Consider the following scenario: Ø You have multiple SQL Server instances in your environment (e.g. dozens or maybe hundreds). Ø You want to find out if some of them are not patched appropriately. This is what the following vbscript is...

Consider the following scenario: Ø You have multiple SQL Server instances in your environment (e.g. dozens or maybe hundreds). Ø You want to find out what are the storage needs for your databases. Ø You don’t know exactly how many SQL Servers...

Consider the following scenario: Ø You have multiple SQL Server instances in your environment (e.g. dozens or maybe hundreds). Ø You want to make sure that the SA login does not have a blank password. Ø Due to the sheer number of SQL Server...

How to schedule a backup of the transaction log In order to take a transaction log backup, you first need to check if the database is in Full Recovery model, because if the database is in Simple Recovery model, you do not need to take transaction log...

Consider the following scenario: Ø You have a 32-bit SQL Server installed on a 32-bit operating system. Ø Due to the limitations of the 32-bit OS, SQL Server can use up to 2 GB of memory (3 GB if you use the /3GB switch). Ø You want to configure...

Consider the following scenario: Ø Your application is using the ODBC SQL driver to connect to your SQL Server. Ø You perform an operation in your application and after a while you get this error: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Timeout...

If your application is crashing, one common troubleshooting method is to attach a debugger like “adplus” on that process, so that when it crashes, the debugger will generate a process dump. Analyzing the dump is of course another matter entirely :). ...

Consider the following scenario: Ø You are using a 3 rd party backup application to take SQL backups (e.g. Netbackup). Ø Your SQL Server has dozens of databases attached to it. Ø Lately you have been getting these errors when you attempt to...

Consider the following scenario: Ø You already have setup multiple SQL Server failover instances on a Windows 2003 cluster. Ø After setting up one or more SQL Server failover instances, then failover stops working as expected. Ø Specifically...

Consider the following scenario: Ø You have restarted the SQL Server service. Ø After SQL Server comes online again, one or more of the databases are inaccessible. o No queries can be executed on them. o They cannot be managed by SQL server...

Consider the following scenario: Ø You are executing queries on a SQL Server linked server. Ø You are using the linked server option “Connections will be made using the login’s current security context”. Ø You receive the following error:...

Recently we were troubleshooting a SQL Server backup failure and we encountered this error: BackupDiskFile::RequestDurableMedia: failure on backup device '\\server\folder\sqlbackup.bak' Operating system error 1130 The backup was being taken...

Consider this scenario: Ø You are planning to migrate your SQL Server from a physical machine to a virtual machine Ø For some reason you cannot use HYPER-V Ø You are wondering how you will be supported by Microsoft since the virtual solution...

Recently I was asked to create a list of advantages, disadvantages and some best practices when deploying SQL Server in a virtual machine, instead of a physical machine. This information was written with HYPER-V in mind, but they probably apply to most...

Since the Password Age for Machine accounts can be misleading and since I did not find this information logged anywhere in the internet, I thought worthy to dedicate a blog post to some facts, to clear things up for anyone who is worried about Password...