Author Archive
Migration
Tomorrow, my company moves into our new facility. It’s about 1.5 miles down the road from our old facilities. We were in two different buildings about 100 yards apart. Now, we’re moving into a single building.
We’re a technology company who makes networking software and quite a bit of the hardware that runs our software .We [...]
New Project: Aviation Statistics
Most technology professionals have a lab or test environment where they can work and play. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. Sure, I have a test environment, but it’s only for my ERP system. And my company is really particular about software licensing. I could never set up a test environment that wasn’t explicitly related [...]
Free Lunch – Without Lunch
The old adage is that there is no free lunch. Every once in a while, a free event comes up that’s a great use of time at no cost. Today was one such example.
My friend Brent Ozar presented a virtual training class sponsored by Quest Software. Today’s topic was “Performance Tuning & Troubleshooting with DMVs” [...]
Looking for a Security Solution
We have some pretty strict security policies in my company. That often means coming up with creative solutions to problems. Hopefully someone in the DBA community can help me.
We have a company that does some outside work for us. We have a database server at their location. We need to allow the database server to [...]
Upgraded
I’ve just upgraded all three of my sites (this one, my personal site, and my Pug site) to the latest version of WordPress. Keeping current on your software is one more way to prevent getting hacked.
My Updated SQL Server 2005 Install Checklist
If you’ve been following me lately (either my blog or Twitter), you know that I’m in the process of building up some new servers on a new SAN for a big database consolidation.
After the first server, I had a pretty good checklist. Brent Ozar has a pretty fantastic checklist that I stole a few items [...]
Moving System Files
Having built one database server in my new environment, the second one is an awful lot easier.
The following six lines of code saved me a ton of time this morning.
ALTER DATABASE [tempdb] MODIFY FILE (name = tempdev, FILENAME = ‘D:\TempDB\tempdb.mdf’)
ALTER DATABASE [tempdb] MODIFY FILE (name = templog, FILENAME = ‘D:\TempDB\templog.ldf’)
ALTER DATABASE [msdb] MODIFY FILE ( [...]
Server Builds
I’m building a new server. Actually, I’m building two. We just bought a new pair of SANS (one production, one DR) and are doing a consolidation project with our databases.
Each DB server will live on its own VMWare host. We’re virtualizing so that we can utilize VMWare’s clustering. It also gives us the flexibility to [...]
Why Database Names Matter
There is a reason users shouldn’t be allowed to name their own databases. Actually, there are probably several thousand reasons. I have a new one for you–It makes my life more difficult.
Lets say you work for a company called Acme. And lets say your manufacturing people created an in-house Microsoft Access application with a SQL [...]
Rookie Mistakes: Named Instance
I hate rookie mistakes. I hate them even more when I’m the one making them.
My coworker was installing Microsoft OCS Server, and he said that he needed a SQL instance, and he told me what the instance needed to be named. Since we already had a SQL server dedicated to this project, I created a [...]