I picked a database that is about 180Gigs, not very big, as my virtualizaton candidate. After doing the pre-work that is needed I was able to provision my VDB to a SQL Server. If you look at it on SQL Server you will see that the database is 180Gigs and you are able to do anything, so far, that you would with a real database. I am also running all this on VMWare guests. So now if you look at the size of the VDB via the virtualization stack, you see that the database is only about 3MB. That is a very big savings. Now that comes with one pretty big caveate, but it is worth it. You do have to have a separate SQL Server instance running where the virtualization software is housing a compressed copy of the database that is in a restoring state at all times. This is what the VDB is actually provisioned from. So how big is that database, well I am getting about 3:1 compression ratio, so that restoring copy that is the VDB source is about 40GB. So 180 to just over 40GB and now I have a second copy of that database. Now the really cool thing, Say I need a third copy or more, well all of those can be taken off the same source and they actually only take a few MB to start. That is a huge savings on disk. Think about if I was working with a database that was 1T or more.

Now another really great thing about this, to provision the VDB, it takes a couple minutes. So even for my 180Gig database, for me to do a restore to another instance for developers, I am talking over an hour, now that is literally less than 5 minutes, after the initial backup of the actual source is taken and compressed and presented as a restoring database. But that is a one time process and now I can provision as many VDB’s as I want and it will only take me about 5 minutes or less per copy that I need. Plus I am only going to be taking up Megabytes and not Gigabytes or Terra bytes. The possibilities of this are just awesome.

There is a lot more to talk about around this and I am just scratching the surface here. But keep an eye out as I will be posting more and more about this as I do more testing with the product. I am working with this companies engineers and providing feedback on features that would be nice to have as well as letting them know about bugs that I run into.

fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo <path>

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

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

In our troubleshooting the error logs lead us down the path of Kerb auth failures. MS agreed with this assessment after looking at the logs and the behavior of the instance. We finally came to a point where the server had to be rebooted in order to continue troubleshooting. I thought I would take this time to also enable the sa account and see if we could get in with an elevated account and just check out some sql server configuration.  Unfortunatley I was not able to get the account up during our small window. I brought the server up in single user mode using the -m switch in the startup parameters but when attempting to connect via sqlcmd I got errors saying only one admin was allowed to log in. My time ran out and we had to start back up in multi user mode. The reboot did not resolve the issue and I still have no sa account. After another day of troubleshooting we decide to backup the database after hours and restore to another server that is not having the authentication errors.

After we get that done I can now play with the srever in question and attempt to fix it. I still want to get sa up so I restart in single user mode but still get the connection error using sqlcmd. I disconnect the network and try again and I am in. I enable the account and start up in multi user mode. What I say next was shocking and something that NEVER should have happend. I open up Logins and I show that all of the domain acounts are gone. Some one must have removed them. I added my account back and I can now connect. OUCH talk about a lesson in security. Time to make some changes. More on that later.

But please do not let something like this happen to you. Follow the security best practices so you can prevent this from happening to you. To it from the start and do not back down. I have found that if someone tells you to just let them have sysadmin now and we will lock it down later, IT NEVER HAPPENS!! Be strong. As a DBA you are in charge of making sure that the data is safe, recoverable, and accessible. In order to do this job well, you must set up security accordingly.

my words.csv file is formatted as so

Number, Word

Here is what I did.

$symbols = “(“, “!”, “@”, “#”, “$”, “%”, “^”, “&”, “*”, “_”, “+”, “=”, “?”, “/”, “~”, “;”, “:”, “,”, “<”, “>”, “\”, “)”, “.”
$words = Import-Csv “\\path to word list\words.csv”
$max = $words.Count

$first = New-Object system.Random
$1value = $first.next(0, $max)
$firstword = $words[$1value].word
$firstword = $firstword.toupper()

Start-Sleep -milliseconds 20
$second = New-Object system.Random
$2value = $second.next(1, 23)
$special = $symbols[$2value]

Start-Sleep -milliseconds 300
$third = New-Object system.Random
$3value = $third.next(0, $max)
$secondword = $words[$3value].word

Start-Sleep -milliseconds 230
$num = New-Object system.Random
$4value = $num.next(0, $max)
$4value = $words[$4value].number

$newpass = “$firstword$special$secondword$4value”

Echo “`n”
$newpass
Echo “`n”

So as you can see I am using the word list to pull the two words as well as the number value. In order to get my capital I am using the toupper() function on the first word, and for the special character I create an array of characters and then pick one to use.

