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Category: Administration

Storage Spaces Direct

Published 2015-11-25 by Kevin Feasel

Glenn Berry introduces us to Storage Spaces Direct:

One of the more exciting new features in Windows Server 2016 is called Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), which enables organizations to use multiple, clustered commodity file server nodes to build highly available, scalable storage systems with local storage, using SATA, SAS, or PCIe NVMe devices. You can use internal drives in each storage node, or direct-attached disk devices using “Just a Bunch of Disks” (JBOD) where each JBOD is only connected to a single storage node. This eliminates the previous requirement for a shared SAS fabric and its complexities (which was required with Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces and SOFS), and also enables using less expensive storage devices such as SATA disks.

This sounds like a technology with interesting potential, and not requiring SAS disks will make it more likely to be adopted.

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SQL Server 2005 End Of Life

Published 2015-11-24 by Kevin Feasel

Warner Chaves reminds us that SQL Server 2005 is within a few months of End Of Life:

As I sit here typing this blog post in my home, we are 145 days or more accurately about 3480 hours until April 12, 2016. That is the date when Extended Support for SQL Server 2005 will be done. Over. Dunzo. Kaput. Yes, Microsoft can do Custom Support Agreements for large companies but it will cost you and you still will be stuck without all the sweet features that have been released in the last 7 years (since 2008 came out). So let’s face, it’s time to upgrade SQL Server 2005!

Chaves gives two good options:  either upgrade or move your database into Azure.  The unfortunate thing is that there are industries (health care, I’m looking at you) whose vendors are so slow to support new versions that some servers will be stuck on 2005 or (ick) 2000 forever.  I feel for you guys.

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Giving 110%

Published 2015-11-23 by Kevin Feasel

SQL Sasquatch shows that his computers go up to 11:

I trust the utilization reported by “Processor Info”.  Note that the greatest reported “Resource Pool Stats” utilization (approaching 120%) is when total “Processor Info” utilization is near 100% across all 12 physical/24 logical cores.  Nominal rating of the core is 3.06 GHz, top SpeedStep is 3.46 GHz.  That would give a maximum ratio of 3.46/3.06 = 113%, which is still under the number reported by SQL Server (for Default pool alone, I’ll add).  Even if the numbers made it seem possible that SpeedStep was responsible for more than 100% utilization reported by SQL Server, I don’t think SpeedStep is the culprit.  The older Intel processors were by default conservative with SpeedStep, to stay well within power and heat envelope.  And no-one’s been souping this server up for overclocking 🙂

So… if my database engine will give 110% (and sometimes more…) I guess I better, too.  🙂

Math is hard.

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PowerShell-Based Health Checks

Published 2015-11-20 by Kevin Feasel

Omid Afzalalghom discusses an open-source tool using PowerShell to read various DMVs and give you a basic health check:

PowerShell is an ideal tool for doing health-checks of a collection of SQL Server instances, and there are several examples around, but few acknowledge the fact that individual DBAs have their own priorities for tests, and need something easily changed to suit circumstances. Omid’s Healthcheck allows tests to be SQL or PowerShell and requires only adding, altering or deleting files in directories.

Grab the tool from his GitHub repo.

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Starting And Stopping Local Instances

Published 2015-11-20 by Kevin Feasel

Slava Murygin shows ways to simplify starting and stopping SQL Server services on local instances:

Step 3: Easily Stop SQL Server Service.

That is very possible you performed some very heavy and memory intense operation by your local SQL Server instance and it ate all your free memory. You do not need it anymore, but SQL Server won’t easily give memory back.
The easiest way to claim all your memory is to stop your SQL Server.
There are some easy ways doing it:
– First way us using SQL Server Management Studio. You just have to do a right click on your local SQL Server instance and choose “Stop”.

The use case for Slava’s advice is a scenario in which you have SQL Server installed on a local machine with very little RAM.

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Finding Objects Using T-SQL

Published 2015-11-18 by Kevin Feasel

Derik Hammer shares a couple of snippets he uses to find objects and SQL Agent jobs.

Here’s one of my favorites, which searches for code within stored procedures, functions, and views:

SELECT
OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(sm.object_id) AS SchemaName,
OBJECT_NAME(sm.object_id) AS ObjectName,
CONCAT(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(sm.object_id), '.', OBJECT_NAME(sm.object_id)) AS FullName,
CONCAT(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(sm.object_id), '.', OBJECT_NAME(sm.object_id), ',') AS CommaSeparatedName,
definition
FROM sys.sql_modules sm
WHERE
sm.definition LIKE '%DEFINITION%'
--AND OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(sm.object_id) = 'Something'
--AND OBJECT_NAME(sm.object_id) = 'Something'
ORDER BY
SchemaName,
ObjectName;
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When CHECKDB Fails

Published 2015-11-18 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Galbraith has a tale of woe and a cautionary message:

Paul’s blog post “Issues around DBCC CHECKDB and the use of hidden database snapshots” discusses the need to have certain permissions to be able to create the snapshot CHECKDB uses.  I checked the DATA directory and the SQL Server default path and found that the service account did have Full Control to those locations.

What happened next ultimately resolved my issue, and it reflects something I constantly tell people when they ask me how I research things relatively quickly (most of the time anyway :)) – whenever you read a blog post or article about a subject, MAKE SURE TO READ THE FOLLOW-UP COMMENTS!  Sometimes they are nothing beyond “Great Article!” but quite often there are questions and answers between readers and the author that add important extra information to the topic, or just “Don’t Forget This!” style comments that add more detail.

Indeed.

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