Importance of choosing the right architecture and SQL Server Edition |
17-May-09
...it's important to look at your requirements in terms of performance, availability, etc to make the right choice of server architecture and SQL Server Edition. If you make the wrong choice, do you think your company will pay to rectify your mistake before the next round of capital-expenditure? Probably not - but you'll definitely pay for the wrong choice with several years worth of hassle trying to make the system be more performant and easily recoverable than your choices allow...
From Paul Randal's blog |
|
Are your disk partition offsets, RAID stripe sizes, and NTFS allocation units set correctly? |
13-May-09
You may not of heard about this (or your disk admins may not have heard about this) but on Windows Server 2003 and before, the default partition offset typically causes worse-than-optimal performance - and correcting it can get gains of maybe as high as 30% in terms of IO latency and duration. The SQLCAT team have just published a *fantastic* whitepaper (written by Jimmy May and Denny Lee) which explains the issue simply and clearly and shows you how to correct it. You should checkout the whitepaper at Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server...
From Paul Randal's blog
|
|
How expensive are page splits in terms of transaction log? |
12-May-09
Page splits are always thought of as expensive, but just how bad are they? In this post I want to create an example to show how much more transaction log is created when a page in an index has to split....
From Paul Randal's blog
|
|
Misconceptions around corruptions: can they disappear? |
5-May-09
subsequent runs of DBCC CHECKDB show varying numbers of corruptions, and sometimes no corruptions - what's going on? Even more strange - a maintenance job runs a DBCC CHECKDB, which shows errors, but then in the morning - no consistency errors. What?...
From Paul Randal's blog
|
|
GUIDs as PRIMARY KEYs and/or the clustering key |
5-March-09
Expanding on the topic of "are you kidding me"... one of the MOST PREVALENT problems I see today is the dreaded "GUIDs as PKs" problem. However, just to be clear, it's not [as much of a] problem that your PRIMARY KEY is a GUID as much as it is a problem that the PRIMARY KEY is probably your clustering key. They really are two things BUT the default behavior in SQL Server is that a PRIMARY KEY uses a UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX to enforce entity integrity.....
From Kim Tripp's blog
|
|
Paul Randal on RunAs Radio: "File Streams in SQL Server 2008"
" |
10-Sep-2008
Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes from RunAs Radio talk to Paul Randal about the new file stream technology in SQL Server 2008. File streams provide a solution to very large files being connected with SQL Server transactionally while still storing the files themselves in the file system, rather than the database.
MP3: here
WMA: here |
|
New Replication and Mirroring Whitepaper published for Microsoft by Paul Randal |
3-Sep-2008
A new whitepaper written by Paul Randal for Microsoft on combining database mirroring with replication has been published and can be downloaded here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/9/4/d948f981-926e-40fa-a026-5bfcf076d9b9/ReplicationAndDBM.docx
Topics covered include:
* Configuring replication in a mirrored environment
* Effect of mirroring partnership state changes on replication
* Effect of a mirroring failover on replication
* How to use LSN-based initialization to recover from the failover of a mirrored subscriber database |
|
Paul Randal on RunAs Radio: "The Involuntary DBA!" |
27-Aug-2008
Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes from RunAs Radio talk to Paul Randal about the involuntary DBA - those folks that end up being the DBA without previous training or expectations. Kim Tripp (Paul's wife) pops in here and there to support her husband's ideas.
MP3: here
WMA: here |
|
Indexing for Performance with Microsoft MVP Greg Linwood |
15-Aug-2008
If you're looking for better performance and an excellent insight into the wide range of indexing strategies then prepare to take notes during this advanced SQL Server training course because Australia's leading SQL Server performance guru Greg Linwood (MVP) will show you exactly how it's done. Read more... |
|
New TechNet Article by Paul Randal - "Top Tips for Effective Database Maintenance" |
1-Aug-2008
A feature article on Effective Database Maintenance Paul wrote for the August issue of TechNet Magazine is now live on the web. It also includes a 5 minute long screencast Paul recorded where he demo's the effect of database shrink on index fragmentation.
Read this article here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc671165.aspx |
|
Paul & Kim on TechNet Radio: "What's new in SQL 2008, Part II - Management & Troubleshooting" |
11-Mar-2008
In the second part of this two-part series, TechNet's Bryan von Axelson talks with SQL Server industry experts Kimberly Tripp and Paul S. Randal about what’s new in Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Part Two focuses on management, troubleshooting and throttling. We also have our monthly Security Bulletin.
WMA: hereMP3 High: hereMP3 Low: here |
|
Paul & Kim on TechNet Radio: "What's new in SQL 2008, Part I - Security & Availability" |
4-Mar-2008
In the second part of this two-part series, TechNet's Bryan von Axelson talks with SQL Server industry experts Kimberly Tripp and Paul S. Randal about what’s new in Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Part Two focuses on management, troubleshooting and throttling. We also have our monthly Security Bulletin.
WMA: hereMP3 High: hereMP3 Low: here |
|
|
|
|