Any comments or questions please let me know.

$servers = Import-Csv “csv listing of all servers”
#########################################################
foreach ($entry in $servers)
{
    $torp = $entry.TorP
    $mon = $entry.monitor
    $machine = $entry.server
    $errorlog = $entry.errorlog
    $os = $entry.os2000
    $iname = $entry.Instance
    if ($iname -eq “Null”)
    {
        $instance = “$machine”
    }
    else
    {
        $instance = “$machine\$iname”
    }
    if ($torp -eq “Prod”)
    {
        $ServerType = “Production”
    }
    else
    {
        $ServerType = “Test”
    }
    $instance = $instance.toupper()
#########################################################

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(‘Microsoft.SqlServer.SMO’) | out-null   
# Create an SMO connection to the instance
$s = New-Object (‘Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server’) $instance

$logins = $s.Logins
$query = “CREATE LOGIN $sqladmin FROM WINDOWS WITH DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master], DEFAULT_LANGUAGE=[us_english]“
$dba = $logins | where{$_.Name -eq $sqladmin}
#$dba
if ($dba -eq $null)
{
Echo “DBA Group does not exist.`n Adding Group”
Invoke-Sqlcmd -ServerInstance $instance -Query $query
$logins = $s.Logins
$dba = $logins | where{$_.Name -eq $sqladmin}
if ($dba -ne $null)
{
Echo “`n Group Created”
$dba.name
}
}
else
{
Echo “Group already exists.”
$dba.name
}
if ($dba -ne $null)
{
$sroles = $s.Roles
foreach ($srole in $sroles | where{$_.name -eq “sysadmin”})
    {
    $srole.AddMember($sqladmin)

}

This script walks through the list of all my instances and adds the login using sqlcmd and then also adds that new group to the sysadmin role. Let me know if you have any questions or need anything at all.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms156421.aspx

http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/10/begperl1.html

I am looking forward to this project and I will keep you up to date on the progress and features.

http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid87_gci1361184,00.html?track=sy41

The article talks about key features and enhancments from SQL Server 2005, BI, Security, and more good stuff. Check it out and enjoy.

$instance = “server\instance”

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(‘Microsoft.SqlServer.SMO’) | out-null
# Create an SMO connection to the instance
$s = New-Object (‘Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server’) $instance
#$s | Get-Member -memberType Property
#$s.logins | Get-Member
$logins = $s.Logins
$query = “CREATE LOGIN [domain\group name] FROM WINDOWS WITH DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master], DEFAULT_LANGUAGE=[us_english]”
$dba = $logins | where{$_.Name -eq “domain\group name”}
if ($dba -eq $null)
{
Echo “DBA Group does not exist.`n Adding Group”
Invoke-Sqlcmd -ServerInstance $instance -Query $query
$logins = $s.Logins
$dba = $logins | where{$_.Name -eq “PNI\PNI SQL SYSTEMS DBAS”}
if ($dba -ne $null)
{
Echo “`n Group Created”
$dba.name
}
}
else
{
Echo “Group already exists.”
$dba.name
}

Not to hard and it is nice to be able to use SMO to check for the login and then Powershell to create it.

http://infocenter.sybase.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.sybase.help.ase_15.0.tables/html/tables/tables34.htm

I attempted droping the indexes so that I could just recreate them but you are not able to use Drop Index when working with system tables. That is when I decided to find the value and the column to update. So then I ran a query:

Select name, status from sysindexes

where name = ‘csysservers’

and status = 146

go

This returned on row for me and I thought now I can run the update

update sysindexes

set status = 40

where name = ‘csysservers’

and status = 146

go

Now I get the following error:

Cannot update more than 1 sysindexes row at a time.

Well this did not make sense at all. When I run the select I only get one row returned. But I took the advice of the error and modified my where clause to include more columns and then I was able to make the updates that I needed.