SQL Server Premier Field Engineer Blog

This is a shared team blog of the SQL Server Premier Field Engineer team

DBCC CHECKDB Fails on a Database with files in Azure Blob Storage

Starting with SQL Server 2014 you can use SQL Server with Data Files in Microsoft Azure Blob...

Author: Carlos Reyes García Date: 09/22/2016

CPU_ID Gaps in SQL Server sys.dm_os_schedulers

We all know (or should!) that SQL Server is NUMA aware. In fact, there are certain background...

Author: Sean Gallardy Date: 09/20/2016

Where is a record really located?

Recently I had a question regarding "What happens to records when they are deleted" – so I wanted to...

Author: TimChapman Date: 09/15/2016

Finding What Availability Group Listeners Applications Are Using To Connect

Background Information While on site helping with AlwaysOn Availability Groups, it was tasked to a...

Author: Sean Gallardy Date: 09/06/2016

Learn SQL 2016 Polybase with HDP - Part 2 – Learning Polybase along with Hadoop Tutorials

In part 1, I showed you how you can create a Hortonworks sandbox and a SQL 2016 instance with...

Author: SQLGardner Date: 09/02/2016

Learn SQL 2016 Polybase with HDP - Part 1 - Build the Environment

I have been working with Polybase in Parallel Data Warehouse for a few years now, so I was quite...

Author: SQLGardner Date: 08/30/2016

What Does Installing Polybase Add to My SQL Server?

In this post, I want to show you some of the components that are added to your SQL Server when you...

Author: SQLGardner Date: 08/29/2016

Azure SQL Database Migration Performance

TLDR -> If you are like me, this section will be all your read: Use the P11 Service Tier or...

Author: nateevenson Date: 08/26/2016

Quickly create A LOT of SQL Instances

Recently I delivered a demo on Policy Based Management for a customer.   To show this off well, I...

Author: Charlie Pyne Date: 08/17/2016

SSDT BI Gotcha on VS2015 – New Target Server Version Added to Project Properties

If you are upgrading your SSIS packages to SSDT on Visual Studio 2015, you may not notice the...

Author: SQLGardner Date: 08/16/2016

Find users under a specific database role for all the servers in my environment

Recently I was working with a customer who wanted to know all the users in their environment who had...

Author: Christopher M Schmidt Date: 08/11/2016

Azure RM: SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups Listener configuration with Azure External Load Balancer

I want to thank to Ruben Gonzalez for his guidance. This blog post explains how to configure SQL...

Author: Carlos Reyes García Date: 08/08/2016

Easier SQL Server Cluster Upgrades with Windows Server 2016!

One of the major complaints that I hear from the field has to do with how hard and time consuming it...

Author: Sean Gallardy Date: 08/03/2016

Load Testing SSAS with PowerShell

Over the years, there has been much confusion as to the best way to load test Analysis Services. I...

Author: Christopher M Schmidt Date: 07/26/2016

Getting Started with Always Encrypted Part 2

In this blog post I am going to continue discussing the new Always Encrypted feature in SQL Server...

Author: TimChapman Date: 07/19/2016

Getting Started with Always Encrypted Part 1

New to SQL Server 2016 are several new security features, each aimed at protecting your data in a...

Author: TimChapman Date: 07/12/2016

SSIS Tip: Using a Filepath Parameter for Multiple Flat Files

SSIS with SQL 2012 and above brought a lot of great enhancements to SSIS that ease deployment and...

Author: SQLGardner Date: 07/05/2016

SSRS Subscriptions (What goes on “under the hood”)

One of the more difficult features to understand/troubleshoot that I've found in my experiences...

Author: tplesuk Date: 06/20/2016

Recover database without LDF file

I recently came across a missing LDF file case that I would like to share some interesting findings....

Author: Louis Li - MCSM Data Platform Date: 01/12/2016

SQL PFE has a Pre-Con at the PASS Summit!

At the 2014 PASS Summit in Seattle on Tuesday November 4, Denzil Ribeiro and I (Tim Chapman) will be...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 10/09/2014

Generating a trusted TDE Certificate in the proper format from a Certificate Authority

I recently worked with a customer who was attempting to deploy Transparent Database Encryption using...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 02/04/2014

SQL Diagnostics Project Part 1 – Configuring Custom SQL Data Collections

This blog post will be part 1 in a multi-post series where I show you how to create your own custom...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 11/21/2013

Inadvertently Promoting a Local Transaction to a Distributed Transaction

I recently dealt with a customer issue where they were troubleshooting MSDTC, and upon hearing the...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 11/08/2013

SQL PFE PASS Content Now Available!

