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Category: Administration

Managing the SQL Server Error Log

Published 2020-09-14 by Kevin Feasel

Guy Glantser has some tips for managing the SQL Server error log:

SQL Server maintains its own log, also called “SQL Server Error Log”. This log contains messages describing informational and error events, similar to messages that you can find in Windows logs. In fact, many of the messages found in the SQL Server Error Log can also be found in the Windows Application Log. The SQL Server Error Log is a great place to find information about what’s happening on your database server.

SQL Server uses 7 log files to store these messages. One file serves as the current log file, and every new message is written to that file. The other 6 files are archived files, and they contain previous messages. Each time SQL Server is restarted, it recycles the files. What does it mean? First, it means that a new log file is created and becomes the new current log file. Second, the oldest log file (“Archive #6”) is deleted. And third, all the other log files are pushed back one step. The previous current log file becomes “Archive #1”, the previous “Archive #1” log file becomes “Archive #2”, and so on.

Read on to see how you can change this, manage the size of log files, and retain data for a longer time.

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A Review of KaDeck: Kafka Management Tool

Published 2020-09-11 by Kevin Feasel

Guy Shilo reviews KaDeck:

If you want the real web version then you need to register in their website and create a team first. Yes, KaDeck is aimed at teams of people working together. You create a team online and shortly you receive a mail with team id and a secret key that you will use when running KaDeck web..

It seems that there is no host installation of KaDeck right now (rpm package, binaries or so) but only a Docker image. This forces the user to run it in Docker or a Kubernetes cluster (or one of it’s commercial distributions such as OpenShift). Another thing is that checks your license online each time you start the container. If you want to use t offline you have to do a process of offline activation. You can reach it from the administration menu.

Click through for Guy’s thoughts on the product.

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A Review of Distributed Availability Groups

Published 2020-09-11 by Kevin Feasel

Joey D’Antoni shares some thoughts on distributed Availability Groups in SQL Server 2016 and later:

I’m writing this post because I’ve been mired in configuring a bunch of distributed availability groups for a client, and while the feature is technically solid, the lack of tooling can make it a challenge to implement. Specifically, I’m implementing these distributed AGs (please don’t use the term DAG as you’ll piss off Allan Hirt, but more importantly its used in Microsoft Exchange High Availability, so it’s taken) in Azure which adds a couple of additional changes because of the need for load balancers. You should note this feature is Enterprise Edition only, and is only available starting with SQL Server 2016.

Read on for some of the positives around distributed AGs, as well as some negatives (mostly around the lack of tooling).

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Starting and Stopping Services Things with dbatools

Published 2020-09-11 by Kevin Feasel

Mikey Bronowski continues a series on dbatools:

OK, let’s start. While doing some maintenance tasks there is a need to start/stop/restart SQL Services. Using SQL Server Configuration Manager is one way or even straight from SSMS, however, working with multiple instances is easier with dbatools.

Mikey covers services, SQL Agent jobs, endpoints, traces, and Extended Events sessions, so check it out.

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Forcing a Shrink of TempDB

Published 2020-09-10 by Kevin Feasel

Monica Rathbun has a script for people who just want to watch the world burn:

Occasionally, we must resize or realign our Tempdb log file (.ldf) or data files (.mdf or .ndf) due to a growth event that forces the file size out of whack. To resize we have three options, restart the SQL Server Service, add additional files, or shrink the current file. We most likely have all been faced with run away log files and in an emergency situation restarting the SQL Services may not be an option but we still need to get our log file size smaller before we run out of disk space for example. The process of shrinking down that file can get tricky so I created this flow chart to help you out if you ever get into this situation.

Now its very important to note that many of these commands will clear your cache and will greatly impact your server performance as it warms cache backup. In addition, you should not shrink your database data or log file unless absolutely necessary. But doing so,  it can result in a corrupt tempdb.

Click through for the process, including a well-made flow chart with a large “Know what you’re doing before doing this” warning.

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Automating Database Restorations

Published 2020-09-10 by Kevin Feasel

Hugo Kornelis walks us through automated restoration of database backups:

Now I’ve been to quite a few conferences. And I’ve heard a lot of DBAs talk about best practices. One of the constants in those talks is: automate your restores. So I felt confident that a quick internet search would surely be enough to find me an existing script for restoring a database. Sure, I’d need to modify it to restore to a test database, but that should be minimal effort.

To my surprise, I was unable to find a script. Is scripting this so easy that every DBA can do it with their eyes closed, and nobody feels a need to share it? Is it so hard that they all decided they’re sitting on gold and will only share it for big money? Or were my internet search skills simply severely lacking?

Anyway, bottom line is that I had to do it myself. And I’ll share the result in this post.

Click through for the script and a detailed explanation of how it works.

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Automate sp_whoisactive Runs

Published 2020-09-09 by Kevin Feasel

John McCormack shows how to save the output from sp_whoisactive for later research:

When I took over a fairly troublesome SQL Server, I was always being asked what was running when the SQL Server was slow. That was fine when it was during the day and I could look. But often I would be asked, why was the server slow at 9pm last Friday? Or some other time. It’s not always the easiest thing to do as SQL Server doesn’t natively keep this information for you.

A quick but effective way to automate this is to download and schedule Adam Machanic’s sp_whoisactive stored procedure. I run this every 10 minutes but I have seen it scheduled as often as every 30-60 seconds. It depends on your system and your needs.

This is in place where I work, and I’ve put it into place when consulting for companies without the budget for fancy tools. I really appreciate that Adam Machanic made it a simple option to insert results into a table. Also, John has a step to delete older data, which is critical.

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Ensuring Trace Flag Consistency Across Instances

Published 2020-09-08 by Kevin Feasel

Taiob Ali creates a process to track ensure specific trace flags are in use:

Recently during a SQL Server upgrade, I noticed some inconsistency with trace flags between production and non-production instances. Investigating further also found a similar inconsistency between Always On Availability Group replicas.

My team members fixed this issue by leveraging startup stored procedures.

Click through for the explanation.

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Restoring the Master Database

Published 2020-09-03 by Kevin Feasel

Kenneth Igiri walks us through restoring the master database in SQL Server:

The master database contains records of the structure/configuration for both the current instance and all other databases. When you run sp_configure, you are writing data to the master database.  It also contains most of the dynamic management views that are necessary to monitor the instance.

The importance of the master database is crucial. First, it has the information necessary for opening all other databases and has to be opened first. Then, it involves all instance level principals for the current instance.

It is crucial to back up the master database daily. Equally important is to know how to restore the master database to the instance. The most frequent cases are the database crash or the necessity to restore the master database to another instance when no longer use the source instance. In this article, we will examine the specific case of moving the master database to another instance. 

It’s definitely not as easy as restoring other databases, but it is possible.

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Dealing with Failing SQL Agent Jobs

Published 2020-09-02 by Kevin Feasel

Garry Bargsley has started a four-part series:

SQL Server Agent Jobs are one of the core features of SQL Server. Agent Jobs perform many actions, from maintenance tasks (server and database), data movement flows, replication, log shipping, data cleanup, health checks and many more. Since Agent Jobs are a critical component in a data organization, it is important to know when Agent Jobs do not succeed. There are several ways to accomplish the monitoring of failed Agent Jobs, from easy to more complex. This four part series is going to cover how you, the DBA, can be notified of failing Agent Jobs in your SQL Server environment.

Click through for part one, which is all about finding failed jobs and filtering down to relevant jobs using dbatools.

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