I recently worked on a number of issues where SQL Server Service Pack/patch installation would fail, and we would see this error in the relevant Detail.txt (located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\<Date time of the...

One of the most common reason for server performance issues with respect to SQL Server is the presence of an I/O bottleneck on the system. When I say I/O bottleneck, it can mean issues like slow disks, other processes hogging I/O, out-dated drivers, etc...

Here's another common issue that I've seen quite a few people run into of late. When you run a patch against SQL Server, the patch installs successfully, but on restart, SQL goes into "script upgrade mode" and you're unable to connect to it...

  I've seen this issue a few times in the past few months, so decided to blog about this. When upgrading from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008/SQL 2008 R2 (or even from SQL 2008 to SQL 2008 R2), you might face an error with the in-place upgrade. Open the setup...

In part 1 and part 2 of the series, we talked about the memory architecture and the Procedure Cache respectively. In this third and final instalment of the SQL Server Memory series, I will look to focus on troubleshooting SQL Server Memory pressure issues...

Before you read this, I would strongly recommend reading Part 1 first. The memory architecture evolved in a big way from SQL 2000 to 2005. Basically, in 2000, all we had was the procedure cache (used to cache compiled plans and execution plans, execution...

I know that memory management in SQL Server is one area that’s a bit of an enigma for a lot of people, and most of us only tend to know as much about memory as is related to our day-to-day activities. In this post(and others in this series), I shall...

One of the cool things about my job is that I get to work on the latest technologies earlier than most people. I recently stumbled upon an issue related to Filetables, a new feature in SQL Server 2012. To start with, a Filetable brings you the ability...

I recently worked on a very interesting issue, where one of the cluster nodes in an AlwaysOn environment became unstable, and the administrators ended up evicting the node from the Windows cluster as an emergency measure. Ideally, since the primary node...

You might run into this situation where SQL Server fails to come online (either with a new install or an existing one). Looking at the application event logs, you see these messages: Event Type: Error Event Source: MSSQLSERVER Event Category...

I know many of you get into situations where SQL Server fails over from one node of a cluster to the other, and you’re hard-pressed to find out why. In this post, I shall seek to answer quite a few questions about how to about conducting a post-mortem...

When migrating a Team Foundation Server from SQL Server Enterprise to Standard , you might run into this error: Restore Failed For Server ‘< Servername >’, (Microsoít.SqlServer.SmoExtended) Additional information: An exception occurred while executing...

I recently came across an issue, where, for some reason, DBMail was not working. To be more specific, we were unable to create a profile for DBMail, let alone send emails. When trying to add the profile to the account, we were getting this error: TITLE...

I recently came across this interesting issue with SQL Replication. We were trying to create a new publication, and the new publication wizard would just hang. Upon doing some investigation, we found that we were hitting the connect article mentioned...

Ghost records are something that are a bit of an enigma for most folks working with SQL Server, and not just because of the name. Today, I’ll seek to explain the concept, as well as identify some troubleshooting techniques. The main reason behind...

I recently worked on a very interesting “issue” in DB mirroring, relevant to a very specific scenario. Read on to find out more. Basically, we have a setup which looks something like this: Initial setup with machines A, B and C A principal...

I recently ran into yet another issue, where the error message had absolutely no relation to the final solution. When trying to back up a database, we were getting the following error: Msg 18273, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Could not clear 'DIFFERENTIAL...

Remember that tiny little whitespace that we tend to ignore most of the time? Believe it or not, there are situations when you could pay heavily if you don’t pay attention to this itsy-bitsy little character. Let me explain how: If you have a SQL Server...

I’m sure many of you would have seen this issue when running SQL 2008/2008 R2/2012 setup on a new server. The setup will proceed to install Setup support files, the window will disappear but, strangely enough, the next window never shows up. ...

This is for all my developer friends out there. I recently had a very interesting discussion with a friend of mine on the enigma called NULL and how it’s different from, say, an empty string. This is something that’s been under debate for...

It’s very rare that I run into an issue with the Resource database, and the one I ran into recently was rarer still. But before I get into the nitty-gritty of the issue, let us begin by outlining a few details about the resource database: The...

This one is for all my friends out there who use Sharepoint. A default Sharepoint installation enables/installs the Windows Internal database, and creates its databases on it. The Windows Internal Database is, in a way, a special edition of SQL Server...

Okay, let me admit first up that this is not an out and out SQL Server issue, but one of those interesting ones, that required me to provide an easy workaround. What happened was, someone (or some program) deleted the entire SQL Server folder from the...

This one is for all my DBA friends out there. I recently ran into this issue when running a security patch installation for a SQL 2005 instance on SP4. The setup failed, and when I looked into the “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup...

This is one of those “rare” setup issues you might run into, on a “Bad luck” day. The patch fails, and in the summary.txt, you see this at the bottom:- Summary No passive nodes were successfully patched Exit Code Returned: 11009...