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• Bare Metal Restore Part 2

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  I blogged previously about how Windows 2008 R2 has native "bare metal restore"   http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/grumpyolddba/archive/2011/05/13/windows-2008-r2-bare-metal-restore.aspx , see the Core Team's blog post here;  http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2011/05/12/bare-metal-restore.aspx Well since then I’ve actually had the chance not only to put the process to the test but to see if I could go one step further. I have a six identical IBM Servers, part of...(read more)

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• So which null equals this null, that null? maybe this null, or is it this null?

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  Tuning takes many routes and I get into some interesting situations and often make some exciting finds, see http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/grumpyolddba/archive/2010/05/17/just-when-you-thought-it-was-safe.aspx for an example. Today I encountered a multitude of Foreign Key constraints on a table, now FKs are often candidates for indexes and as none of the defined keys had an index it required a closer look. I view foreign key constraints as somewhat of a pain, excessive keys can cause excessive related...(read more)

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• SSMS Built in Reports for Server and Database Monitoring

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  This is a long post which I hope will format correctly – I’ve placed a pdf version for download here  http://www.grumpyolddba.co.uk/sql2008/ssmsreports_grumpyolddba.pdf I sometimes discover that the built in reports for SQL Server within SSMS are an unknown, sometimes this is because not all the right components were installed during the server build, other times is because generally there’s never been great reporting for the DBA from the SQL Team so no-one expects to find anything useful for...(read more)

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• Hello it’s your server calling

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  This is nothing exciting but I've always found this startup procedure  very useful. All this simple procedure does is send you an email if the SQL Service Starts. If your Server is a cluster it will tell you which node you're on. -- On it's own this procedure can't actually be used as I route the output through another procedure, dbasp_SendMessage, this procedure routes a passed message to either a smtp email or a log table or both, the destination is set in a server config table...(read more)

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• Cursors 1 Sets 0

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  I had an interesting experience with a database I essentially know nothing about. On the server is a database which stores session state, Microsoft provide the code/database with their dot net, so I'm told. Anyway this database has sat happily on the production server for the past 4 years I guess, we've finally made the upgrade to SQL 2008 and the ASPState database has also been upgraded. It seems most likely that the performance increase of our upgrade tipped the usage of this database into...(read more)

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• 1 Million IOPS

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  As a keen follower of storage performance I couldn't help but be drawn to this article in The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/14/lsi_million_iops/ this morning. I gave my 5 year old laptop a new lease of life with a SSD and in combination with the old drive made external managed to reduce the time of a demo query from 50 odd mins down to 6 mins. I also have 4 Silicon Power 32GB SSDs set up as a raid 0 on my home server, an overblown PC. http://www.futurestorage.co.uk/index.asp?selmanuf...(read more)

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• You Couldn’t Write it !! ( part 1 )

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  This post was inspired by a developer and I think illustrates the gulf that can sometimes exist between IT and the business. I should point out that this post is the diplomatic version! Initially I was sent a simple search for a person with a question about why the query plan showed a sort when there was no sort in the query and why did the sort show it was 40% of the query. ( The point about the sort belongs to another post some time. ) Easy answer to the duration was that this was a leading wild...(read more)

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• w WARN: Thread pool pressure. Using current thread for a work item.

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  The skill set needed by a DBA can be quite diverse at times and a run in with SSRS 2005 probably illustrates the point quite well. I don't have skills in IIS although I was responsible for the design and deployment of an online mortage application site some years ago.I had to get hands on with IIS5, firewalls, intrusion systems, ISA Server, dmzs, NAT, IP and lots of other acronyms so I have an understanding of these things but never had to do anything other than set up and configure IIS - no...(read more)

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• Would you expect this error ?

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  Now I know why, but what I'm thinking is that if I create an error should I get valid data returned? To explain, I was browsing through the dmvs for queries which might benefit from tuning and I identified a query with two clustered index scans ( table scans ). I don't know all the schema off by heart and I was looking for a select by a LoginID column. I assumed this would be numeric and promptly entered an integer value to examine the query plan, yeah I should have looked at the table definition...(read more)

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• Why do I bother with RAID 10 ?

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  Before I post anything I just want to clarify what I mean by RAID 10 , this is sets of mirrored pairs that have been striped as against a RAID 0 which has been mirrored. I've just had a disk failure in the data array for one of my dev servers, it's an eight disk raid 8, no real worries, replace disk and off we go - but no - the HP engineers told me from the diagnostics ( done to ensure I got the right replacement under warranty ) that not only had a disk failed but I'd lost all the data...(read more)

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• Would you expect this then ?

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  I've just been working through a database looking for log tables which can have data aged out, or deleted if you like. I was using SSMS for this and used the default right click select top 1000 rows as a quick view of the data. Establishing that I had unwanted data in such a table I deleted based upon getdate()-30 , nearly 7,000 rows deleted, I then highlighted the top 1000 rows query and re-ran query, surpisingly I still got the same result set with 2006 dates in it, and 1,000 rows. A quick...(read more)

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• Now you know it's true !

