The Multifunctioning DBA » Administration

Easy way to find bytes per cluster on your disk

Colin Smith — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:08:23 +0000

I recently learned a new windows command that is not the most intuitive, but it is nice. I know that when I get a server and I am told that all my volumes are ready to go for SQL Server, I want to make sure that I have a 64K block. This command makes it easy to verify.

fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo

That is it. Really simple but not the most intuitive. Here are the results.

fsutil example. Only 4k blocks on my c: drive

Powershell to get unique login count from SQL Server

Colin Smith — Wed, 26 May 2010 07:00:50 +0000

Just like I needed to get a count of unique logins to an application on one of our Sybase instances I also needed to get these values for a few of our SQL Servers. Since SQL Server uses mixed mode authentication and we are using AD groups to aid in the security of the SQL Server, I could not just write a query against the instance to get a list of unique logins. I could have but it would have returned the groups and not the individuals that are members of the groups. So I wrote a PS Script to go out and connect to the SQL Server, get a list of logins and then parse the AD Groups to get me a listing of all the members of those groups. Then it takes that list and gets unique logins, since a user may be a member of more than one group, and then counted the number of users. First I made a connection to the SQL Server using SMO, then I find all the logins and filter them based on whether they are a user or a group. If it is a group then I query the domain to find the group members and output all those users as well as the local sql users to a file. Once I have looped thru all groups then I get the contents of the file and sort and get unique and then I select a count of the new object. That is it. If you have any questions or would like to see the code then just let me know.

ddlgen in Sybase

Colin Smith — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:32:09 +0000

I completed an upgrade from Sybase 12.5 to Sybase 15.0 recently and I found that it ended up breaking some scripts that we use to generate ddl for all instance devices and all create databases. The scripts that we were using were writting log ago by people that are no longer working for the company. I decided to change this up to use ddlgen to create all this for us. ddlgen is a very nice little program that is able to generate the ddl and output it into files for use, if needed, in the future. Here is what I did to get all the devices ddl out of an instance.

ddlgen -U username -S servername -TDBD -N% -O outputfilename

That is simple enough to do and man it works great. This will get you the DDL needed to init all of the devices on the instance. Now I need to get the DDL to create all of the databases. For this I wrote a little shell script to get a listing of all the databases and then do the ddl gen for each. Here is that.

#!/bin/ksh
dblist=`isql -S servername -Usa << endit | tail +4
password
use master
go
set nocount on
go
select name
from sysdatabases
go
exit
endit
`
echo $dblist
for db in $dblist
do
ddlgen -Usa -SCIRC_DBA -D $db -TDB -F% -O $db.definitions.out

password
done

SQL Saturday in Phoenix

Colin Smith — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:50:56 +0000

I have posted this before, but I was asked to post about it again. SQL Saturday is a go for Phoenix. We have a date of July 17th at the DeVry University Phoenix Campus. I know that we have at least one Sponser for the event but I think we have more. We are still hoping to get more and more presenters and just any type of help that we can for the event. I do not for sure of any speakers being confirmed but I have heard, via twitter, that Denny Cherry (Blog | Twitter), SQL Server MVP will be in town presenting for us. I know that I am really looking forward to meeting him and also look forward to hearing him speak.

Here is a link to the official Registration for SQL Saturday 47. Also if you are on Twitter, and you should be if you want to be a part of the community, please follow hashtag #sqlsatphx for updates and for the latest news about the event. You can also contact Samson Loo (Blog | Twitter). Just click the twitter link and follow him. More information can also be found via the Event Home Page. Please sign up come help us make this event great so we can have many more in the future.

AD Audit in Powershell

Colin Smith — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:37:58 +0000

I have mentioned this before but I have finally done what I set out to do and re-wrote my old vbscript that audits AD Accounts based on Create Date and Last LogonDate in Powershell. This is another great example of how much better powershell is and why everyone should now it. My VB Script was just under 800 lines of code and that was without many comments that documented the process. Now I feel that documenting scripts is very important. This is because I have had to try to fix other peoples scripts when they did not document it well and it is not fun. My powershell version of the same script with added functionality as well as over 100 lines of comments is only just over 400 lines. That means that I was able to remove about 500 lines of actual code from the script as well as add functionality to the script.
I will break the script down and post each one of the functions with a good explanation of each in my next few posts. It is a very cool script and it could be added to and customized to fit any situation that you may need. My version is based on my companies policy of disabling an account after 90 days of inactivity and deleting the account after 180 days of inactivity. My company runs the script weekly and the script sends out emails about the accounts that have been disabled and deleted to the needed personal so that the appropriate paperwork can be completed for those accounts. The script is soon to be posted. I am still testing but I will have it very soon.

Powershell Profile

Colin Smith — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:00:05 +0000

The Powershell Profile is a script that druns anytime you launch Powershell. This is handy so you can ste up variables, add snapins, or just do what ever you like or think is cool when launching Powershell. I was just editing mine, which you can do by:

notepad $profile

This will pull up your profile so you can edit the script. If you would like to know where the script is located then just do a $profile to get the full path. Anyway after I edited my profile I wanted to reload the profile so that all the new things I just added would be available in my current powershell session. Like most things in Powershell this is simple.

. $profile

This will re-run the profile script and now all your new goodies are available

Select Folder Dialog Box

Colin Smith — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:13:54 +0000

If you would like your scripts to interact with the user and have a nice popup box for a user to select a folder here is a link to an article that will help you out. I think this is pretty great.

http://powershell.com/cs/blogs/tips/archive/2009/04/01/select-folder-dialog.aspx

Reboot a Remote Windows Host Remotely

Colin Smith — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:38:38 +0000

Say you need to reboot a server and this is something that you would like to automate based on certain criteria. For instance, I might want to reboot a server if I can talk to the server but for somereason my SQL Server is not up and running. If everything is configured correctly the SQL Server should start up again on boot. So you can do something like the following.

$varname = Get-WmiObject Win32_OperatingSystem -computername “remotemachine”

$varname.reboot()

Now you can check your SQL Server once the machine is back up.

Another Example of why you should learn Powershell

Colin Smith — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:54:54 +0000

I was roaming around the web and reading some articles and I ran across the following blog post:

http://bassplayerdoc.blogspot.com/2008/10/another-one-liner-in-windows-powershell.html

I think this is a great reason why all administrators that deal with Microsoft products should learn powershell. I know some Administrators are happy with VBScript and I know that many people use Pearl or other languages. I am all for knowing them and using them when they make the most sense. Some languages are better at some things then others. I think that Powershell is the Future of Microsoft Administration and this is a great example. Check out the other articles on this Blog as well. Some really good stuff.