Press "Enter" to skip to content

Category: Administration

Accelerated Database Recovery in tempdb for SQL Server 2025

Published 2026-04-08 by Kevin Feasel

Rebecca Lewis looks into a feature:

Two weeks ago I covered the Resource Governor changes in SQL Server 2025 — specifically, capping how much tempdb data space a workload group can consume. That was the data-file side. For the log side, SQL Server 2025 now lets you enable Accelerated Database Recovery (ADR) on tempdb. Enable it and cancelled queries stop grinding, the tempdb log stops bloating, and recovery gets faster. Sounds like an easy yes — but you’ve got to read the fine print.

Click through for that fine print.

Leave a Comment

Updates to Straight Path Solutions sp_Check Procedures

Published 2026-04-02 by Kevin Feasel

Jeff Iannucci has some updates:

This month though there are mostly a few small updates for the tools, as next month’s updates should also include many of the issues noted in GitHub (thanks for those!) Most of this month’s updates were to sp_CheckSecurity, although we did add “Initial File Size” to the output of sp_CheckTempdb since that had been requested by a few folks.

We hope these new updates can help you, especially if you’ve never used these stored procedures. Here are the updates for March 2026, with links to the GitHub repositories where you can download the latest versions.

Click through for those links.

Leave a Comment

Capacity Overage in Microsoft Fabric

Published 2026-03-31 by Kevin Feasel

Pankaj Arora has a new ‘give us money’ lever:

Capacity overage, is a new opt‑in capability in Microsoft Fabric designed to help organizations keep their workloads running—even during unexpected compute spikes. Now available in preview, this feature allows for automatic billing for excess capacity usage, based on limits you set, instead of throttling operations, ensuring smoother experiences when workloads exceed the limits of your purchased capacity.

I will say that I think it’s reasonable to have the two options of throttling (you went over by 30%, so for a stretch of time you’ll be capped until you get back under the limit) or simply paying. The controversy around this was mostly in the fact that, if you shut off and restart your Fabric capacity, you’d automatically be charged for the overages you created. To that end, providing more options on how to work off that overage debt is useful.

Leave a Comment

The Importance of the Transaction Log in SQL Server

Published 2026-03-31 by Kevin Feasel

Deb Melkin lays out the case:

Lately, I’ve been feeling like we’re not paying as much attention to transaction logs as we should. In fact, I’ve been saying there needs to be a flashing neon sign that says “Transaction Logs are more important than ever.” I thought I’d take a minute and explain why.

Click through for some important functionality that makes heavy use of the transaction log, Deb also has a call to action on how to keep them going.

Leave a Comment

Monitoring Fabric Mirroring of SQL Server 2025

Published 2026-03-25 by Kevin Feasel

Meagan Longoria wants to make sure things are working as expected:

I previously wrote about how the underlying technology for Fabric mirroring changed with SQL Server 2025. The latest version of mirroring that uses the SQL Server Change Feed is reading from the database transaction logs and pushing the data to a landing zone in OneLake. The data is then merged into the Delta tables for the Fabric mirrored database.

In this blog post, we will look at how to monitor this process, both in SQL Server and in Fabric.

Click through for information on the right DMVs to query and what you can find within Microsoft Fabric itself.

Leave a Comment

Protecting TDE-Enabled Databases

Published 2026-03-23 by Kevin Feasel

Jonathan Kehayias answers a question:

I have gotten a lot of email questions recently about TDE and SQL Server, specifically around the encryption hierarchy involved in protecting the encrypted data inside of a TDE enabled database in SQL Server. So, rather than continuing to write long emails that explain this fully, I figured this would be a great blog post topic for future reference as a way to reboot getting back to posting content more regularly on my blog. For an overview of TDE in SQL Server see the following topic in the Books Online (Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) – SQL Server | Microsoft Learn).

Click through to learn more about how SQL Server works with the in-built encryption system for TDE and what you need to back up in order to ensure you can correct anything that might go wrong.

Leave a Comment

An Overview of pgNow

Published 2026-03-18 by Kevin Feasel

Hamza Sajawal looks at a Redgate product:

pgNow is a lightweight PostgreSQL diagnostic tool developed by Redgate that provides quick visibility into database performance without requiring agents or complex setup. It connects directly to a PostgreSQL instance and delivers real-time insights into query workloads, active sessions, index usage, configuration health, and vacuum activity, helping DBAs quickly identify performance bottlenecks. Because it runs as a simple desktop application, pgNow is particularly useful for quick troubleshooting and point-in-time diagnostics when a full monitoring platform is not available. 

The tool is currently free to use, and its development is actively maintained by Redgate, with potential future enhancements expected as the project evolves. It analyzes workload behavior using PostgreSQL system views and extensions such as pg_stat_activity and pg_stat_statements.

Click through for setup instructions and an overview of what it currently can do.

Comments closed