Maintenance

Aveek Das
Grafana Dashboard Demo

Overview of the Grafana Dashboard with SQL

June 2, 2020 by

In this article, I am going to demonstrate how to set up Grafana Dashboard for real-time analytics or data monitoring purposes. Grafana is an open-source, cross-platform analytics service tool that can be used to fetch data from several data sources, and then the data can be visualized in a much intuitive way in the form of bars and graphs. This is quite a useful feature for the DevOps or the IT team as it can make their job easier to find abnormalities or spikes in the production environment by observing the logs generated.

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Jignesh Raiyani
New database with Database File Size

How to determine free space and file size for SQL Server databases

March 9, 2020 by

In this article, we will discuss the actual database file size and free space in the database file size with the help of monitoring script and shrink solutions. While creating a database initial size of the database files (Data File and Log File) can be defined by us, with the Autogrowth and MAXSIZE parameter. The initial size will be the same as the model database if by chance user forgot to define the initial size parameter while creating a database or do the same intentionally.

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Bojan Petrovic

Optimizing SQL Server index strategies

July 2, 2019 by

Index strategies overview

This article is about techniques for optimizing the SQL Server indexes strategy. It is an appendix of the SQL index overview and strategy article in which I covered different areas like what indexes actually do, how to create them, and I briefly mentioned some index design guidelines. Furthermore, I also presented an example of how to design them by tuning and optimizing queries, so I’ve really tried to cover all but there is always more when it comes to SQL Server indexes.

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Bojan Petrovic

SQL index maintenance

January 23, 2019 by

One of the main DBA responsibilities is to ensure databases to perform optimally. The most efficient way to do this is through indexes. SQL indexes are one of the greatest resources when it comes to performance gain. However, the thing about indexes is that they degrade over time.

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Ed Pollack

Generating Schedules with SQL Server Agent

January 15, 2019 by

Summary

SQL Server Agent allows us to create jobs and assign any number of schedules to them. This allows for great flexibility when deciding when jobs should run. Over time, as the number of jobs and schedules increase on a given SQL Server, it can become challenging to fully understand when and how often jobs run during a given span of time.

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Esat Erkec

How to create an email alert in SQL Server Agent for job failures

November 28, 2018 by

SQL Server Agent is a Microsoft Windows service which helps to execute, schedule and automatize T-SQL queries, Integration Service Package, SQL Server Analysis Service queries, executable programs, operating system, and PowerShell commands. These actions which are performed by SQL Server can be called by the SQL Server Agent. Maybe, we can liken SQL Server Agent to an alarm clock because the agent will execute the scheduled task when the time comes

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Esat Erkec

Forecast SQL backup size

October 23, 2018 by

This article will cover the process of analyzing and predicting/forecasting the size of a SQL backup as a means to better handle/manage retention of backups.

One of the main database management tenets is “Do not lose your data”. According to this; a database administrator incurs huge responsibilities to protect data. Under these circumstances, taking database backups and archiving SQL backup files is a key task for database administrators. In data protection strategy, taking database backups and archiving backup file processes play the leading role. Especially, backup planning is very significant for disaster recovery scenarios because backup file will be used for restore operation after any failure or data corruption. For this reason, every dba must generate recovery strategies for possible disaster scenarios and ensure that these scenarios can be solvable. At the same time, these backup files must be tested for data integrity; thus process provides to evaluate the recovery time and integrity of backup files. In this Backup and Restore (or Recovery) strategies for SQL Server database article you can find all details about backup and restore strategies.

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James Rhoat

SQL Server Setup – Instant File Initialization (IFI)

August 31, 2018 by

If SQL Server needs to allocate space, first it fills the space it needs with zeros. Examples of when it needs to allocate space are creating/restoring a database, growing/allocating data and log files, and finally the troublesome auto growth operation. However, most of these slowdowns/long running actions can be improved by enabling instant file initialization. I say most because the one case where this is required is on log file growth. However, even when Instant file initialization has been enabled the log file will be zeroed out before the space is usable for SQL Server.

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James Rhoat

SQL Server Dedicated Admin Connection (DAC) – how to enable, connect and use

August 31, 2018 by

The dedicated admin connection (DAC) can help you out of a sticky situation. This was built to help you connect to SQL Server and run basic queries in cases with critical performance problems. This works by telling SQL Server to reserve a thread specifically for processing your queries in an emergency. While it does reserve a connection for you, it is only one thread, there is no parallelism happening here, in fact, you will receive an error.

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Gerald Britton

Shrinking your database using DBCC SHRINKFILE

August 16, 2018 by

Introduction

SQL Server is pretty good at managing disk space. As long as we do our part to set up appropriate storage types and place files and filegroups properly and set reasonable AUTOGROW settings, it’s almost a set-it-and-forget-it operation. Mind you, I said, “almost!” Sometimes, things do go BUMP! in the night and we need to act. Here’s what happened to me not too long ago:

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Ahmad Yaseen

Maintaining SQL Server indexes

May 31, 2018 by

In the previous articles of this series (see the full article TOC at bottom), we discussed the internal structure of SQL Server tables and indexes, the guidelines that you can follow in order to design a proper index, the list of operations that can be performed on the SQL Server indexes, how to design effective Clustered and Non-clustered indexes, the different types of SQL Server indexes (above and beyond Clustered and Non-clustered indexes classification), how to tune the performance of the inefficient queries using different types of SQL Server Indexes and finally, how to gather statistical information about index structure and the index usage. In this article, the last article in this series, we will discuss how to benefit from the previously gathered index information in maintaining SQL Server indexes.

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Timothy Smith

How to archive SQL Server data with scale in mind

February 21, 2018 by

We manage data in a growing environment where our clients query some of our data, and on occasion will query past data. We do not have an environment that scales and we know that we need to archive some of our data in a way that allows clients to access it, but also doesn’t interfere with current data clients are more interested in querying. With the current data in our environment and new data sets will be using in the future, what are some ways we can archive and scale our environment?

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