A call comes in to the DBA from Help Desk. There is an urgent problem with a reporting application; unhappy users say that their screens are “frozen”, and not because of an overactive A/C vent. Some have reported seeing a timeout issue related to SQL. Is it a blocking problem? As a DBA, if blocking Read more
Many organizations are experiencing rapid expansion and diversification of their SQL Server estate to include Cloud, VMWare and other platforms, alongside traditional on-premise servers. This article explains the basic architecture and components of SQL Monitor, and then how to set up a distributed monitoring solution. It will allow a single administrative team to manage and Read more
Over 600 technology professionals who work in organizations that use SQL Server recently responded to our survey to discover the current state of SQL Server monitoring. We asked people across a range of sectors, in organizations of every size around the globe, about how they monitor SQL Server, the technologies they work with, and what Read more
Whatever development methodology you use, you must check on the quality of the code before releasing a version of a database. This isn’t just a general check for ‘technical debt’ or code smells; you must also make sure that queries are not hogging resources on the server. A common crime is the unnecessary overuse of Read more
If you’re using SQL Server’s Read Committed Snapshot Isolation level (RCSI), to avoid long waits for a blocked resource, caused by transactions being held open for too long, then you’ll want to monitor for possible side effects. Usually, the overhead of using RCSI is not significant compared to the performance benefits of alleviating blocking, but Read more
Deadlocks can occur when two or more sessions inside of the database engine are waiting for access to locked resources held by each other. Technically, a deadlock can be viewed as a circular locking chain, because every process (SPID) in the blocking chain will be waiting for one or more other processes in that same Read more
Today Microsoft released the public preview of Azure SQL Database Managed Instances – an exciting new option for running SQL Server workloads in the cloud. I’m pleased to say that initial support for this new offering is already available across the development tools in Redgate’s SQL Toolbelt, as well as in SQL Monitor. This support Read more
There is nothing wrong with the principle of using ad-hoc queries; one can use them occasionally and perfectly legitimately. However, when ad-hoc queries run as part of a processes that does database operations iteratively, row-by-agonizing-row, they can be one of the most unremitting ways of sapping the performance of a SQL Server instance. You need Read more
The increasing size of SQL Server databases, alongside the growing complexity of SQL Server estates, is making more organizations realize the need for a tool that enables proactive monitoring. Hand-rolled scripts can provide basic information, like wait stats and memory utilization, but that’s often not enough. With the database a key element of business operations, Read more
In recent weeks, the IT industry has learned of two serious processor vulnerabilities, Meltdown and Spectre, which an attacker can exploit to obtain information to which they should not have access: specifically, information cached in the operating system kernel’s private memory. I’ve included references at the end, for in-depth technical descriptions of the vulnerabilities, which Read more
