I’m not coming up with a great topic for today, so I thought I would share a few of the many relational database engines I have used over the years. I started working with relational database engines while I was in college. I took a course for relational databases that used engines running on the old DEC PDP-11 computers called […]

Yesterday we talked about partitioned tables. The goal was to spread the load over multiple resources allowing for large amounts of data to be live and responsive at the same time. Spreading data over multiple tables allows the data to be stored in the most optimized state with the least amount of overhead. It also improves disaster recovery. Using partitioned […]

A couple of people have both publicly and privately written about the whole “welcome to databases” question about how you get started. A few have ended up talking about technologies to avoid, and have turned to talking about technologies that are things that are better suited for prooduction. The irony is that no one seems to agree on where the […]

As the size of your database continues to grow, the physical implementation of your disk storage become more important. This is expressed in real time performance when using the database, and disaster recovery options. One of the key ways of handling large volumes of data, especially in a single table, is the use of partitioned tables. We are going to […]

David Eaton brings us back to database fundamentals of file utilization for an SQL Server database. He writes: The fundamentals of SQL Server are still the same, spread out the data on as many disks as you can. Make sure the database design is correct and scalable. Set up filegroups to move indexes intelligently, meaning use two or more and […]

If you were mentoring someone coming out of school today and looking to work in the data platform space, what would you tell them to learn? I’m a bit curious – I was talking with some of the editorial team here this evening and we were talking through the fact that there is a lot of breadth to platform selections […]

As AZ Jim reminds us in our comments, the configuration of your disk systems matter in more ways than one. There are many ways a controller can build RAID drives, consisting of at least two disks that perform as a single disk. The more disks participating in a RAID system, the better the fault tolerance should one or more drives […]

We’re about to undertake a mission to move some databases to a PaaS environment from a SQL Server database server. Sizing is proving to be more art than science thus far… I think sometimes that SQL Server folks invented the consulting response of “it depends.” It’s the catch-all response when someone asks “how long…” or “how much…” or “why is […]

I appreciate the comments for addressing performance issues that may be based on systems out of your control as a DBA. Some suggestions rely on tools to identify bottlenecks. Others take advantage of metrics you are already able to gather from SQL Server and performance monitors built into Windows. Sometimes the issues are not with SQL Server, or Windows is […]

There are often times when you as a DBA are managing resources hosted on hardware for which you have no control, and perhaps, not even access. This can be expressed in different ways. For example, your database engine may be hosted on a virtual machine that is assigned to you. You may be administrator on the VM, but not have […]