Upcoming IDERA Geek Sync – March 17th, 2021
Don’t miss my upcoming IDERA Geek Sync, How To Be The DBA When You Don’t Have A DBA, this Wednesday, March 17, 2021. This webinar is for the “Accidental DBA”: …
Setting The Database Owner, Compatibility Level, And Recovery Model With PowerShell
One of the great things about dbatool is that it allows you to run commands against multiple things. Sometimes you may need to run the same command on every server, …
Backing Up Databases With The dbatools PowerShell Module
We do a lot of database backups and restores at work, outside of our regular backup routines. A lot! I’ve actually done as many as 40 in one day. Our …
Configuring Database Data And Log Files
One of the things that Database Administrators typically do is configure the Data and Log file growth settings for the databases on their servers. While these configurations vary by server …
Extended Event To Track Data And Log File Size Changes
One of the things that a DBA tries to avoid/prevent are automatic file growths in data and log files. We generally like to plan for these things and size the …
Corruption With Backup Compression And TDE In SQL 2017
Last week I spent a good bit of time dealing with a corruption issue, and as it turns out I may actually have found a bug in SQL Server 2017. …
Generating A Database Snapshot For DBCC CHECKDB
Many people don’t realize that DBCC CHECKDB actually uses an internal database snapshot of the database to run the consistency checks on. (See the “Internal Database Snapshot” section of the …
SQL Scripts: How To Find Data And Log File Information
As a DBA, one of the things I routinely need to check is how much space is available in my database data and log files. In this post of my ongoing SQL …
SQL Scripts: How To Find Index Usage
This post is part of an ongoing SQL Scripts series, in which I list useful queries that I use in my day to day database administration. If you are interested in code …
SQL Scripts: How To Find Index Fragmentation
This is the first post in an ongoing SQL Scripts series, in which I list useful queries that I use in my day to day database administration. What Is Index Fragmentation? …
Persist And Aggregate Index Stats Across Server Restarts
(This script is part of my SQL Server Metrics Pack project that is now available on GitHub. If you like the code below and find it useful, I encourage you to check …
Change The Isolation Level Of An Availability Group Database
I recently needed to change the Transaction Isolation Level of one of our databases in an Availability Group. As it turns out, this is not as straight forward as you …
Using PowerShell To Store sp_BlitzIndex Results In A Table
I really like Brent Ozar’s sp_BlitzIndex procedure. It offers a lot of great insight into the indexes in your databases. If you are not currently using it, you should check it …
Finding Recurring Index Fragmentation Issues
One of the nice things about Ola Hallengren’s maintenance solution is that it has the option to log its operations to a table. This gives you ability to do a …
You Can Now Specify MAXDOP For DBCC CheckDB!
I just stumbled on this today. According to the DBCC CheckDB documentation, as of SQL Server 2014 Service Pack 2 you can now specify MAXDOP when running DBCC CheckDB! The documentation states: …
What Features Are Disabled Between Compatibility Levels In SQL Server?
Have you ever wondered what features may or may not be available when your database is running in a different compatibility level than your SQL Server version? I recently came …
Useful Tools: sp_whoisactive
One incredibly useful SQL Server tool that I often forget about is Adam Machanic’s sp_whoisactive procedure. The reason I say I forget about it is that it is not something that I …
SQL Server Maintenance Scripts
When it comes to everyday routine maintenance of your SQL Server databases, you can’t beat Ola Hallengren’s SQL Server Maintenance Solution. Focusing on SQL Server Backups, SQL Server Integrity Checks, and SQL Server …