Kevin3NF

A series of conversations from several days…compacted into one nightmare. Enjoy:

Front line dude: Acme has a drive space issue…can I shrink the log file?

Kevin3NF: Give it a shot (this is SOP for Acme on this drive)

FLD: Didn’t work

Kevin3NF: Give me the ticket, I’ll take a look.

Kevin3NF: Hey ACME developer…you have a 2 day old transaction taking up all your T-log space…

Acme: ok…let me truncate the log

Kevin3NF: WAIT A SECOND!

Acme: Did that help?

Kevin3NF: No. You just invalidated the T-log backup stream and started causing the backup to fail

Acme: Why?

Kevin3NF: Cuz that big open transaction is still there, and SQL Server thinks there is no full backup now.

Kevin3NF: Hello?

Kevin3NF: (Sees pictures of crickets in his Inbox)

Acme: (hours later): go ahead and run a full backup tomorrow afternoon

Kevin3NF: You know you don’t have a valid backup to recover to, right?

Acme: Yes, but we can’t backup now…

(tomorrow afternoon):
Acme: Hey…who told you to run a full backup?!?!?

Kevin3NF: You did…I have the email.

Acme: (complaint to Kevin3NF’s bosses)

Time passes…repeat scenario.

Big transaction, full log file, fill drive, lather, rinse, repeat.

Customer: FAIL. >:(

Acme me owes ME some fries…but I get paid to deal with stuff like this every day 🙂

Kevin3NF

https://dallasdbas.com/287-2/

SQL PASS Community Summit 2008

Wow. What a load of information! Almost an overload, but managed to keep my head above the water in almost every session.

The breakdown:

Day 1:

SQLCAT – Overall Lessons Learned from SQL 2008 Experiences
Quite a good bit of variety here, touching on:

   Data Compression

   Backup Compression

   Performance Tuning (Extended Events)

   SQL Server Reporting Services

   Database Mirroring (compressed LogStream)

   Encryption

 

Capitalizing on the SQL Server 2005 System Information
Way more info here than I was able to process…took a few notes to look up after Thanksgiving

 

Understanding and Troubleshooting Transactional Replication Performance
Lots of discussion on subscription streams/mutli-threading and read/write activity of the Log Reader and Distribution Agents. Got a few things to play with.

 

SQL Server 2008 Policy-Based Management – Sharon Dooley
Not a whole lot here I didn’t pick up at the SQL 2008 launch in LA…still a very cool feature I won’t get to use much in our environment.

 

Day 2:

Guiding your Query Plans (by Kalen Delaney)
Guiding query plans didn’t actually enter the picture until late in the presentation, but it was fantastic nonetheless. Most of this session was about Hints…Table, Index, Option, etc. A BUNCH of stuff that never crossed my monitor before. 3 pages of notes worth. Being able to force a recompile of a portion of the overall query is really slick. And the very simple new feature of assigning a value in the declare:

 

DECLARE @MyID INT = 123

 

Smart Database Design – MVPs DrSQL and Paul Nielson
Well outside of what I do from day to day, but pretty cool anyway, since I was a developer many moons ago. Worth the lack of elbow room just to hear from DrSQL and Paul live…too bad my on call phone went a little nuts and I had to leave early

 

Advanced Troubleshooting with SQL Server Extended Events
So far over my head I’m still not sure what I learned…good thing I have notes

 

Business Continuity with Backup and Restore – Peter Ward
I could probably have taught this session. Should have been labeled 200 level, but still good solid information on backup/restore and some of the new (05/08) options (Online restore, Partial, COPY_ONLY, etc.). Thought about arguing a point with Peter, but decided the way he presented his wasn’t likely to cause harm.

 

Day 3:

Data and Backup Compression Lessons Learned
Some fairly impressive numbers here…300GB DB compressed to 45GB, 50% time savings, etc.

Money-maker: use sp_estimate_data_compression to do custom analysis for customers considering whether to move to SQL compression. Assuming you have the install to do it on.

Collecting and Analyzing Performance Metrics in SS2005/8
Got here late, stuck in the back, couldn’t see or hear very well. Saw a little perfmon on the screen I think…

Writing Technical Articles (Kathi Kellenberger)
The only Personal Development session I attended, since I was on the company nickel. Interesting stuff. I’ve thought about teaching and writing a SQL Basics series for new or accidental DBAs that really will never do more than backup/restore or set up Dev systems. Kathi Kellenberger did a fine presentation, including various places to publish to, and what they pay (if anything). I’m completely convinced to NEVER get in on a book project 🙂

End-to-end troubleshooting for SQL Server 2005
Kevin Kline rocks. Many others have blogged this presentation, so I won’t repeat here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can’t make stuff up this good…

Scenario:

Major website in the IT industry, very well known. Perf issue, most likely related to inefficient queries and/or indexes and stats. Site timeouts all over the place.

Sent customer a list of long running queries and got this:

{Customer} says they are in the process of getting rid of the site. He said use gum and bailing wire for the time being. Thanks for you hard work.

Sadly, I am out of gum and bailing wire. Will spit and duct tape do?

Simply amazing.

Kevin3NF

I was asked to give a once over to a system not built by my team. SQL 2000 32-bit on Windows 2003 64 bit. 40GB RAM.

Min and Max set to 32gb, yet Perfmon is showing 40gb used by SQL Server. Hmm.

Freakshow noticed that the Min and Max Server memory settings seemed a little high at 33000000. 33000000/1024 = 31.4 Terabytes of RAM. Sweet.

Linchi Shea from the .server newsgroup noticed it as well.

We set it to a more conservative 36gb.

You want room for the O/S with that?

Kevin3NF