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Category: Administration

Operation Requires Server to be a Registered Server

Published 2021-12-23 by Kevin Feasel

Garland MacNeill finds one way to solve a problem:

Anyway, it’s been a while since I worked on this AG and I need to get the migration/upgrade done. As I was working on configuring jobs, I ran into a problem where the AG node (as a target node) wasn’t downloading jobs from the Master node, in fact, the last poll was in July.

When I tried to force a poll, I was met with an error message that the server wasn’t registered, never mind it was clearly listed as a target server. Google didn’t find anything useful, other than some questions from 2013. I did come across the syntax to forcefully eject the server as a target with SQL. 

Read on to see how and what to do in the aftermath.

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SERVERPROPERTY() and DATABASEPROPERTYEX() Views

Published 2021-12-20 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Mallon provides a public service:

The thing I hate the most about these two functions is that you need to know the right magic spells to make them work. Let’s look at SERVERPROPERTY() first. The syntax for the function is SERVERPROPERTY( 'propertyname' ), which is easy enough syntax, but the list of values for propertyname isn’t discoverable from SQL Server metadata, DMVs, or even IntelliSense. Instead, I need to check the docs for the list of allowable values. These property names are essentially magic words, and I need to check my spell book to make sure I get it right.

Invalid values for propertyname just return NULL–which is easy enough to handle, but also means your code will compile and run, but might do unintended things if you get your magic spell wrong, due to a typo.

Click through for Andy’s solution to the problem.

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Reviewing Azure Options for PostgreSQL and MySQL

Published 2021-12-17 by Kevin Feasel

Maria Zakourdaev has a pair of info sheets. First up is Azure Database for MySQL:

MySQL is an open-source relational database that is widely used for web applications, it’s easy to use, reliable, secure, and fast.

Recently Microsoft have announced a new deployment option, Flexible Server, that is now generally available.

If we have a quick look at the available options, we now have Single Server and Flexible server deployment options.

Then we have Azure Database for PostgreSQL:

PostgreSQL is an open-sourced, feature rich and extendable relational database that handles high concurrency workloads easily. It supports complex structures, many advanced data types, Search Tree indexes and also got highly sophisticated query optimizer.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL is an Azure managed services running PostgreSQL community edition. With Flexible Server announced recently, you now have 3 deployment options: Single Server, Flexible Server and Hyperscale/Citus.

Click through for a quick comparison of each available option.

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Log Replay for Azure SQL Managed Instance

Published 2021-12-17 by Kevin Feasel

Joey D’Antoni has some quick notes on the Log Replay Service:

Recently, I’ve started on a project where we are migrating a customer to Azure SQL Managed Instance, which now supports a few different migration paths. You can simply backup and restore from a database backup, but you can’t apply a log or differential backup to that database. You can also use the Database Migration Service, but that requires a lot of infrastructure and Azure configuration. The log replay service, or LRS, is the functional equivalent of log shipping to your new managed instance database. While log shipping is a well known methodology for both database migrations or disaster recovery. However, the implementation is a little different–let’s talk about how it works.

Click through to see how it differs.

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Copy Logins between SQL Server Instances

Published 2021-12-17 by Kevin Feasel

David Alcock wants to move a login:

Migrating SQL databases is fun, depending on your definition of fun that is. The process can involve having to move things such as login details that have been around for that long that nobody has a clue what they are anymore.

With domain accounts that’s pretty straightforward, the passwords are managed in Active Directory and not held in SQL Server and it’s just a case of recreating the account on the new instance.

SQL authentication is different and migrating an account as is means you also have to recreate the password as is which could be difficult if you didn’t know what the password should be. It’s worth saying at this point that the preference should always be to use domain accounts, they’re more secure and much more manageable and migrations are ideal opportunities to refactor things to be better but for the sake of this article let’s proceed with the scenario of recreating a SQL authentication login with an unknown password, and we’ll need to get creative.

And as you’d expect, dbatools makes a dramatic appearance.

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Finding SQL Servers with the MAP Toolkit

Published 2021-12-14 by Kevin Feasel

Lee Markum goes to active sonar:

A full tutorial on using the MAP Toolkit is available here on Microsoft Learn. MAP Toolkit installation is fairly straight forward but is also included in the  tutorial from Microsoft that I linked to above. You can install it on your own desktop and then scan Active Directory for SQL Servers. Please be sure to notify your System Administrators BEFORE you run the scan as it will set off intrusion detection alarms.

Sure, it’s no nmap sweep, but any blog post which includes a warning like that is worth the read.

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Clearing a Data File with EMPTYFILE

Published 2021-12-13 by Kevin Feasel

Chad Callihan gets rid of secondary data files:

As I was working on a recent tempdb blog post, I encountered an error when trying to remove data files. Let’s look into the issue you may have removing data files and the solution to get those files cleaned up.

Click through to see how you can empty a data file and remove it without receiving error messages. I’m going to guess that this works better on lightly-used databases more than slammed ones.

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Alerting on Blocking in SQL Server

Published 2021-12-13 by Kevin Feasel

Ajay Dwivedi sets up an alert:

Recently one of my LinkedIn friends contacted me for a blocking alert that would work on on-prem & cloud SQL Server instances alike. Previously I wrote https://ajaydwivedi.com/2018/08/how-to-setup-blocking-alerts-on-sql-server blog post for on-prem SQL Server blocking alert which makes use of WMI based event.

So I wrote the following blocking alert setup code for SQL Server that has the below features –

– Send mail notification to one or more recepients unlike SQL Agent job which is restricted to only one operator.

– Parameter to control the consistent blocking threshold. Nobody wants spontaneous blockings which comes/goes.

– Parameter to control the mail notification delay. Say, I want to be notified every X minutes (defult 15 minutes).

– Parameter to control the mail notification subject.

– Separate mail notification for Blocking & Script failure itself.

– Auto-clearing feature. Means, if the blocking is resolved, we should get an automated mail notification saying Blocking is cleared.

Click through for the instructions.

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