How Do You Track IT Resources? Recently I overheard some colleagues talking about allocating IP addresses to servers, some physical and some virtual. I have also been documenting some different environments myself consisting of multiple servers per environment, some with multiple IP addresses per server. The thought occurred to me this might be a good topic to open up for […]

Turn On Auto Create Statistics In response to the previous editorial, Maurice, one of our most frequent contributing readers, provides this insight from his personal experience. In one of our development team, there was a practice of not turning on auto create statistics option at database level. There was a fear of slowing queries, which is a misconception I will […]

Index Optimization and Statistics Appropriate indexes are often critical for optimal query performance. Looking on the internet for directives for index optimization can be pretty helpful. Here is an interesting Conundrum for any DBA. One site tells you to create multiple indexes on individual columns for performance; SQL Server will join the different indexes as necessary and utilize the intersection […]

The cloud changes how you approach your systems, there’s no doubt. For the near-term, and possibly medium term, we’ll have predominantly hybrid solutions running. This means that you’ll still be managing those systems you have in-house PLUS the systems in the cloud. No problem. Some changes, but in many cases adding to, not reducing responsibilities. I continue to hear though […]

Performance Monitor Counters There are many good blogs, white papers, and support tools available on the internet helping you measure the performance of your Windows and SQL Server services. Using the Performance Monitor utility in Windows you can gather metrics about so many aspects of your server enabling you to identify areas with good or bad performance characteristics. The majority […]

Is TechNet a Big Deal? Based on the feedback we have received it appears that TechNet has been an essential resource for many. Ed: For me this means no more test lab at home. I can justify the cost of TechNet for a test lab, but I cannot justify the cost of MSDN. I can justify the time needed to […]

–Microsoft to Retire TechNet Subscriptions I first started using TechNet in 1991. My company was exploring this new concept of Client/Server, having been entrenched in Main Frame systems, and was not willing to invest thousands of dollars in hardware and software for a learning exercise. As a result, they used the first release of SQL Server, still owned by Sybase, […]

We’re really looking forward to getting the conference kicked off tomorrow morning, right here online. You can attend technical sessions, chat with presenters live, get information about the things that others have experienced and so much more. There is no sales allowed when it comes to producing these sessions, so you know there are technical tidbits galore. Today’s the last […]

Application Logging with XML I ran a series of editorials a while back on application logging. We considered what kinds of data and events needed to be logged. Some shared techniques used to maintain a history of changes, or log events. Today Scott is catching up with his old Email and shares with us some experience he has had using […]

Scott Shaw has created a session on this very topic – check it out here. Unless you’re in a very unique situation systems-wise, I think it’s very clear that the cloud and cloud-based services, will be changing how we manage systems. In some cases it will be hybrid clouds like what we’re seeing support for from Microsoft and others. In […]