\\xxxxxxxx\xxxx.bak” . Operating System Error 5 (failed to retrieve text for this error. Reason: 15105). (Microsoft.SQLServer.Smo)   The error may vary, you may also receive Operating system error 5(Access denied) and that too for local disk instead of network disk. But symptom is same.   Solution to fix this […]

Today while installing SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1, installation failed with following error code, —————— MSI (s) (4C:9C) [04:51:32:016]: Product: SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Database Engine Services – Update ‘Service Pack 1 for SQL Server Database Services 2008 Core Instance (64-bit) (KB2528583)’ could not be installed. Error code 1639. Additional information is available in the log file C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20130820_043842\sql_engine_core_inst_Cpu64_1.log.   MSI (s) (4C:9C) [04:51:32:016]: Windows Installer installed an update. Product […]