What are you most concerned about in your database platforms?
Please pick from the list below, and expand on your choice in the comments if you like:
Loading ...
Thanks for reading!
Database Concerns – A Poll!
Loading ...Uncategorized
Loading ...Truth For Life
“Dallas DBAs has been fantastic and responsive to all our needs. You are definitely one of our easiest vendors to work with.”
Rick
Truth For Life
SQL Server Best Practices
As a CIO or CTO, one of your primary responsibilities is to ensure that your organization’s data is managed effectively and efficiently. To do this, you need to have a strong understanding of SQL Server best practices. In this post, we’ll discuss some of the most important best practice areas for SQL Server management.
This is a high-level discussion with items that we will explore more in future posts
Deploying regular backups:
One of the most important best practices for SQL Server is to deploy regular backups. This will ensure that your data is always protected in the event of a system failure or data loss. There are many different ways to backup your SQL Server data, so it’s important to choose the method that best suits your needs.
Security measures:
Another important best practice is to incorporate security measures into your SQL Server deployment. This will help to protect your data from unauthorized access and prevent malicious attacks. There are many different security features available in SQL Server, so it’s important to choose the ones that best fit your organization’s needs.
Monitoring performance:
Another vital best practice is to monitor the performance of your SQL Server regularly. This will help you identify any potential issues and correct them before they cause major problems. There are many different performance monitoring tools available, so it’s important to choose the ones that best fit your organization’s needs. Some of these are free, some require licensing.
High Availability and Disaster recovery plans:
Another crucial best practice is to implement a disaster recovery plan for your SQL Server estate. This will ensure that your data is always safe and accessible in the event of a major outage or disaster. There are many different disaster recovery strategies available, so it’s important to choose the ones that best fit your organization’s needs and budget.
Maintaining documentation:
Finally, it’s also important to maintain comprehensive documentation for your SQL Server deployment. This will help you keep track of all the different settings and configurations, and make it easier to troubleshoot any issues that may arise. Comprehensive documentation also makes it easier to train new staff members on how to use and manage your SQL Server deployment.
These are just a few of the most important SQL Server best practices for CIOs and CTOs. By following these best practices, you can help ensure that your organization’s data is managed effectively and efficiently. If you have any questions about these best practices, or if you need assistance implementing them, please contact us today. We would be happy to help you get started!
Thanks for reading!
SSMS – How to get two rows of tabs
If you spend much time at all in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), you’ve no doubt had trouble figuring out which query tab is the one you need.
Many DBAs and SQL Devs find themselves (despite best intentions and New Years Resolutions) with dozens of tabs open, and many of them unsaved.
Thanks to Daniel Maenle (LI|T)’s comment on a LinkedIn post, I went digging and now my life is better!
Pin Important Queries
I have some saved queries I leave open all the time for various reasons. As an example:
When I open a few new queries, typically in a frenzied troubleshooting session, it looks like this:
Yours is different by default. Note the highlighted bits. My saved queries I always use are “pinned tabs”. The Second row is New Queries that I have not yet saved.
You can change this here, with immediate effect (Tools, Options):
Hope this helps you organize your SSMS and brings you a few minutes of sanity!
Thanks for reading!
A DBA Short Story
This happened:
- 3am – spam call
- 4am – spam call
- 7am – check voice mail…it wasn’t spam. It was a dormant customer with no on-call agreement
- 9:30am – save customer’s server and sanity
- 4pm – database back online, team happy, and customer is working to get approval for the Pocket DBA™ service 🙂
Thanks for reading!
GroupBy Conference May 2021
Dallas DBAs is proud to be sponsoring the May 2021 GroupBy Conference, Americas DBA track
GroupBy is a different sort of conference as it has been online since it began in 2019 (Thanks Brent! (b|t)) Sessions are voted on by the community with the top vote getters being accepted.
As part of our Virtual Group sponsorship we get to present a session, so we asked the first-runner up in the vote tally to “guest present” for us.
Jeff Moden (L), Mr. “NO RBAR” himself will be presenting “Black Arts” Index Maintenance – GUIDs v.s. Fragmentation – They’re not the problem… WE ARE!” at 22:00 UTC on May 25.
This will be a roughly 30 second “About Dallas DBAs” bit, and the rest is all Jeff.
Session Abstract:
This is NOT your typical presentation on the fragmentation problems of Random GUIDs. No… Instead we’re going to DESTROY THE MYTH OF RANDOM GUID FRAGMENTATION.
In one of the most ironic/heterodoxical turns of knowledge you’re ever likely to experience, we’ll see how THE USE OF RANDOM GUIDS CAN ACTUALLY PREVENT FRAGMENTATION! In the end, you’ll witness the results of some simple testing that clearly demonstrate that you can easily insert literally MILLIONs of rows into a Random GUID clustered index with almost no page splits (not even supposed “good” ones) and LESS THAN 1% Logical fragmentation!
We’ll identify the real problem and the seriously effective yet incredibly simple two-part fix for it. In the process, we’ll prove that Random GUIDs actually behave in a manner like most people expect a good index to behave, especially in but not limited to high performance OLTP environments as well as the benefits of doing so.
We’ll also learn how to use a new tool that I created (included in the ZIP file) to ACTUALLY SEE what an index looks like at the page level for all pages in a single graph.
Then, we’ll use that tool to lay waste to what people are currently calling “Best Practice” index maintenance. We’ll literally see what REORGANIZE does to an index at the page level and why it’s one of the very worst things you can do to your Random GUID and many other types of indexes even if you’re limited to the Standard Edition of SQL Server. We also prove that REORGANIZE CAUSES ORDERS-OF-MAGNITUDE WORSE TRANSACTION LOG FILE USAGE than REBUILD especially for Random GUIDs.
As interesting and totally necessary sidebars, we’ll also see how the use of ever-increasing index keys could be (and frequently is) a major source of many of your fragmentation problems and we’ll also see that NEWSEQUENTIALID may NOT the answer that you’re looking for.
See you there (virtually)!
Thanks for reading!
