Working with SQL Server over the past 25 years for various organizations all over the world, I usually always find a database server that is well outside of support. I’d be willing to be that anyone reading this blog post in 2024 knows of a SQL 2000 or SQL 2005 instance out there. I hear […]
Purging SQL Server Backup History
It seems like every few weeks I come across a database server with a very large msdb. After a small amount of investigation work, I determine that the largest tables consuming the most space are all related to backup history. I typically only keep 30 days of backup history but I’ve seen as little as […]
Getting Error 64 When Trying To Connect to SQL Server or Azure
Often times when working with a client, I’ll run into issues or get emails from a client with a message like the following: A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the pre-login handshake. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 – The specified network name is no longer available.) (Microsoft […]
Why Test SQL Server Backups
For a lot of us data professional types, this seems like a silly topic, however I constantly hear of companies that aren’t testing their backups by restoring them, or don’t have proper backups at all.
#ThankfulThursday
Wednesday March 13th 2024 I had the honor of speaking at the Redgate Summit in Atlanta and got to meet a lot of new people and get to hang out with several good friends. I’ll be posting about that in a few days. A small group of us went out for dinner after the event […]
There Is Insufficient Free Space on Disk Volume To Create the Database
I have been involved in countless database migrations. Most of the time I have access to the existing source servers and future destination servers. In cases where you have access to both environments, it is very easy to evaluate and clean up any issues with the source databases. In situations where you are only provided […]
Getting Started With SQL Server Always Encrypted
Azure SQL Database and SQL Server 2016 introduced a new security feature for SQL Server databases called Always Encrypted. Always Encrypted is a feature designed to protect sensitive data, such as national/regional identification numbers (Social Security numbers for those in the USA), credit card numbers, and other highly sensitive types of data. Always Encrypted allows […]
Careful When Changing SQL Server Database File Extensions
I recently had a friend reach out to me about database performance dropping drastically. I asked if anything had changed recently on the server, and they told me that all they had done was increase the number of files for tempdb from 1 to 8 per best practice. Knowing that this shouldn’t have a negative impact […]