First things first–if you are reading this, and not regularly running consistency checks on your SQL Server databases, you should drop everything you are doing and go do that. What do I mean by regularly? In my opinion, based on years of experience, you should run DBCC CHECKDB at least as frequently as you take […]
Tag: sql
How Do You Shrink Your Azure SQL Database?
In the early days of Azure SQL Database (ne SQL Azure) we had size limits that were minuscule–I vaguely remember 5 and 10 GB, but it could have been smaller. Back then space was at a premium. In 2021, we have hyperscale that allows us to have an Azure SQL Database of up to 100 […]
Automating TempDB Configuration in Azure
One of the unique things about managing SQL Server on Azure VMs is that we use the local D: drive for TempDB. The D: drive (or /dev/sdb1 for those of you running on Linux) is a direct-attached solid state drive (on nearly all VM tiers) which offers the lowest latency storage in Azure, making it […]
You’re Speaking…and You Don’t Have Slides
I had this dream that other week. I was in the big room at PASS Summit, sitting in the audience. I was relaxed, as I thought I was presenting later in the day, when I quickly realized, due to the lack of speaker on the stage, that I was the next speaker, and the room […]
8 Things To Do After You Install SQL Server
Scripts to come.. Script file for the run once script to do all of this is here. The script to do the installation and the ini file to drive it, is here.
Sales Reps–Please Don’t BS Me, Alright?
Today is my morning of big data storage events, I’m attending two from two different vendors in about four hours. One down so far, and it was pretty good, until… I’ve bashed sales reps before (on twitter and on this blog), I’ve even offered lists of things not to do. Well today’s presentation was on […]
SQL Server Clustering — Why you should use mount points
I’m in the process of developing a presentation entitled “Building Your First SQL Server Cluster” for some upcoming SQL Saturdays, and some inspiration for a few blog posts have come out of it. This one is short and fairly simple. Windows, as we all know and love, has us use drive letters as the root […]
A recruiter story, Part II
When I left you last week, we were discussing a recruiter horror story, passed along from a friend in a past job. She had a really awful phone screen with HR, but the hiring manager still wanted to speak with her. The story continues… The hiring manager schedules a phone screen with me, and we […]
A Recruiter Story, Part I
This conversation came up on Twitter a few weeks ago. There is a perception in the IT community that recruiters are nothing better than bottom feeding, used car salesman. As a point of reference, I’m trying to hire a DBA right now, and I’ve posted to Linked In and Twitter about it, and have had […]
How to Transfer an IT Project Effectively
A couple of weeks ago I got some really good news—I was transferring into a new role at my current company. Since this is an internal transfer, the standard two-week notice stretched to four and I had time to properly transfer my existing projects. It is important to be as effective as possible in doing […]