Too Much Data
Are you managing too much data? Lots of data professionals feel that way, but fortunately "Big Data" is in the news and bringing more visibility to the challenges we face on a daily basis.
Designing Databases for Rapid Resilience
As the volume of data increases, DBAs need to plan more actively for rapid restores in the event of failure. For this, the intelligent use of filegroups is important, particularly when the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server offers the hope of online restores. How, though, should you arrange your data on the different filegroups? What happenens if the primary filegroup gets corrupted? Why backup and restore indexes?
Monitoring is Essential
One of the keys to better availability, scalability, and performance on your systems is understanding what is happening in the instances. That requires monitoring, which Steve Jones sees as essential.
The Art of SQL Server FILESTREAM by Jacob Sebastian and Sven Aelterman
FILESTREAM is implemented as an extension to the VARBINARY(MAX) data type and allows large object data to be stored in a special folder on the NTFS file system, while bringing that data under the transactional control of SQL Server. This book describes both the way it works and the implementation, administration and troubleshooting of it.
The Data We Give Away
We're all used to storing and protecting data, but how often to we consider the data we're generating every day?
Viewing VMware Counters in PerfMon for SQL Server
I want to ensure that my SQL Server on a VMware Guest OS is getting the resources it should. This would go a long way towards helping isolate the performance problems we're experiencing. However, our system administrators won't give us access to VirtualCenter or any of the tools they use. Is there anything I can do? Check out this tip to learn more.
Reading SQL Server's Transaction Log
This article shows how you can read the [RowLog Contents] in the Transaction Log, for Real!
What Do You Want from SQL in the City?
After the SQL in the City tour wrapped up this week in Seattle, Steve Jones looks back and asks a question. What type of training would be best for you.
Blogs
Moving On-Prem PostgreSQL to the Cloud: Picking the Right Path for Big Tables
Every PostgreSQL migration eventually hits the same fork in the road. The database is...
A Spread of Vacation
By Steve Jones
I’m off on vacation today. Which is a little weird as I just got...
How AgentDBA Identifies Backup Failures
By Arun Sirpal
Every DBA has a box like this. Sitting untouched for months. Nobody’s proud of...
Forums
Have you done a Mid year check in?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Have you done a Mid...
From SQL Server On-Premises to Claude Desktop: How I built a Full MCP Pipeline
Comments posted to this topic are about the item From SQL Server On-Premises to...
Independence Day 2026
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Independence Day 2026
Question of the Day
Independence Day 2026
In the original Independence Day movie (1996), what type of computer did Jeff Goldblum use to connect to the alien mainframe? Take a guess, don't look it up or ask AI.
See possible answers