It’s time once again for 5 Tips for Friday. This week’s topic is Database Configurations. Beware default file growth settings: Unless the database is always going to be tiny, the default database file growth settings are horrible. If your log file is 1 GB, then adding 10% of space is not an issue. But each…
Tag: Modernization/Configuration
Podcast with SQL Data Partners on Patching Best Practices
Recently, I joined Carlos L Chacon (site|@CarlosLChacon), Steve Stedman (blog|@SqlEmt), and the rest of the SQL Data Partners Podcast team for their podcast show and the episode went live earlier this month. We talked about best practice and the reality of patching SQL Server. Check out the podcast to get my take on keeping up…
When is it a good idea to consolidate multiple instances?
In this age of cost-saving after cost-saving, one way you may be looking at saving money is by combining multiple instances into one in order to save on licensing/machine costs. Or possibly you have a new database and want to decide if it can reside on an existing instance or if you need a whole…
5 Tips for Friday: Upgrades and Migrations
It’s Friday, and I’m out of town on vacation in historic Williamsburg, VA (if any burglars are reading this, I forgot to feed the 5 rabid Rottweilers that I’m fostering so feel free to stop by and visit them). What does that have to do with upgrades and migrations? Nothing. Just making conversation, but that…
Quiz: How well do you know SQL Server configuration best practices?
Our first quiz on best practices is online now. Quiz #1 is about SQL Server Configuration. How will you do?
Patching SQL Server and SSMS? Order matters.
If you’ve been living under a rock, you may not have noticed how frequently SSMS is getting updated. The SQL Team is really rocking over at Microsoft putting out fixes and enhancements fast and furious. When CUs (cumulative updates) and SPs (service packs) come out, it makes sense to install the latest SSMS update at…
SQL Server on Linux Series: Moving TempDB
In the last blog post, we added additional drives to the SQL Server machine so that we can scale out our storage workload. Let’s move the tempdb objects to one of these new drives! By default, our tempdb files are in the system database folder at /var/opt/mssql/data. (more…)
SQL Server on Linux Series: Additional Drives
One of the biggest differences with managing SQL Server Linux is with drive presentation. With Windows, we’d all scream if we saw a SQL Server with just one drive (C:) and everything piled on it. The same goes for any other operating system, including Linux. But, how do we get the additional drives added and…
SQL Server on Linux Series: Operating System Differences
SQL Server administration, once installed and running, doesn’t vary too much based on your operating system, but the differences in the operating systems are pretty significant. To properly administer a production SQL Server on Linux, an administrator needs to understand the core basics of the Linux operating system. I’m going to limit the scope of…
Why Log Shipping is Better than Database Mirroring for Migrations
This topic has come up several times recently, so I feel the need to blog on it. As the person who wrote the book on Database Mirroring, it will probably come as a surprise to many of you that I believe that log shipping is a much better tool for database migrations than database mirroring.…