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Time for some housecleaning
What do you know, it’s been 4 years since I’ve last written in here. Believe it or not, I had a great many plans and posts prepared! I just never quite got around to them… Much to my surprise, my little site still gets quite a few visits, seemingly from folks very interested in how…
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Using dbatools to improve your patching process
One of the the key responsibilities of a production DBA is keeping SQL servers patched. You have to have a good process in place, however; it won’t do you any good to apply a patch that just broke your application. How do I get started? Generally speaking, you’re either running an in-house application, or a…
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I’ve been gone for a little while
And see what happened! A bunch of people came to visit, but I wasn’t home. How rude of me… Well, I haven’t been idle! Quite the opposite, which is why this site has been rather neglected lately. Here’s a bit of what I’ve been up to professionally: Driving database automation with SSDT Implementing auditing all…
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Clean up the SSIS database
SQL Server Integration Services (or SSIS) is a very powerful service and set of tools to import data to and from your database. Some companies will have entire teams dedicated to writing SSIS packages (also known as ISPACs) to perform their ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) processes. As part of your SSIS maintenance, there are a few things…
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Remove replication objects from your database
As part of your DBA duties, you’re probably restoring your production databases into a test server. Then one day you notice that your log volume is getting pretty close to full! You take a look in the transaction log folder, and notice that that log file is even bigger than the data file. You did…
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Shrink your log files painlessly
All the advice you’ve heard out there is true: It’s not a good idea to regularly shrink your files! If you find yourself in that situation, you probably have other problems to deal with, such as You might need more storage! Data files are supposed to grow (in most cases)! If they’re growing faster than…
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Get the size of all your objects
I try to stay in touch with the internals of my databases, including the size of things. Growth patterns are a good indicator of where most of your database activity lies, and that in turn can help you locate activity hot-spots. For today’s post, I have a simple script will help you get all your…
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Add a SQL subscription with just a script
SQL Replication is one of my favorite things about SQL Server. For the most part, and as long as it’s properly maintained, it’s rock solid! It’ll just churn along without too much fuss. In this post, we’ll show you how to add a subscription with just a script. Why? There’s two main reasons: The default…
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Create a SQL Backup Report
One of the most important duties of a production DBA is to ensure backups are happening regularly. No one wants to face a manager and tell him/her “I’m sorry, but the most recent backup I have is from a week ago”. Create a SQL backup report, so you can review your situation! My production environment…
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Installing SQL server Unattended
If your environment looks anything like mine, you’ll be spinning up new SQL instances in a pretty regular basis. The SQL install process has gotten much better over the years, but it’s still a slog to go through the same prompts over and over again. My favorite solution for this conundrum is to install SQL…