Cindy Gross - Troubleshooting, tips, and general advice about SQL Server

How and Why to Enable Instant File Initialization

2009-12-23T01:00:00Z

See my new blog post (written with Denzil Ribeiro) about " How and Why to Enable Instant File Initialization " on our PFE blog . Keep an eye on the PFE blog for more posts from my team in the near future....(read more)

Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting

2009-12-22T02:23:00Z

Our new book, Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting, will be shipping soon! Order now! :-) Christian Bolton , Justin Langford , Brent Ozar , and James Rowland-Jones have each written several chapters in this book. Steven Wort , Jonathan Kehayias and I each contributed a chapter as well. The 1st half of the book introduces you to how things work within SQL Server at a level that will make it easier to understand the rest of the book. The 2nd half of the book focuses on troubleshooting...(read more)

Latest SQL Server 2005 Cumulative Updates - SP2 based CU17, SP3 based CU7

2009-12-21T23:52:00Z

There are two new cumulative updates (CUs) available for SQL Server 2005 as of today. · SQL Server 2005 SP2 based CU17 ( 9.00.3356) . This is the last SP2 based CU as SP2 will no longer be supported after 1/12/2010 . KB = Cumulative update package 17 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976952 · SQL Server 2005 SP3 based CU7 ( 9.00.4273) . KB = Cumulative update package 7 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976951 This announcement will...(read more)

SQL Server's Default Trace

2009-12-16T19:01:00Z

Are you familiar with SQL Server's default trace setting? It can be helpful with finding basic who/when type information on major events. For example, you may want to know who was creating and dropping databases on a given instance. SQL Server has a couple of options that might help you find out more about when/by who the database is being created and dropped. One is Policy Based Management but you would need to configure it ahead of time. Another option is to run a profiler trace that captures information...(read more)

Backing up a corrupted SQL Server database

2009-12-02T16:33:00Z

I had a question about how to do a backup and skip a corrupted block of data. First, DO NOT DO IT unless you absolutely have to, such as when you are taking a backup prior to trying to fix the corruption (which means you should be on the phone with Microsoft PSS). If you do skip corrupted data you have to consider the backup to be very suspect. Do not ever ignore any indication of data inconsistency in the database. If you have corrupted data it is almost certainly a problem caused by something below...(read more)

Compilation of SQL Server TempDB IO Best Practices

2009-11-20T17:07:00Z

It is important to optimize TempDB for good performance. In particular, I am focusing on how to allocate files. TempDB is a unique database in several ways. The ones most relevant to this discussion are: · It is often one of the busiest databases on an instance. This means the performance of TempDB is critical to your instance's overall performance. · It is recreated as a copy of model each time SQL Server starts, taking all the properties of model except for the location, number, and size of its...(read more)

SQL Server and Fragmentation

2009-11-20T16:58:00Z

There are several types of fragmentation that affect SQL Server, all of which have the potential to cause performance problems. 1) At the disk/OS level individual files can become fragmented due to growth over time. This can be addressed by a defragmentation tool at the SAN or Windows level. Ask your storage team about your options there. 2) Within a SQL Server database individual pages can become internally fragmented so that many pages are less full than expected. This means more pages are needed...(read more)

SQL Server 2008 setup may report a Windows 2008 cluster validation failure

2009-11-20T16:55:00Z

You may receive the error "The cluster either has not been verified or there are errors or failures in the verification report" while installing a SQL Server clustered installation on Windows 2008. When see this error you must fix the underlying error that caused Windows validation to fail. Even though in some cases you could avoid the error and continue SQL Server setup with the undocumented SkipRules setting, this is not advisable and will leave you in an unsupported state (unless you are using...(read more)

How to tell what edition your SQL Server setup files are

2009-11-20T16:49:00Z

The setup files for SQL Server look pretty much the same for all editions. If you saved the files somewhere but didn't indicate in your directory name or a readme file which edition they are for, how do you tell the edition? Running setup doesn't necessarily help, the initial setup screens for SQL Server 2005 Enterprise and Standard both show the same EULA that includes "MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2005 STANDARD AND ENTERPRISE EDITIONS". To see the edition of the setup files, look in the Servers directory...(read more)

How to use PsGetSid for SQL Server

2009-10-30T03:38:00Z

To translate a SID to a name or vice versa, you can use this tool from sysinternals: PsGetSid v1.43 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897417.aspx You can use it to translate the SID in these registry keys into the SQL Domain Groups or local groups used for SQL Server 2005/2008 instance permissions. The SID is stored in this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.X\Setup AGTGroup (Setup grants this domain group the permissions needed by the SQL Server...(read more)

Checklist for upgrading to a new version of SQL Server

2009-10-28T23:22:00Z

Here is the basic process for a full version upgrade (such as 2000 to 2008) of the SQL Server engine. The steps will be different for RS or AS. I did not include all the details of variations such as replication, mirroring, log shipping, full-text search, or clustering. They are covered in the white paper in the first reference at the bottom. Look for potential problems: · Run Upgrade Advisor from your new version of SQL Server and address any issues. · Run SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Assistant (I don’t...(read more)

How People Abuse Their SQL Server Transaction Log - Things NOT to Do

2009-10-28T20:47:00Z

Care and Feeding of the Transaction Log Want to learn more about how the transaction log works? Kalen Delaney, celebrated author of SQL Server 2008 Internals and the Inside SQL Server series as well as a world class trainer and performance tuner, is giving a pre-conference talk at SQL PASS next week. The pre and post conference sessions are full day sessions you can purchase as an add-on to the regular conference (which runs Tuesday-Thursday). Kalen's pre-conference session " Care and Feeding of...(read more)

Considerations for installing SQL Server on VMWare

2009-10-23T22:15:00Z

You still need to follow the standard SQL Server best practices, security, and preparation when you install on a VMware VM. Below are some additional considerations with regards to VMware. Key points: · You must double check that your combination of VMWare, Windows, and SQL will be supported. o By Microsoft: http://windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvpwizard.htm , http://support.microsoft.com/?id=956893 o By VMware: http://pubs.vmware.com/vsp40/upgrade/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm#href=c_database_scenarios.html&single=true...(read more)

Checklist for installing SQL Server 2005 as a clustered instance

2009-10-23T22:06:00Z

Checklist for installing SQL Server 2005 as a clustered instance Windows/Hardware 1) Verify the Windows cluster is set up per basic best practices and that basic failover works. 2) Verify you have the latest patches, especially security patches, for Windows. 3) For Windows 2008: Validate the configuration using "Validate a Configuration" in Failover Cluster Management. 4) For Windows 2008: Make sure your quorum choice is appropriate for the number of nodes and other factors in your environment. 5)...(read more)

SQL Server and TCP Chimney

2009-10-22T19:42:00Z

If you are using SQL Server or Analysis Services: I suggest you double check that your SNP settings, especially TCP Chimney Offset, are all OFF unless your NIC vendor has verified they support it and you have installed their version of drivers that support it. Windows 2003 SP2 turned it on by default, you can disable it with a hotfix (which updates three registry key values) or manually set the registry key values yourself. If the NIC vendor does support the settings they can improve your network...(read more)