Why You Need a SQL DBA or Consultant
Many organizations do not have in-house DBAs. This can be due to a number of reasons. Most commonly it is smaller organizations that cannot justify a full time DBA....
2024-09-16
7 reads
Tim Radney - Database Professional
Your SQL Server is Slow, What To Look At
As a data professional, you’ll often get a phone call, email, or trouble ticket that says “SQL Server is slow, my query is slow, or things are slow”. This...
2024-08-12
7 reads
Risk with Not Patching and Upgrading SQL Server
Working with SQL Server over the past 25 years for various organizations all over the world, I usually always find a database server that is well outside of support....
2024-07-15
31 reads
Purging SQL Server Backup History
It seems like every few weeks I come across a database server with a very large msdb. After a small amount of investigation work, I determine that the largest...
2024-06-10
13 reads
Getting Error 64 When Trying To Connect to SQL Server or Azure
Often times when working with a client, I’ll run into issues or get emails from a client with a message like the following: A connection was successfully established with...
2024-05-14
16 reads
Why Test SQL Server Backups
For a lot of us data professional types, this seems like a silly topic, however I constantly hear of companies that aren’t testing their backups by restoring them, or...
2024-04-23
8 reads
#ThankfulThursday
Wednesday March 13th 2024 I had the honor of speaking at the Redgate Summit in Atlanta and got to meet a lot of new people and get to hang...
2024-03-20 (first published: 2024-03-15)
130 reads
There Is Insufficient Free Space on Disk Volume To Create the Database
I have been involved in countless database migrations. Most of the time I have access to the existing source servers and future destination servers. In cases where you have...
2024-02-26 (first published: 2024-02-15)
474 reads
Getting Started With SQL Server Always Encrypted
Azure SQL Database and SQL Server 2016 introduced a new security feature for SQL Server databases called Always Encrypted. Always Encrypted is a feature designed to protect sensitive data,...
2024-02-19 (first published: 2024-02-04)
565 reads
Careful When Changing SQL Server Database File Extensions
I recently had a friend reach out to me about database performance dropping drastically. I asked if anything had changed recently on the server, and they told me that all...
2024-01-08
13 reads
Blogs
What’s New at AWS re:Invent 2025 – Day 1 Highlights
Day 1 is an absolute thrill at re:Invent! I normally dedicate this dynamic day...
Running SQL Server on KubeVirt – Getting Started
With all the changes that have happened with VMware since the Broadcom acquisition I...
Why is shrinking IT budgets a good thing?
Each year around this time, companies enter the familiar ritual of budgeting. For many,...
Forums
Best analysis approach to reduce data type length in multiple tables
Hello SSC, I hope everyone is having a happy and safe holiday season! I...
Do you separate data/log files and TempDB files on different disks using AWS EC2
Hello, I am receiving multiple direction on deploying SQL Servers in AWS EC2. ...
Service account being in local admin in AWS EC2 environment?
Hello, I am working with a company on their database administration. I am trying...
Question of the Day
A New Operator
In SQL Server 2025, what does this code return?
SELECT '1' || '0'See possible answers