Today I will talk about a book  titled  ” Windows PowerShell 3.0 Step by Step” by Ed Wilson;O’Reilly Media, Inc.

When I first heard that Ed Wilson is writing a book on Windows PowerShell I was greatly excited. I am a great fan of PowerShell and by all means… Read more

That was indeed a great day at Redmond. I had a great time talking to some of the best SQLServer minds and learned something new.

It all started with a wonderful keynote by Buck Woody(B/T),and he delivered quite an interesting talk on SQLServer history. A journey… Read more

This is my first SQLSaturday and I’m super excited to attend this event.

SQLSaturday’s are always a great opportunity to learn something exciting, and shake hands with those people who are really passionate about SQLServer.

SQLSat212 has got some good sessions and I’m looking forward to have a great time… Read more

I’m generally not a great fan of Activity Monitor which is built in with SSMS,however today I wanted to check some processes details and opened Activity Monitor after a long long time.

Straight away I was struck with this error.

By using the ‘Show Technical Details’ button I tried to… Read more

Today I will discuss about an issue which was observed while creating a linked server via script.

The existing linked server was scripted out from a SQL2005 instance and the same script was used to create a linked server under a SQL2012(SP1/CU2) instance.

This a common procedure to follow… Read more

A short and sweet post for a gorgeous morning -

Have you seen a file with extension .wrk in the log shipping copy folder ?

What is this all about, Curious? Then here is the answer -

When the transaction log backup files are copied from the primary server to… Read more

Here comes CU 3 (Build 11.0.3349.0.) for SQLServer 2012 SP1. You can download the same from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2812412

Similar to CU2 there are some interesting hotfixes which are included in this CU release, and its worth testing it out.

The ones which attracted my attention are -

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CU2 for SQLServer 2012 SP1 is one key update which you should review and deploy if found necessary. I have found this very much needed for all my SQL2012 SP1 deployments. This CU contains a very important fix(KB2793634).

Note - The choice to deploy CU2 or just the fix (KB2793634)… Read more

Adding a linked server is an easy task which can be done at any point of time. I was under this same assumption until I came across a strange scenario.

Here is the scenario for you all.

Use SSMS to create a New Linked Server and choose provider as ‘Oracle… Read more

Would you love to get a weekly status report of all the databases hosted on your mission critical servers? ,Would you love to get a report which will help you maintain and manage your large shared SQLServer environments neat and clean?

If your answer is Yes, then powershell is your… Read more

This post is a quick tip to find the version of Windows Installer installed on your box.

You might wonder why I ever need to check this version, so here is my small story -

Today I was installing SQLServer 2008 Upgrade advisor for a Windows Server 2003(SP2) box(Pretty old… Read more

Last month I wrote about leveraging policy based management for regular DBA compliance checks. You can read that post here.

Policy based management(PBM) is indeed one of my favorite features. I normally like to play around exploring more and more about it, and eventually end up learning something new(Yay!). Read more

Page Verify = Checksum is one option which I like all my servers to be compliant. By default all the new databases which gets created will have page verify = checksum as this option is inherited from the model database.

NOTE – APPLICABLE FROM SQL2005 AND ABOVE.

SELECT name,page_verify_option_desc FROM…

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This post is not a detailed explanation of DBCC Memorystatus for SQL2012,but a quick observation I made recently for the node Process/System counters.

This is one area to look at under DBCC Memorystatus output to get a quick snap shot of the current state of memory and understand if… Read more

Lets start New Year with a very simple yet useful topic.

I am a big fan of out of box reporting capabilities of SSMS. Some of the reports are really useful.

One of the reports which I really like is the Top Jobs report. This one can be pulled by… Read more

Year 2012 was super special for me in many ways. Made lot of new friends, Attended SQLPASS Summit 2012 and had the privilege to meet and greet #SQLfamily members, New learnings, Multiple SQL2012 deployments, Lot of writing and Loads of fun !!!

All about resolutions -

One of the major… Read more

“ReFS”, this term was absolutely new to me when I was reading this white paper from Microsoft ‘Storage Windows Server 2012′.

ReFS is the next gen file system from Microsoft, and available in Windows Server 2012.

Here are some of the key ReFS benefits and capabilities -

1. Robust… Read more

Recently I was checking the plan cache utilization with the help of the below query which I normally use for this purpose. This is written by Glenn Berry(B/T) and is available along with his SQL Server 2005 Diagnostic Information Queries.All credit goes to him.

SELECT TOP(50)…

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Registration and Check in for PASS Summit 2012 was opened yesterday (Nov 4th), and I decided to utilize this opportunity and check-in little earlier than the first day of the conference (Nov 7th).

A great benefit of completing this well before the conference day is I can avoid checking in… Read more

All roads lead to Seattle!

If you are a SQLServer professional, then you don’t want to miss this event.

Over 190 technical sessions, 2 days of pre-conf sessions with in-depth learning opportunities, networking with MVPs/Microsoft CSS/SQLCAT members! This is what PASS Summit is all about, and the great news is… Read more