A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Amit Khandelwal has some good news for us:
We are happy to announce the official production support and availability of SQL Server 2019 package native to Ubuntu 20.04 distribution starting with CU 10. You can read more about the SQL Server 2019 CU 10 release here.
Also click through for some good news around Python 2 dependencies going away.
Comments closedChris Adkin continues a series:
If you have been following this series, you should have:
– a basic understanding of Terraform
– a Kubernetes cluster that you can connect to using kubectl
– a basic understanding of Kubernetes services
– a working metalLB load balancer
– a basic understanding of how storage works in the world of Kubernetes
– a Kubernetes storage solution in the form of PX Store, alternatively you can use any solution (for the purposes of this series) which supports persistent volumes, however to use the backup solution in part 9 of the series you will need to use something that supports CSI
From here, Chris explains the importance of the data controller and then deploys one.
Comments closedI currently manage 5 AlwaysOn Availability Groups. Two are on SQL Server 2014 and overdue for an upgrade, while three of them are on SQL Server 2017. From time to time I have run into a couple of different situations that I needed to troubleshoot and I want to tell you where to look and what to check on in these scenarios. I can’t possibly tell you about everything that could go wrong, but I can tell you about my experience with AlwaysOn Availability Groups and let you decide if that experience helps you or not.
Click through for more.
Comments closedTaiob Ali clears up some misunderstanding:
The auto-failover groups feature for the Azure SQL database can be configured with an automatic failover policy. Azure triggers failover after the failure is detected and the grace period has expired. Grace period is determined by a setting called ‘GracePeriodWithDataLossHours’ that cannot be set under one hour. Why is it not allowed to set a time which is less than an hour? Can your business tolerate the application be down for that period? Should your turn off Auto Fail-over and set it to manual?
I noticed a lot of confusion around this setting, including my own. Some of the confusion is due to a lack of clarity in the documentation. I checked with the Microsoft Azure SQL team, and they are actively working on clarifying some of the questions I raised.
I want to thank Dimitri Furman and Roberto Bustos from the Azure SQL Team for clarifying some of my confusion that I will share here.
Read on for a Q&A style explanation of auto-failover and grace periods.
Comments closedDavid Klee reviews a product update:
I just found out that VMware has updated their in-guest time synchronization with the 7.0 Update 1 release. Previously, we had to manually disable some of the advanced time synchronization ‘features’ that didn’t adhere to the front-end GUI option that said to not synchronize the guest time with the host. For most VMs, it is not that big of a deal, but for SQL Servers running in a highly available configuration, this act could break your availability solution.
Click through to see what has changed in the product.
Comments closedJess Pomfret shows off an interesting way of using Azure Functions to apply tags to resources:
In part one I discussed how useful Azure tags can be, and specifically about how adding a ‘dateCreated’ tag can help you keep track of your resources, and how to find resources with certain tags using PowerShell. Part 2 and 3 are based around the fact that adding the ‘dateCreated’ tag is a great idea, but relying on a human to remember to add it is less than ideal. In part 2 we looked at using Azure Policy to automatically add the tag. Today’s post will cover another option using Azure Functions.
Azure Functions gives us a way of running serverless code, written in a number of different languages, triggered by specific events or timings. Looking through the documentation there are many use cases from processing files to analysing IoT workstreams. Our use case is to run a PowerShell script that tags any resources that are missing the ‘dateCreated’.
Click through to see how.
Comments closedRandolph West reports on a change in SQL Server 2014:
I’ve been doing SQLskills training recently, and Paul Randal (blog | Twitter) reminded our class that zeroing out a transaction log file does not use zeroes (
0x00). Well, not since SQL Server 2014 at any rate.
Click through to see what SQL Server uses instead when “zeroing” out a log file.
Comments closedJack Vamvas answers a question:
Question: I need to extract the securables for a user created SQL Server database role. For example , the Explicit Permissions including the Permission,Grantor,Grant,With Grant and Deny. And also the Securables – Schema,Name,Type
How can I get this information via t-sql?
The only downside in Jack’s query is that it enumerates the securables for the principal. But if the principal is part of an Active Directory group (or multiple groups), this becomes more difficult.
Comments closedMonica Rathbun shares part two in a series:
As you learned in part one of this Mastering TempDB series, TempDB is a global resource used for many operations within SQL Server. You create and allocate temporary user objects such as temporary tables and table variables, rebuild indexes with
SORT_IN_TEMPDB=ON, use it for version stores (RCSI), internal objects (worktables, spools, group by, order by) and evenDBCCCHECKDBjust to name a few. All these operations require space to be allocated in the TempDB database. At times, these operations can result in TempDB growing rapidly, which, in turn, can fill up the file system and cause failures. In this article, you will learn how to fix an overgrown TempDB file that has resulted in it running out of space.
It beats my answer, which is to rip the server out of the rack and chuck it in the ocean.
Comments closedJust when you thought you were done with cleaning MSDB, Eitan Blumin brings you back in for more:
As part of its regular, ongoing, day-to-day activities, your SQL Server instance would naturally collect historical data about its automated operations. If left unchecked, this historical data could pile up, leading to wasted storage space, performance hits, and even worse issues.
MSDB would obviously be collecting data about the SQL Agent job executions. But there are also a few other types of historical data that needs to be cleaned up once in a while.
Click through for part 2 in the series, which covers a half-dozen more things.
Comments closed