A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Umair Shahid looks at some capabilities in Postgres:
This blog aims to provide an in-depth guide on auditing and monitoring access in PostgreSQL. We will explore various tools, techniques, and best practices to help you implement effective auditing and monitoring strategies in your PostgreSQL environment.
Read on to learn more about pgAudit and PostgreSQL logging.
Comments closedSteve Jones susses out a problem:
I had a customer that was looking to document a restore that had occurred on one of their systems and didn’t see it. They had concerns about SQL Server accurately tracking history across time and noted they hadn’t cleaned any history.
We dug through some of their instance jobs and found one that ran sp_delete_backuphistory. The person didn’t realize this removes restore history as well. This post talks a bit about how this works.
Read on for the full story.
Comments closedAaron Bertrand has a public service announcement:
I’ve talked about it before; you shouldn’t have a backup strategy, you should have a recovery strategy. I can’t possibly care if my backups succeed if I’m not bothering to test that they can be restored. And if they can’t be restored then, both technically and practically, I don’t have backups.
In one of the systems I manage, they built a very simple “test restore” process long before I became involved. Every night, it would pull the full backup for each database, restore it on a test system, and run
DBCC CHECKDBagainst it. It would alert on any failure, of course, but the primary purpose was to always be confident that the backups could, in fact, be restored.
Aaron now has a much more robust version of this in place, which you can see in the article.
Comments closedChad Callihan doesn’t want jobs running willy-nilly:
Transitioning from a failover cluster configuration to an Availability Group configuration brings with it all kinds of “fun” challenges. One such challenge that you may not have considered is the handling of jobs on whatever server is Primary, along with secondary servers. Let’s briefly discuss a potential challenge and an option to address it.
Click through for the example and a solution. Eitan Blumin has another solution in the comments, so check that one as well.
Comments closedJosephine Bush runs an import-export business and wants a database to “fall off a truck”:
After a data migration, we needed to decommission the old Azure SQL DBs, but we wanted to keep a copy in case we needed anything later. Enter exporting an Azure SQL DB to storage!
Click through for an example of how it works. Given that we’re getting bacpac files out, I wonder what it would look like with a really large database.
Comments closedGrant Fritchey subverts our expectations:
It’s a great question. Let’s say you want to capture stored procedure completions. But, you only want to capture them between 3AM and 4AM. Can you do it?
Read on for the answer, followed by the correct answer.
Comments closedOlivier Van Steenlandt saves some cash:
With only a limited budget for exploring and testing new tools, I had to figure out how to use my budget efficiently. Therefore, before making any decisions, I looked at the Microsoft Fabric pricing and possibilities.
If you want to take a look at the Microsoft Fabric pricing models, you can find an overview via the following link: Microsoft Fabric – Pricing | Microsoft Azure
To avoid any surprises and to be as cost-effective as possible, I created an easy Python script that I can use to pause and start my Microsoft Fabric capacity, or better said resume and suspend.
I highly recommend this for any organization that does not need 24/7 uptime for Fabric capacity. If you run your system 12 hours a day instead of 24, it takes your F64 capacity from $8k a month to $4k.
Comments closedSemab Tariq shares a few tips:
PostgreSQL is a widely used database known for its robust performance and reliability. To get the most out of PostgreSQL, tuning its parameters is crucial.
In this blog, we will explore the various PostgreSQL performance-related parameters and how to tune them effectively. By measuring Transactions Per Second (TPS) before and after tuning, and analyzing the results, we will demonstrate the significant impact of tuning on PostgreSQL performance.
Click through for some of the sorts of settings you might want to review. In Semab’s case, a simple server achieved nearly 30% better throughput after making these changes, so that’s not bad for the level of effort.
Comments closedSagheer Ahmed sets up TLS encryption:
This technical guide provides detailed instructions on how to configure SSL/TLS encryption for SQL Server using a self-signed or CA-issued certificate. Secure your data transmissions and enhance your security posture with these essential steps.
Read on for the instructions.
Comments closedMike Lynn talks Transparent Data Encryption:
Transparent Data Encryption uses certificates in its architecture for protecting your data while at rest. One attribute of a certificate is they have an expiration date. Certificates expire for a couple reasons, but the main reason is to enforce security. When a website certificate expires it forces the website owners to get a new certificate by proving they are who they say they are with a trusted third party.
SQL Server certificates that are used for TDE also have an expiration date, but these dates are only checked when you are creating a self-signed certificate using the “CREATE CERTIFICATE” T-SQL command. If you don’t supply an expiration date when creating your certificate SQL Server will assign one that is 1 year into the future.
Read on to learn more about how it works with TDE. I will say that with encrypting backups, SQL Server does care about the expiration date when it comes to creating a new encrypted backup, but not when it comes to restoring a backup.
Comments closed