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Category: Administration

Finding Missing SQL Server MSIs

Published 2019-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Annette Allen had a service pack installation go south due to missing MSIs:

I was recently doing a service pack, I’d run it on the entire test estate and half of the Production estate, I’d used Pinal Dave’s really useful AG check list and been really overcautious, I’d finished integrity checks on all databases, I’d backed everything up and even had a snapshot of the server completed.

When I clicked on the service pack I got the error  “missing MSI” sorry I don’t have the screen dump or the full error message because at the time of trying to fix it I did’t think to take a copy

Read on to see what the root cause was and how Annette was able to fix this error.

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Checklist for an Azure VM Running SSRS

Published 2019-12-10 by Kevin Feasel

Kathi Kellenberger has a troubleshooting guide for setting up an Azure virtual machine to run SQL Server Reporting Services:

Recently I set up an Azure VM running SSRS for my students to host their database and report projects. My goal was to set up a custom domain name and use SSL. I ran into a few issues and a couple of wrong paths so I thought this would be helpful for others trying to accomplish the same. I’m not going to do a step-by-step walkthrough, but instead a checklist to help you troubleshoot

It’s not step-by-step, but it’s pretty close.

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Online and Resumable Operations in SQL Server

Published 2019-12-10 by Kevin Feasel

Kendra Little summarizes which operations in SQL Server have the ability to be run online, which are resumable, and which support the WAIT_AT_LOW_PRIORITY flag:

ONLINE operations in SQL Server were simple to understand for years — we got ONLINE index rebuilds in SQL Server 2005. That was it for a while. Then, things got more complicated: we got more types of indexes. We got ONLINE options for schema changes that don’t involve indexes. We got more options for managing things like blocking, because online operations are really only mostly online — generally there’s going to be at least a short period where an exclusive lock is needed to update metadata. We now have some RESUMABLE operations coming in, too, for those big operations that are tough to handle.

Along the way, I fell behind. Because these features have steadily come out over a period of time, my brain simply didn’t register them all, or possibly I missed seeing them amid other announcements.

It’s not a comprehensive list, but it’s a good starting point for understanding the options you have available.

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The Problems with RDPing into SQL Server Hosts

Published 2019-12-02 by Kevin Feasel

Emanuele Meazzo enumerates the issues with using RDP to connect directly to a server hosting SQL Server (or any other database system):

When there are SERIOUS performance problems, i.e. your instance is totally pinned as far as resources go, the only way to log into the instance to do something about it is using DAC; even if you are on the same machine, if you’re trying to log in, as usual, it won’t make any difference.
Enable Remote DAC and save yourself from future troubles, now.

There are several problems. Better is to run client tools from a client machine and something like SSH or Powershell remoting to do things against a server itself.

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Multi-Server Diagnostics with dbatools

Published 2019-11-26 by Kevin Feasel

Gianluca Sartori shows how we can collect diagnostic information from multiple SQL Server instances by way of dbatools:

What I really love about PowerShell is how simple it is to filter, extend and manipulate tabular data using the pipeline, in a way that resonates a lot with the experience of T-SQL developers.

The main part of the script is the one that invokes all the diagnostic queries included in the list $queries. This is done by invoking the cmdlet Invoke-DbaDiagnosticQuery, that takes care of using a version of the diagnostic query that matches the version of the target server and selecting the data. As usual with dbatools, the -SqlInstance parameter accepts a list of servers, so you can pass in the list of all the SQL Servers in your infrastructure.

Gianluca has a GitHub repo for the script and explains it in more detail as well.

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Finding Power BI V1 Workspace Owners

Published 2019-11-25 by Kevin Feasel

Brett Powell has a process to find Power BI V1 workspace owners:

As most readers of this blog likely know, there are two very different kinds of workspaces in Power BI – V1 or ‘classic’ workspaces which are tied to Office 365 groups and V2 or ‘modern’ workspaces which are not. V2 workspaces have many advantages beyond their independence from Office 365 which you can read about elsewhere but for a bit of context you can read the GA announcement of V2 workspaces from back in April.

Since upgrading to V2 workspaces has been a manual process thus far, most Power BI tenants contain a mix of V1 and V2 workspaces. You may also have read the recent announcement of a new feature in the Power BI service available to workspace admins to upgrade their V1 workspaces. This blog post is all about identifying these V1 workspaces and their admins.

Click through for the process, as well as Brett’s recommendation regarding migration to V2 right now.

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Partition Switching to Make Table Changes

Published 2019-11-25 by Kevin Feasel

Daniel Hutmacher shows a couple things you can change with near-zero downtime using partition switching:

Look, I’m not saying that you’re the type that would make a change in production while users are working.

But suppose that you would want to add an identity column to dbo.Demo, and change the clustered index to include that identity column, and make the index unique? Because it’s the table’s clustered index, you’re effectively talking about rebuilding the table (remember, the clustered index is the table), which involves reorganizing all of the rows into a new b-tree structure. While SQL Server is busy doing that, nobody will be able to read the contents of the table.

Daniel mentions a read-only table, though you could also do this with a read-write table as long as you have triggers to keep the two tables in sync until go time. That adds to the complexity, but it is an option if you need it.

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Creating a Failover Cluster Instance with Shared Storage

Published 2019-11-21 by Kevin Feasel

Ryan Adams wraps up a video series on setting up a SQL Server lab environment:

You are going to create a SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance in Part 4 of our series on how to build a SQL Cluster Lab. The FCI will only be installed on Node1 and Node2. FCIs require shared storage so you will make your domain controller an iSCSI target. Last you will create your FCI using the iSCSI drives you presented to the cluster. 

Click through for links to the entire series.

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