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  Grumpy is good - official !! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8339647.stm...(read more)

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• Did I back that file up ?

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  As part of some diagnostics I was wishing to check if a particular file had been locked by a backup process whilst I was trying to copy it. So I put a request into the DataCentre for a list of files backed up and time when they were backed up, seems reasonable to me ? However the response was somewhat strange, apparently I can only find out if a file was backed up if I ask to have it restored, there is no facility ( so I'm told ) to produce a list of backed up files. It's good to know that...(read more)

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• Just when you thought it was safe..........

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  One of my duties is to handle software releases to our Production system, as is my want I always run my eye down any schema changes, this new object stood out for a number of reasons. I may add this to my interview questions: SET ANSI_NULLS ON SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO IF NOT EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA= 'dbo' AND TABLE_NAME= 'MSPaymentForExtraction' ) BEGIN CREATE TABLE [dbo].[MSPaymentForExtraction]([MSPaymentID] [ int ] NOT NULL IDENTITY...(read more)

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• Given the choice 8 out of 10 Optimisers prefer.........

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  Did you know that included columns do not partake in the uniqueness of a unique index? ( see below ) A few months ago we upgraded our major production system from SQL2000 to SQL2008, this has allowed me to apply some of the index tuning techniques I devised for SQL2005 way back when to the current environment now we're confident we have no unexpected surprises to surface. Amongst the techniques I use is to pull information from the dmvs to find tables ( and indexes ) which are getting high numbers...(read more)

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• You Couldn't Write it - Houston we have a problem!

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  Note identities changed to protect the innocent (sic ). In a datacentre I have an iscsi san which provides storage for a SQL Cluster. It developed a fault and required replacement of a few parts, all hot swappable. Although we had suppport/warranty this did not include onsite so we arranged to have the parts delivered. The datacentre did not want to carry out the work so we had to arrange for the manufacturer to send an engineer. Times were arranged and interested/concerned parties put on standby...(read more)

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• Community is Great

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  I have a great respect for so many who contribute to the community, without them I would often struggle in my role for sure. When "strange events" happen in a busy production environment it can be quite daunting when it seems everyone around is expecting you to have the answer/solution at your finger tips. I'm indebted to Paul White http://sqlblog.com/blogs/paul_white/default.aspx in confirming I'd found a bug and doing all the hard work including raising a connect item https:/...(read more)

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• Ghost in the machine

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  Well it does relate to ghosts, in this case dbGhost, http://dbghost.com/    which is what this post is about. Ghost creates databases on the fly, something I personally don’t like too much, which it then compares to a “base” database to produce release scripts. ( The brief description ). As with all things sometimes all is not well and the server is left with a number of ghost created databases so I have to have a job to delete these every night before backups, it’s not difficult to code...(read more)

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• Analysing Indexes - count *

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  In my presentations on indexing I have always said that you should explore the advantages of covering your clustered index with a secondary index. In circumstances where you might want to just return values form the PK ( assuming it's your clustered index ) a secondary index will be more efficient especially when the row size is wide. Any operation on a clustered index will always return the entire row, so select ID from dbo.mytable where ID is the clustered PK integer will return not just the...(read more)

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• Analysing Indexes - reducing scans.

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  The whole subject of database/application tuning is sometimes akin to a black art, it's pretty easy to find your worst 20 whatever but actually seeking to reduce operational overhead can be slightly more tricky. If you ever read through my analysing indexes post you'll know I have a number of ways of seeking out ways to tune the database. -- This is a slightly different slant on one of those which produced an interesting side effect. -- We all know that except for very small tables avoiding...(read more)

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• You couldn't write it - Expired SA account

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  This is the stuff of DBA nightmares ! email trail: Q. Can you reset the SA account on server XXXXX, we think it has expired and now no-one can work. Connect to Server: Surely no-one would set up a Server with an sa account which expires? Thankfully not. Find sa password and change connection to use SA account. Connect without issue. Me. Have checked Server and account is fine. A. Thanks that's great, you've fixed it we can all work now....(read more)

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• Looking for a code Plugin !!

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  SET ANSI_NULLS ON SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO IF NOT EXISTS( SELECT 1 FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA . TABLES WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = 'dbo' AND TABLE_NAME = 'MSPaymentForExtraction' ) BEGIN CREATE TABLE [dbo] . [MSPaymentForExtraction] ( [MSPaymentID] [int] NOT NULL IDENTITY ( 1 , 1 ) NOT FOR REPLICATION ) ON [PRIMARY] END GO...(read more)

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• A follow up to yesterday

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  As I have been asked,  here to tidy up yesterdays post is the procedure my startup procedure calls along with the logging table deployed in the DBA database. Just to muddy the water further I have routines for remotely calling the DBAMessages table through a remote server to send out email from a central server!! Just to explain that I have been ( previously ) limited to only using one Server to send email alerts for multiple Servers so I attempt to code to deal with all possible circumstances...(read more)

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