First off, thanks to everyone who decided to attend a Microsoft SQL PFE session at the PASS Summit...

Author: TimChapman Date: 10/21/2013

SQL PFE @ PASS Summit

I have been a long time supporter and attendee of the PASS Summit.  Last year I even had the...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 10/09/2013

Connection Pooling for the SQL Server DBA

  There are a handful of questions that DBAs get in the wild that aren’t necessarily under the...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 10/08/2013

SecurityException / ‘The process was terminated’ errors installing SQL 2008 when .Net Framework 4.0 is installed

When installing SQL 2008 on a newer OS or a machine that has .NET Framework 4.0, you can encounter...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 09/18/2013

An Approach to SQL Server Index Tuning

Well-constructed indexes can greatly improve read performance in SQL server, but they can be costly...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 09/13/2013

Forced Parameterization Can Lead to Poor Performance

Something that is a relatively common performance eye opener is when you have a large ad hoc...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 09/03/2013

Back to Basics: SQL Parameter Sniffing due to Data Skews

In Denzil’s recent post about correlating XE query_hash he alluded to a relatively common...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 08/27/2013

Correlating XE query_hash and query_plan_hash to sys.dm_exec_query_stats in order to retrieve Execution plans for high Resource statements.

Extended events is a powerful feature that allows us to troubleshoot performance issues within SQL...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 08/19/2013

Oops… I forgot to leave an empty SQL table partition, how can I split it with minimal IO impact?

One of the several advantages you get with partitioning a very large table is the ability to add or...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 08/13/2013

Timeout Error from Excel Services - “Unable to refresh data for a data connection in the workbook”

Applies to: SharePoint 2010 Excel Services, SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 Analysis Services...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 08/07/2013

Adding mount points to a WSFC SQL Cluster ( FCI ) Instance

  In this blog post I will look at how you can add a mount point to a Windows Server Failover...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 07/30/2013

How to: Restoring SQL File stream Data

It is not uncommon to have multiple copies of the same database on a single instance or to restore...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 07/23/2013

Monitoring SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups Worker Thread Consumption

In most cases, people utilize SQL Server features and capabilities in a common and typical usage...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 07/15/2013

Slice on a Calculated Member that uses the Aggregate function

Applies to: SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services, SQL Server 2008 R2...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 07/08/2013

Are my actual worker threads exceeding the sp_configure 'max worker threads' value?

Tom Stringer (@SQLife) was working on some HADR testing for a customer to simulate many availability...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 07/01/2013

Lazy Log Truncation – Clearing of SQL transaction log VLF status deferred

I came across an oddity in the transaction log when I was testing Availability Group backup...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 06/27/2013

SQL Server Resource Governor Monitoring reports

Resource Governor is an extremely cool and powerful feature that, when implemented, can manage the...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 06/20/2013

An overview of High Availability and Disaster Recovery solutions available for SQL Server

With the more recent releases of SQL 2012 and Windows 2012, we are seeing the landscape of available...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 06/15/2013

SQL Server Analysis Services Multidimensional Model – Merging Partitions with Slice

According to SQL Server Books Online: Partitions can be merged only if you meet all of the following...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 06/03/2013

Flow Control in Always On Availability Groups – what does it mean and how do I monitor it?

A question was posed to me whether Flow Control which existed in Mirroring was still relevant for...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 05/16/2013

Implications of the SQL Server Bulk Logged recovery model on point in time restores

Choosing the database recovery model is one of the more important choices DBAs have.  If the...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 05/07/2013

Compare SQL Failover Cluster Instance SQL and OS Node Versions using PowerShell

It is a common check to see if all of the nodes in a cluster are equally patched.  The reason...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 04/29/2013

Identifying the cause of SQL Server IO bottlenecks using XPerf

In a previous blog post (Troubleshooting SQL High CPU usage using Xperf), we covered the xperf...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 04/23/2013

SQL 2012 System Health Reporting Dashboard – Visualizing sp_server_diagnostics results.

We have introduced the System Health Session in SQL 2008 in order to capture some critical Events to...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 04/15/2013

Get the Active Power Plan of Multiple Servers with PowerShell

  It is a widely known and discussed performance hit when you don’t have an optimal power plan...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 04/11/2013

SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Availability groups Automatic Failover doesn’t occur or does it – A look at the logs

  I was dealing with an issue where we had an AlwaysOn availability group with 2 replicas...

Author: SQL Server Premier Field Engineering Date: 04/08/2013

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