I recently had the need to move the quorum for a cluster to a new SAN drive.  It’s a quite simple thing to do, but some of the options and locations of the cluster resources itself are a little hidden in Windows 2008.  Let’s just walk through the basic steps. Read more

Depending on whether you’re (A) me, or (B) you, the next few weeks are either (A) an insanely busy but enjoyable period of imparting knowledge, or (B) a wonderful opportunity to hear me speak at any of several different venues.

Here’s the summary:

7/27 4:45PM CST - EDMPASS. 

7/29… Read more

Here is a common got-ya.  You are modifying the cube dimension security for a role-playing dimension.  You make the changes and the cube processes successfully.  But when you try to connect to the cube, you get the following error message: The ‘XXX’ attribute in the ‘YYY’ dimension has a generated… Read more

Just a few notes about things I’m doing over the next few months:

• July 30 – Attending SQLSaturday Birmingham. I went to their first one and had to skip last year, great to have time to go back to see one of my favorite SQL groups
• Aug 13 – Making…

Read more

I can’t believe it, but I can finally say that I’m now officially a Microsoft SQL Server MVP! Last week I got the great news from my MVP lead, Ryan Bolz (Twitter) in…a peculiar way. Allow me to explain. Typically MVP renewals and new awardees are notified… Read more

It has been while since I wrote anything on my contracting blog but over the past month or so I have had several  questions from people who are thinking about their future and what they want from their career. This includes people thinking about both permanent and contract work.

Whether… Read more

This is part of a series of tips on how bad/rogue admins can get access to the data in your SQL Servers.

Sooner or later a SQL Server is going to need maintenance. This could simply be automatic patching for security vulnerabilities. Now I realize that there are some environments… Read more

On Wednesday 13th July at 16:06 (GMT) I got what could only be described as the biggest shock of my 31 years on this planet – an email from the Exceptional DBA Awards 2011 saying that I’d made it as one of the final five! To say it’s an honour… Read more

I’ve spent some time trying to get the SMO Transfer class to bend to my will. I want to script out all objects of a certain type or a select list of objects. As we will see a moment this was a bit a of challenge and it wasn’t until… Read more

There was a lengthy discussion on Twitter this morning, where one of my friends, Grant Fritchey (Twitter) was asking the community for suggestions about a good hardware setup that would enable him to run two to three concurrent virtual machines, all running SQL Server. My initial thoughts ran… Read more

Presentation and scripts from my Storing Powershell Output session at the South Florida 2011 IT Camp:

Read more

Introduction

Most of us who are regularly working with SSRS have always felt the need of some way through which multiple DataSets could be joined – something similar to JOINs of SQL. But there was no straight forward way to get it done in SSRS until the release of… Read more

The 2011 version of SQLSaturday Orlando (officially SQLSaturday #85), a joint effort between Orlando's PASS chapters OPASS and MagicPASS, is taking place on September 24 at Seminole State College. The call for speakers is open through July 24 and there are still spots available. We've got two ways… Read more

Last night I received an e-mail letting me know that I’ll be presenting at SQL Saturday #84 in Kalamazoo, MI.  Besides myself, this is shaping up to be quite an event.  The schedule of sessions and list of speakers has been published.

I’ll be presenting on the following… Read more

MDX can be extended with Visual Basic functions like the FORMAT() and NOW() functions to dynamically generate the current year, month or date member. For example, it can be used as part of a named set to generate current year budget and actuals. It can also be used as part… Read more

“vNext” is the codename Microsoft has chosen for the next version of the Visual Studio.

A big feature is improving the application lifecycle management (ALM) process.  Check out this pdf “Visual Studio VNext: Application Lifecyle Managment” or the video The Future of Microsoft Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management or the… Read more

Just short of the winter solstice, I bailed out of a freezing cold Johannesburg for warmer climates; well, actually for London where the weather could almost have been mistaken for a South African winter, except much wetter.

However I wasn’t going to London for the weather (fortunately), nor even for… Read more

I have been building dashboard using Reporting Services (SSRS) for a client of mine. The dashboard is going to be used to display useful information on their SQL Server instance, the information contained in the reports will be retrieved from DMVs. Information like the SQL Server wait types, information on… Read more

As I mentioned in the introductory post, I’m summarizing posts from previous years in the the past week.  Oddly enough, in four years of blogging I’ve not blogged in this week before – guess I’ll need to do something about that.

Maybe they’ll be better luck next week…

Related… Read more

This is part of a series of tips on how bad/rogue admins can get access to the data in your SQL Servers.

The service account for SQL Server is a member of the sysadmin role. This is required. And one would think that if you follow all the best practices… Read more