http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Articles tagged Administering, Configuring posted on SQLServerCentral.comen-us360sjones@sqlservercentral.com (Steve Jones)Sizing a database can be one of the most arduous tasks a DBA, analyst or developer must attend to. It?s time consuming and more hours go into analyzing the database than actually sizing it. This article focuses on how to monitor the database?s growth after its deployed and contains some tips on how to size it before deployment. We will also dive a little into how to benchmark your database against a robust data load. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/sizingadatabase/383/2008/08/01http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/sizingadatabase/383/What's the best way to change the default backup directory for a server, using SSMS or Enterprise Manager, without changing all the default directories at the same time? What is the TSQL to do it? A prize for the best correct solution.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/2948/2007/04/06http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/2948/The SQL Server tools are top notch and often other platforms attempt to duplicate their handiness. Enterprise Manager is one that every DBA uses and it can perform a myriad of functions to configure your server. Read this new article by Dale Elizabeth Corey that looks that the wide range of items in the Configuration Properties of this tool. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/exploringsqlserver2000configurationproperties/1493/2006/09/29http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/exploringsqlserver2000configurationproperties/1493/Sizing a database can be one of the most arduous tasks a DBA, analyst or developer must attend to. It?s time consuming and more hours go into analyzing the database than actually sizing it. This article focuses on how to monitor the database?s growth after its deployed and contains some tips on how to size it before deployment. We will also dive a little into how to benchmark your database against a robust data load. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/sizingadatabase/383/2008/08/01http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/sizingadatabase/383/Attaching and detaching databases is old hat these days right? Do you know how to reattach a database that has more than 16 files? Or do you know what happens if you try to reattach a database that had two log files but one is missing/deleted? And even if you know the answer to that - do you know how to fix it without restoring from backup? Maybe it's not ALL old hat just yet! http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/attachanddetachagain/656/2006/06/23http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/attachanddetachagain/656/How do you easily copy DTS packages from one server to another? DTS, BCP, T-SQL? Are there advantages to using one method over another? Andy did some research - read the article and see what works and what doesn't! http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/copyingdtspackagestoadifferentserver/638/2006/05/05http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/copyingdtspackagestoadifferentserver/638/Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2000 is huge. There are significant changes in it and they apply to all three products: the core SQL Server, MSDE, and Analysis Services. Because there are so many changes, this first article in the series will only focus on the security changes. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Service+Packs/sp3coresecurity/907/2005/12/09http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Service+Packs/sp3coresecurity/907/In part one Chris Kempster covered a variety of security recommendations primarily for production systems. In Part two of this series he continues to explore security at a variety of levels where you may not realize you are vulnerable. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/securitypart2/593/2005/11/04http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/securitypart2/593/As a DBA you do not need to know how to setup an Active Directory domain or a DNS server, but you still need to know how Kerberos, Service Principle Names, and hostnames are used to perform integrated authentication to a SQL Server. This article by new columnist Chad Miller shows you some of the more integral parts of troubleshooting running Windows Authentication security in a SQL Server environmnet. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Installation/cannotgeneratesspicontext/929/2005/08/19http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Installation/cannotgeneratesspicontext/929/Article number four in this popular series continues exposing Worst Practices! This week Andy continues his tirade by talking about why case sensitive databases should be BANNED from the planet. Is he right or just OUT OF CONTROL? Read the article and join the discussion - your comment may lead to an article, that's what generated this one! http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/worstpracticesmakingdatabasescasesensitiveoranythi/489/2005/07/08http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/worstpracticesmakingdatabasescasesensitiveoranythi/489/Do you use the maintenance plans or hate them? Wish they would do more? Curious about how they work under the hood? Cmon, you gotta read this one! Trust us, it's not another "how-to" article! Well, maybe just a little bit! http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/sqlmaintenanceplans/663/2005/03/04http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/sqlmaintenanceplans/663/Mindy explores the metadata stored in SQL 2000 to show you how to produce a simple and useful data dictionary! http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Installation/datadictionaryfromwithinsqlserver2000/607/2005/02/04http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Installation/datadictionaryfromwithinsqlserver2000/607/In this article, Brian Kelley continues his series on Query Analyzer for SQL Server 2000. Query Analyzer offers a highly configurable integrated development environment (IDE). Some of the areas Brian looks at are how to modify the fonts and colors, set connection settings, choose scripting options, and customizing file and result set options. Learn how to make the most of the IDE and make it work for you. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/qa2k_3/740/2005/01/07http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/qa2k_3/740/The SQL Server tools are top notch and often other platforms attempt to duplicate their handiness. Enterprise Manager is one that every DBA uses and it can perform a myriad of functions to configure your server. Read this new article by Dale Elizabeth Corey that looks that the wide range of items in the Configuration Properties of this tool. