Server Admin | Richard Douglas - SQL Server Professional

Woohoo, manager has signed off on #sqlbits. 3 whole days of SQL goodness :) about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
@databasejase Hi mate, are you going to SQLBits this time? about 1 day ago from TweetDeckin reply to databasejase
ha ha Aussie Jason Donovan looked shocked when he found out his ancestor was a convict on Who Do You Think You Are - Priceless! about 1 day ago from TweetDeck
@BrentO $1000 for a mac mini? I'd expect a Big Mac for that :-) How to Buy Your First Mac: http://bit.ly/9xLE1u about 1 day ago from TweetDeckin reply to BrentO
@SQLGRE afraid not, I'm actually part way through writing a blog about this ... about 1 day ago from TweetDeckin reply to SQLGRE
RT @BrentO: Interview with @GlennAlanBerry by @bradmcgehee in which Glenn says our book is his favorite. http://bit.ly/cqN5QF - Great book about 1 day ago from TweetDeck
@SQLBob Was that a phrase you picked up from that link you sent rounsd earlier? about 2 days ago from TweetDeckin reply to SQLBob
A 3rd party has just told me by email that I should have maintenance routines that include auto shrink! #SQLFail about 2 days ago from TweetDeck
@JohnSansom I have a few books on my phone, but I find that the screen just isn't large enough. about 2 days ago from TweetDeckin reply to JohnSansom
@JohnSansom We were just talking about Kindles about an hour ago here in the office, I'd love to hear a review .... about 2 days ago from TweetDeckin reply to JohnSansom

SQL Patch Updates

The following KB articles/patches for SQL Server have been released over the last few days:

SQL Sever 2005

You have to reinstall some drivers when you install SQL Server 2005
FIX: A Deadlock occurs when two transactions try to perform a DML operation on a table that contains a TABLOCK locking hint or an XLOCK locking hint
Cumulative Update 2 [...]

Recovering TempDB

In a previous post “Moving TempDB” I provided step by step instructions on how you can move your TempDB database with an emphasis on reducing disk IO contention. If you have read this post you will notice that I did not change the path for the TempDB database files from the USB stick back to their [...]

Moving TempDB

One of the planned projects in my schedule for the coming financial year is to add some new disks in to one of our SQL servers. As part of this project I will be moving the TempDB database onto a different disk thereby helping to reduce the IO contention on the server. [...]

Its all about the end result

On Sunday night I was implementing a significant change release on our main production environment and thought after after implementing numerous implementation and migration projects over the years that a blog on the mechanics of change control could be a great help to people in their jobs, be it Developer, DBA or Project Manager. I hope there’s something in here for everyone. [...]

Forget SatNav - Use MAPs

Microsoft have released version 5.0 of MAP (Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit) [...]

Rebuilding ReportServerTempDB

Whist reviewing various logs on SQL Servers across the estate I was greeted with the following error on one of our SQLExpress instances this morning:

The application domain WindowsService_22 failed to initialize. Error: Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities.ReportServerStorageException: An error occurred within the report server database. This may be due to a connection failure, timeout or low disk condition within the [...]

Paul Randall & Kimberley Tripp SQL Master Class

An overview of a great day with Paul Randall & Kimberley Tripp [...]

Identifying the active cluster node

There are a number of ways that you can find out which physical machine your active cluster node is residing on.

You could access the information via the “Failover Cluster Management” console (cluadmin.msc)
Log on to the virtual windows cluster
Open the console “Failover Cluster Management” console (cluadmin.msc)
Drill down through the virtual machine and “Services and Applications” levels until you see your cluster application.
The summary screen will display the current active node under the label “Current Owner”
The benefit of doing things this way are that you can access all sorts of other information about the cluster, however for a quick check it seems quite a long winded way of doing things, a much easier way is to just connect to the virtual SQL instance and run the following T-SQL:

SELECT SERVERPROPERTY(‘ComputerNamePhysicalNetBIOS’)
[...]

Recommended SQL Books - Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting

One of the most frequent questions you will find on SQL forums and mailing lists is “which book should I buy?”, having bought quite a few SQL 2008 books recently I thought I would review one of my favourites: [...]

Installing Anti Virus on a SQL Server

It’s been quite a while since I last posted anything on this site, there’s been a lot of change behind the scenes and have a number of entries to post based on things that have happened in the last few weeks.

Earlier this week I was asked by one of our infrastructure guys when would be a [...]

Richard Douglas – SQL Server Professional

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