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Security is a confusing topic to many, especially when it comes to understanding what rights are needed to monitor and use SQL Server Agent. This article will examine the rights and roles used for SQL Server Agent, as well as the security context requirements for jobs.  Read more...

SQL Server Hardware will provide the fundamental knowledge and resources you need to make intelligent decisions about choice, and optimal installation and configuration, of SQL Server hardware, operating system and the SQL Server RDBMS.  Read more...

Greg Larsen provides a quick primer of the new Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) to help you better understand and manage your In-Memory OLTP tables and your Instances that support In-Memory OLTP tables.  Read more...

In this article, I’ll attempt to “convince” you that every SQL Server you put into production should be a SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI).  Read more...

Robyn Page's crib sheet was a Simple-Talk classic, providing a terse but thorough roadmap of all of the important SQL Server backup-related considerations. It returns, newly revised for SQL Server 2014.  Read more...

This metric is useful if you want to know exactly how much physical space a particular table is taking up, including the size of its indexes. If a database is growing quickly within a short time and you suspect a certain table is responsible, you can monitor its actual size, or the rate at which it is increasing.  Read more...

SQL Server 2014 comes with a set of enhancements as compared to its processors that brings a lot of business benefits to the applications in OLTP and OLAP environments. This articles highlights a few key enhancements that are built into the product.  Read more...

I want to embed code into my SQL Server Reporting Servers (SSRS) to allow special formatting for report output. How do I implement and deploy this code and what functionality can use this embedded code?  Read more...

Use Powershell to create a single script that checks over your server and every SQL instance on it to help pinpoint problems.  Read more...

Originally one of the articles in the first DBA Team series, Grant wonders what Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett would have done if asked to write technical articles for Simple-Talk. He came up with the DBA detective, hard-boiled Joe Dee Beay.  Read more...

I had to do some performance testing for an upcoming MSSQLTips article and I thought I’d share the framework I...  Read more...