SQL Server will autogrow your databases as they run out of space. But the process doesn't manage space, nor does it check the free space on the drive. Allowing autogrow to grow unchecked and unmanaged will eventually use up all the free disk space and potentially crash your server. New author Mark Nash brings you his system for monitoring space usage and generating a report that eases this process.
What counters should you monitor to baseline your servers? Which ones for checking performance? It's an interesting question and one that always leads Steve Jones to a wide range of sources in print and on the web. Steve compiled his own list and finally has put some words around the list to give some justification of why they are chosen. Read on and see how this compares to your list (you do have a list don't you?).
Preferred node setting facilitates instances on traditional cluster to be on the correct nodes which will lead to load-balancing of the resources.
Joe has a bunch of small, easy to use scripts that can definitely be the beginning of a great set of monitoring tool. Amazing how much info you can gather with a little bit of code!
Every Database Administrator, developer, report writer, and anyone else who writes T-SQL to access SQL Server data, must understand how to read and interpret execution plans. This book leads you right from the basics of capturing plans, through how to interrupt them in their various forms, graphical or XML, and then how to use the information you find there to diagnose the most common causes of poor query performance, and so optimize your SQL queries, and improve your indexing strategy.
Setting up SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) based performance dashboard driven off servers that are registered through a Central Management Server (CMS).
Using hints in a query is something that most DBAs don't ever seem to bother with, but when they do, NOLOCK seems to be their hint of choice. Wayne Fillis brings us a detailed examination of how this particular hint actually affects the performance of your system.
A look at the good, and bad, of the IoT world along with the potential future.
Learn how to examine and read a SQL Server execution plan in this article. This is the third part of a short series from Darren White that examines execution plans and imparts the basics on an important skill for DBA's and SQL developers alike.
If you are using row level security in SQL Server 2016 you might find users are updating or inserting rows of data that keep them from seeing the row after they have performed the update or insert statement. If you want to prevent this from occurring, you can use a blocking predicate.
By Steve Jones
AI is a big deal in 2026, and at Redgate, we’re experimenting with how...
By Steve Jones
Another of our values: The facing page has this quote: “We admire people who...
By Ed Elliott
Running tSQLt unit tests is great from Visual Studio but my development workflow...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server 2025 Standard Developer...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item URL Safe or Not?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item No Defaults Passwords Ever
If I use BASE4_ENCODE() in SQL Server 2025, is the output URL Safe by default?
See possible answers