A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Shane O’Neill says you don’t have to put on the read-host:
So, automation is nearly non-existent right now on my tasks. But, when I got asked if there was an easier way to get user input; taking into account bad answers, shortcuts, default options, etc., rather than using a plethora of
Read-Hostcommands and double-checking the user input, well…
Read on to learn what Shane came up with.
Comments closedJose Manuel Jurado Diaz won’t let failure get him down:
Introduction:
Efficiently managing temporary failures and timeouts is crucial in production environments when connecting to databases. In this article, we’ll explore how to implement a retry mechanism with
sqlcmdin a Bash script, dynamically increasing timeouts with each failed attempt.Problem Statement:
Operations can fail due to network issues, overloaded servers, or other temporary problems when interacting with databases. Implementing a retry mechanism helps address these temporary issues without manual intervention.
Read on for the solution script. You could also adapt this to Powershell fairly easily, I think, though if you do go down that road, I’d recommend taking a look at Polly and PsPolly.
Comments closedChad Callihan knows your last backup is only as good as your last restore:
Is the process of testing your backups something you know you should do but never get around to? Do you find yourself assuming all is well with backups while putting out other fires? Test-DbaLastBackup, part of the beloved dbatools, can solve your dilemma.
There are many options available when using Test-DbaLastBackup. Let’s explore a few of these options and see some examples of how to use them.
Click through to learn more about this. And you could easily put together Powershell scripts to stagger your restorations over a time frame (such as, 15% of your databases each day, so that you get to 100% by the end of the week).
Comments closedJose Manuel Jurado Diaz has a script for us:
Database administrators and IT professionals often need to be proactive in monitoring resources, especially when working in cloud environments like Azure SQL. One critical resource that requires monitoring is the transaction log of a SQL Server database. If it fills up, it can hinder database operations, leading to potential application downtime.
In this article, we’ll discuss a PowerShell script that monitors transaction log usage in Azure SQL databases and sends an email alert if a database exceeds a specific threshold.
There is a reference in the script to Check-LogUsage, which appears to be a different function, likely related to the linked T-SQL statement Jose posted.
Comments closedJeff Hicks wants you to think fast:
Time to get back to the to blog. I’ve been working through my backlog of projects. These are things that I started writing or updating but then got pushed to the back of the line. One of these projects is a PowerShell module I wrote as a teaching tool. The idea was to create short quizzes on PowerShell topics that someone could take in a PowerShell session. My idea was to create quizzes on PowerShell topics, but you can create a quiz on anything. If you want to try things out, install the PSQuizMaster module from the PowerShell Gallery. The module will work in Windows PowerShell and PowerShell 7, including cross-platform.
Read on to see what’s in a quiz and how to create your own quiz.
Comments closedBig Data? Pain? Looking for empty folders and want to delete them? In this post I show you how to proceed to find and delete empty folders.
Open PowerShell, ISE or VS Code.
Caution: If you proceed, all empty folders will be deleted without any warning.
It is kind of funny to warn people that, if they run the script to delete all of these empty folders, they will delete all of these empty folders. But hey, better safe than sorry.
Comments closedPain Point: Something bad happened and you need to restore a SQL Server database.
Pain Point you didn’t know you had: The backup files are all corrupt due a problem with the storage subsystem.
A backup is only as good as the last time you tested its restoration. Kevin shows just how easy it is to perform this test using DBATools.
Comments closedI ran into a concern to quickly audit all current users and role members for a set of Azure SQL databases, spread across multiple resource groups. Without an easy CMS concept or a way to quickly loop through an unknown set of servers, resource groups, and databases, that can be a little challenging. I have an account to use that should have access to all databases (but doesn’t) so put together some PowerShell that I could run locally to get that information and send the results to Excel.
Click through for a SQL script to get the data and a Powershell script to run this for each database and export the results into different tabs in Excel.
Comments closedJose Manuel Jurado Diaz wants to know when the Query Store state changes:
This morning, I have been working on a support case where our client was not able to see certain queries when querying the Query Data Store. We have observed that the cause is due to the Query Data Store changing to a read-only mode due to the volume of data and the limitation our client had on the QDS database space. Therefore, I would like to share the following PowerShell script that can be executed at regular intervals to check and retrieve when the state of QDS has changed. Unfortunately, in Azure SQL Database, we cannot use the Extended Event ‘qds.query_store_db_diagnostics’.
Click through to see Jose’s alternative solution.
Comments closedPatrick Gruenauer does two things at once:
In this blog post, I’d like to give you a few examples related to PowerShell Background Jobs to build upon. Let’s jump in.
Let’s say I want to ping a few computers. This consumes time. So I want that this task runs in the background as a PowerShell background job.
Outside of practicing for a certification, I don’t remember the last time I willingly chose to run something as a background job, either in Powershell or bash. The concept is still useful (especially if I’m on an SSH connection or have direct terminal access), though in a UI-driven world, I’d just open a new terminal tab.
Comments closed