ITKE grandparent

Moving a standalone instance to a cluster while keeping the name and IP

A little while back I posted about how to move a standalone instance to a clustered instance using a different name and IP, but what do you do when you need to keep the same name and IP address?  This is a much more complex procedure to complete. Continued »

Not all multi-pathing software is created equal

Once you’ve setup a good redundant network design you need to invenst in some goo multi-pathing software to ensure that you are making the most of the redundant network that you have created. Continued »

Join me at the San Gabrial Valley .NET User Group Meeting on November 18th

For those not at PDC or the Underground party on November 18th, 2009 …

Join me at the San Gabrial Valley .NET User Group as I give a presentation all about SQL Service Broker.  The pizza starts at 6pm and the presentation starts at 6:30.  The groups site says that there is no fee to attend as the event is being sponsored.  I don’t see any RSVP info on the site, so show up ready to learn.

In addition to what the UG will be giving away, Quest is sending me over some goodies to give away (don’t ask me what, I’ll find out when the box arrives).  Thank you Quest.

I’ll see everyone there.

Denny

Auto shrink is just pure evil

If you don’t agree with the above statement please keep reading.  I’m write, and it’s important, I promise.

In order for the auto-shrink feature to be really effective it has to move data from the end of the file to the middle/front of the file so that it can chop off the tail end of the database file.  This causes extra load to be placed on the disk, and on the CPU as it is identifying the data pages which can be moved, then moves them.

It also causes extra fragmentation to happen within the database as the shrink operation does not preserve the fragmentation state of the indexes within the database.  Because of this the worst time to shrink a database is write after the indexes have been rebuilt.  Because of the extra space that is needed to rebuild indexes this is probably also the most common time to shrink a database on a regular basis.

My favorite reason to not shrink a database is listed directly in Books OnLine under the “Shrinking a Database” heading.  Under the Best Practices topic it says “Unless you have a specific requirement, do not set the AUTO_SHRINK database option to ON.”.

So go and turn your AUTO_SHRINK settings to off like they should be and quit worrying if the hard drive icon in the My Computer window shows that it’s full.  Worry about about how much free space is within the database files, not the free space on the disk.   Fill the disk already.  It’s fun, and all the cool kids are doing it.

Denny

The Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 launch was more informative that I thought

Yesterday was the Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 launch event here in Southern California (Orange County to be specific, Burbank is on Wednesday).  For the most part I was planning on going to pick up a couple of tidbits of information, and a free copy on Windows 7 Ultimate (I’m not stupid, someone offers me a free Windows license, I’m going to take it).  However the day was much more informative that I had expected that’s for sure.

In this post I’m going to cover some of the high level information, then over a few future posts I’ll give more into what was covered. Continued »

I’ve got some money for an upgrade, what should I upgrade?

So you are going along your normal day, and your boss comes up to you and tells you “We’ve got a few thousand bucks left in this years budget, what would you like to upgrade?”  Assuming that new 26″ monitors for your workstation are out of the question, the boss is probably talking about a server upgrade here so lets see what we can do. Continued »

This isn’t your grand-mothers bingo game (#sqlbingo)

This year at the PASS Summit there will be a daily bingo game.  This isn’t the standard sit in a room while someone calls out numbers.  No you have to find the people who’s names and faces (for the most part) are on the bingo cards. Continued »

How do you know when it’s time to refactor that database design?

Software developers love re-factoring code.  And why shouldn’t they.  It’s quick (sometimes) and when done correctly it’ll reduce the amount of code, and speed up application response time.  DBAs like re-factoring code as well.  We get the same benefits when done correctly.  Re-factoring the database schema on the other hand, is a frigging nightmare.

Changing around code is easy, moving 100,000,000 records from one table to another in a timely fashion isn’t.  It sucks, big time. Continued »

Hey sysadmins, quit trying to virtualize everything!

Please forward this to the systems admin in your life that wants to take your big SQL Server, and cram it into a Virtual Machine against your wishes.

So you’ve got your kick ass virtualization project moving along nicely, but you’ve hit a snag.  The DBAs are fighting back saying that they don’t want to virtualize the SQL Servers.  You hear them, but you know better right?  You built the hardware, you know what it can do.  The SQL Server doesn’t really need all that horse power. Continued »

SQL Server gets an ANSI compliant unique index … sort of

If you work with any of the other big database platforms you’ve probably noticed that SQL Server’s implementation of a unique index is “different” than the others.  Until now there hasn’t been a way to fix that without using a trigger.  Until now… Continued »