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/exploringsqlserver2000configurationproperties/1493/2006/09/29http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/exploringsqlserver2000configurationproperties/1493/Good enough for your bookshelf? This one meets that requirement for Brian, click the link to find out why. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/reviewofsql2kresourcekit/1329/2004/04/13http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/reviewofsql2kresourcekit/1329/Do you have the need for more speed on your servers? How do you go about squeezing more speed out of the database when faced with an upgrade? Steve Jones walks through some of his thought process when looking at ugprade for one of his servers. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/theneedforspeedupgradingyourservers/1320/2004/03/30http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/theneedforspeedupgradingyourservers/1320/In part one Chris Kempster covered a variety of security recommendations primarily for production systems. In Part two of this series he continues to explore security at a variety of levels where you may not realize you are vulnerable. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/securitypart2/593/2005/11/04http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/securitypart2/593/Andy continues writing about replication, this week discussing the many options available when creating a snapshot publication. As we noted on his last article, this one may take longer than usual to load due the large number of images but we think the readability of having it all one page is worth while. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/snapshotreplicationforthebeginner/886/2004/01/27http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/snapshotreplicationforthebeginner/886/We've asked Andy to put together some articles that tackle replication from a beginner perspective, a tutorial type approach PLUS comments on what you should or should not do. This week he covers the steps needed to set up a server for replication. More images than usual so the page may take a little longer to load, but we think worthwhile so that you can see every step along the way. Let us know what you think. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/gettingreadytoreplicate/883/2004/01/20http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/gettingreadytoreplicate/883/Everyone does demos. Selling software relies upon people viewing your software in action and being confident it will work. Managing a demo server can be a challenge and this series will look at different problems and options you have. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Installation/buildingademoserver/864/2004/01/14http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Installation/buildingademoserver/864/Get started with using WMI (Windows Mgmt Instrumentation) by seeing two good scripts to start with, one to reboot the server, another to list all the services. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/usingwmi/1235/2003/12/23http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/usingwmi/1235/New book! This new book by Ken Henderson (author of other 'GURU' books abou SQL) promises an all inclusive approach to the internals. Sample chapters and other info available by following the link. We'll try to get a review up soon!http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1184/2003/11/17http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1184/Andy returns to the Worst Practice series this week with a short article looking at how connection strings in applications affect what you see in sysprocesses. Perhaps less controversial (in our opinion) that some of the other worst practices, this is something easy to fix and definitely worth fixing! Read the article and post a comment - explore other points of view! Readers posting a comment will be entered in a drawing for a copy of the SQL Server 2000 Resource Kit. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/worstpracticebadconnectionstringsandbadinfoinsyspr/802/2003/08/01http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/worstpracticebadconnectionstringsandbadinfoinsyspr/802/Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2000 is huge. There are significant changes in it and they apply to all three products: the core SQL Server, MSDE, and Analysis Services. Because there are so many changes, this first article in the series will only focus on the security changes. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Service+Packs/sp3coresecurity/907/2005/12/09http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Service+Packs/sp3coresecurity/907/Seagate has a white paper out that discusses how faster (15k rpm) drives can lead to lower cost of ownership. Interesting, and worth looking into. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/983/2003/05/08http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/983/New author! Mike Pearson discusses how auto close was at the root of a performance problem he was troubleshooting, how you can check your servers easily, and discusses why both auto close and auto shrink are bad ideas in a production environment. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/autocloseandautoshrinkjustdont/984/2003/05/05http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/autocloseandautoshrinkjustdont/984/A monster book at 980 pages, it's written in 'how-to' format and has a ton of good material. Andy gave it the once over for us and reports back - see what he thinks! http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Installation/reviewofsql2000fastanswers/959/2003/04/18http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Installation/reviewofsql2000fastanswers/959/Joseph recently had to upgrade a server from 4g to 8g of memory. Read how he did it and learn about some interesting aspects of AWE. For example, if you have 6.5g configured for use by SQL, how will task manager show used by sqlserver.exe? http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/aweadventures/960/2003/04/16http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/aweadventures/960/Have you ever had the problem where a user ran a query against your SQL Serer and crashed it or made the server unusable since the CPU was spiked at 100%? A SQL Server black box is the equivalent of a flight data record. The black box records all queries being passed to your SQL Server and other useful information like errors. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/blackbox/954/2003/04/11http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/blackbox/954/This week we have another article from Andy that discusses some changes he made at work in conjunction with clustering all his database servers. Not a how-to, just comments about what was changed and why. Worth reading just for the reminder about the potential gotcha that @@ServerName can represent. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/standardsareagoodthing/951/2003/04/09http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/standardsareagoodthing/951/