I'm doing some performance tuning work lately and I find this quote from my favorite philosopher to be so true: "Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple." -Dr.Seuss

I really dislike the new "cloud" term, since it's really just computing, but I get the point. The larger question is, what is the role of the DBA in a "cloud" environment? If your company moves the data substructure into a provider...

That's right - not a "Backup Plan", which most DBA's already have, but a "Recovery Plan". What that means is that you are working towards the end-goal - a recovered system. Your Recovery Plan will certainly contain your backup plan...

If you've never read the "scripting guys" at Microsoft, they are a hoot. Ed Wilson and Craig Liebendorfer do a fantastic job of writing each week and helping with scripting of all kinds, including PowerShell. Well, this week they appointed me...

I'm technically "off" today, but I wanted to dedicate this blog to the Memorial Day holiday here in the U.S. It's a time when we honor those who gave their lives in service to our country. I served, as did my wife, in the U.S. Air Force at bases...

"Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts." - Edward R. Murrow

When you create a database, you should always create Filegroups to store the data on multiple drives. Don't confuse this with just creating multiple files in a database - that is useful, but not the same. Let's take an example to explain what you want...

In the SQLCMS project, I show an example of some "base tables" that you can create for the system. Whenever I create a database, or database object, I make use of a feature that's been around for quite awhile - Extended Properties. You can set and read...

For the SQL Server Central Management System I've been developing , I needed to create a few "dashboard" type reports. I could use just plain old HTML/ASP/ASPX/PHP, but in keeping with the theme of using what I already have available in SQL...

This is really neat - I read in SQL Server Magazine that a company called WestClinTech created a product that loads in tons of Excel functions into T-SQL. It's basically composed of SQLCLR functions that you load in, covering math, statistics, business...

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

I don't like to read technical blogs that have a lot of personal info in them. Sure, I'll rant from time to time, or talk about a technical book I've read and so on, but most people really don't care about your new cat or how you're feeling today. Keep...

Most every DBA I know uses sp_who2, an undocumented stored procedure that shows locking, blocking, who is on, what they are doing and so on. At TechEd on Monday (I could only go for one day this time) I met up with my friend Adam Mechanic - a SQL Server...

I've gotten a couple of questions on the SQL Server Central Management System ( http://sqlcms.codeplex.com ) that I blogged about yesterday. It's simply a methodology you can use to manage and monitor your SQL Servers using the tools you already have...

Yesterday I delivered a pre-conference session at TechEd US in Los Angeles. I covered lots of SQL Server 2008 features, but the key was that we ended up putting them all together for a single purpose. Most of us have a way of aggregating the data about...

I'm sure you have a lot of plans for today, and things you want to get done. But you could do worse than making this your primary goal for today: "The really great person is the person who makes every person feel great." - G.K. Chesterton

I've worked on several platforms, from Oracle and DB/2 to Sybase and SQL Server. Perhaps it's because SQL Server is so simple to set up, use and manage, but it seems that in this platform I see a lot of problems with people following best practices. In...

In PowerShell 2.0, there's a command to get things to the clipboard. I haven't deployed 2.0 yet, though, since I'm a DBA and naturally paranoid about anything beta on my systems. So I searched for other ways to do that, and there are a few, but then I...

I ran into a licensing question the other day on Physical versus Logical Processors. Happily, Microsoft only charges you for Physical sockets - which you can find with this query: SELECT cpu_count / hyperthread_ratio AS PhysicalCPUs FROM sys.dm_os_sys_info...

Well, here's where I'm at so far: Requirements: 1. Install SQL Server 2008 and related services - file locations; default paths; service accounts http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143547.aspx NTFS is required for installation, but if you upgrade...

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."  - Douglas Adams