Automate Your Backup and Restore Tasks

A new article that shows how you can automate a basic function that many environments need: the backup of a production database and the restore on a development system.

Drive Space Monitoring Gets An Update

Monitoring drive space is something every DBA ought to be doing. Shaun Stuarts brings us a method that can easily be used to keep track of your SQL Server instance

Partition offset and allocation unit size of a disk for SQL Server

SQL Server performance is dependent on the server resources available and disk performance is probably the most important resource. To maximize disk performance for SQL Server, I've always been told that the drive's partition offset must be set to 32K and the allocation unit size set to 64K for partitions that hold data and 8K for partitions that hold logs. How do I find out the allocation unit size and partition offset for my drives?

System Databases

How to execute a DOS command when xp_cmdshell is disabled

For security reasons many sites disable the extended stored procedure xp_cmdshell, which is used to run DOS commands or executables. When you really have to run a DOS command or an executable from a stored procedure how can you get around this limitation without a breakdown in security.

Can you set a pagefile more than 4GB?

Can you set a pagefile on a Windows machine to more than 4GB? Stanley Chan shows us how after an issue with a crashed Windows machine.

Run SQL Command Against Multiple Instances Without CMS

I understand that I can use Central Management Servers to run a T/SQL query against multiple instances at once - can I do this without CMS though?

SQL Server restart validation checklist

Many times there is the need to restart the SQL Server services, this could be a reboot of the server after patching, service pack installation or due to some other reason. Sometimes we may face issues after the restart for example the SPN is not registered, a database is offline etc... For the solution you can use the below standard SQL Server validation checklist after you restart your SQL services.

SQL Q&A: Shrinking, Growing and Redesigning Databases

SQL databases come in all shapes and sizes and schemas. This month, our SQL expert helps with condensing, growing and redesigning databases.

Issues with running DBCC SHRINKFILE on your data files

Why would database performance remain low and fragmentation high event though the entire database has been defragmented every night? In this tip we cover how SHRINKFILE works and some of the issues it might create.