Today faced an issue that SQL server agent was not starting up, after investigation found that issue is due to AWE and lock pages in memory settings , found a very useful article at following link It says,  I changed my SQL Server Agent service account to a domain account using SQL Server Configuration Manager (should always use this tool to manipulate service accounts), but then could not start the SQL Server Agent service. This […]

Today after searching for possible causes of OLEDB timeout error faced by an application came across various links and lastly found a useful link  Article states:  I have heard many people saying that their web site is chugging along, and suddenly they get this error:    Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers (0x80004005)  [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Timeout expired   or    Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error ‘80040e31’  Timeout expired   This […]

Today while debugging a C: drive disk space issue found that in certain service account location C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp there are several “*.CACHE” files. They come named as follows: “machine-name_instance.SQL-Server-name_{49268954-4FD4-4EB6-AA04-CD59D9BB5714}_#.cache” where: “machine-name” is the server’s Windows computer name; “instance.SQL-Server-name” is the MS SQL Server 2008 server and instance name; “#” is some unique 1-2 digit identifier. these were created by Data collector functionality of SQL server 2008, when you do not specify specified cache file patch in […]

While investigating a cluster resource offline issue, came across following three errors in windows system event log, cluster log and SQL error log respectively, Error message 1 Source: ClusSvc Category: Failover Mgr Type: Error Event ID: 1069 User: N/A Computer: < Computer Name > Description: Cluster resource ‘SQL Server ()’ in Resource Group ‘‘ failed. Error message 2 Error in the Cluster log file, SQL Server < SQLServer >: [sqsrvres] Unable to read the ‘VirtualServerName’ […]

Today, while doing some maintenance plan modification encountered a unique issue, recieved following error while modifying/opening any maintenance plan or job, Error Screenshots: Job error: Maintenance Plan error: Later on investigation found that this is a known bug with SQL Server 2005 SP2 that if SQL Server name exceeds 30 chars then this issue will occur, for e.g. if SQL server name is dazsqlmper234_1234\dbajsasalsa_456 Issue: SQL Agent Jobs and Maint plans are not editable when […]

I was struggling to identify the DTS package name from the job syntax which looks like, DTSRun /~Z0x5B431B25562BD74…2AE391DF759D0B3B09EEAB94B687E05E66CE7307C6304204 this can be simulated by right clicking the DTS Package (SQL 2000) and schedule a job. If you schedule a package to run that way, the SQL Job it creates will have an encrypted name for DTS package in SQL job step – similar to what you see above. Found a solution to this at following link […]

A very good read of 59 pages by Paul S. Randal available at following link: http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/CommonSQLServerMyths.pdf Do give it a read, it talks about very common myths which an amateur or even professional DBA’s have.

Looking for SQL Server 2000 to SQl Server 2005 migration, useful resources available at following link: http://blogs.technet.com/b/vipulshah/archive/2006/11/30/useful-resources-to-pitch-for-migrating-to-sql-server-2005.aspx Comparing Enterprise Development Productivity: SQL Server 2005 versus SQL Server 2000 http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/compare/devprod2000.mspx “This independent productivity study, conducted by 3 Leaf, compares two developers working independently to provide the same added features and functionality to a baseline application. One developer worked with SQL Server 2005, and the other used SQL Server 2000. Bycomparing the time required by each developer […]