Category Archives: SQL Server Maintenance

Querying SQL Agent Job Information

Many companies rely on the job scheduling and alerting services provided with the native SQL Server Agent service. From backups to SSRS subscription to SSIS packages, SQL Server Agent has the capability to run many types of business critical tasks on a regular schedule or can be programmatically triggered to start from other processes as […]

Why Your SQL System Needs a Health Check

SQL server health check

Structured Query Language (SQL) systems help us communicate with databases.  The databases can be large and can also house very sensitive data within it. Many businesses rely on their SQL systems to keep their data safe, which is why it is vital to protect it with industry-standard security methods.  A SQL server health check compiles […]

SQL Server Agent Alerts – Getting the News Fast On Database Corruption

Have you ever made the comment to your friends or family that you are always the last to know something?  Good news travels fast but bad news doesn’t always travel fast enough. When dealing with database corruption SQL Server, which is always bad news, if you are the DBA you will want to be first […]

SQL Server Diagnostics – Intro to Wait Stats

SQL Server has a bounty of self-diagnostic data that any good DBA can monitor and analyze.  This analysis is often triggered by an unexpected event like queries that begin to run longer than usual or a spike in CPU utilization.  Finding the root cause of such events is not always easy but through a simple […]

Planning Your 2018 IT Budget

It’s that time of year that a good amount of IT departments are dedicating time to researching and planning for their 2018 IT budgets. As you know, the growth of your company and it’s data depends heavily on your IT infrastructure, so the decisions you make and the costs of those choices are very critical. […]

2 Reasons Why Failover Could Be Slow

Intro Microsoft SQL Server has had Mirroring starting with version 2005, and now that SQL Server 2012 is released, there is an additional feature set called AlwaysOn (marketing info | technical info). AlwaysOn in currently an Enterprise only feature, so Standard Edition users will still need to use Mirroring. I would describe AlwaysOn this way: […]

DBCC loginfo, VLFs and SQL2000 and earlier.

I was reading Paul Randal and Kimberly Tripp’s discussions about Virtual Log Files (VLFs), found here. DBCC loginfo I found that performing a log backup will cause the active VLF to ‘rotate’ to the first VLF, freeing up the rest of the VLFs for maximum shrinkage. Uh, well, you know what I mean. In SQL […]