SQL Server Updates and Lessons Learned https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/feed.xml SQL announcements, guidance, and lessons learned from the field Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:42:19 GMT en-US hourly 1 SQL Updates Newsletter – June 2018 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/sql-updates-newsletter-june-2018 Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:42:19 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlupdates/?p=555 Recent Releases and Announcements  

Troubleshooting and Issue Alerts

 

Recent Blog Posts and Articles

  • Detecting unconscious bias in models, with R
    • For a practical demonstration of one way you can go about detecting proxy bias in R, take a look at the vignette created by Paige Bailey for the ROpenSci conference. The vignette details general principles you can follow to identify proxy bias in an analysis, in the context of a case study analyzed using R.
    • The case study demonstrates predictions biased by race even though race was not explicitly included in the adaptive boosting. That's because zipcode, a variable highly associated with race, was included in the model.  Read the complete vignette to see how Paige modified the model to ameliorate that bias, while still maintaining its predictive power. All of the associated R code is available in the iPython Notebook.
    • http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2018/06/understanding-bias.html
  • TEMPDB – Files and Trace Flags and Updates, Oh My!
    • Object Allocation Contention: There are some cases where having multiple files alone does not completely address PFS contention. For these cases, we have implemented a fix where we not only round robin between the files, we also round robin between the PFS pages within the file. The tradeoff with spreading the allocations throughout the file is that a shrink operation may take longer because it will need to relocate data to the beginning of the file.
    • With this change, not only will increasing the number of files help with PFS contention, increasing the size of the files (which increases the number of PFS pages in the file) will also help.
    • Metadata Contention: Whenever we remove something from the temp table metadata cache, we need to delete the corresponding rows from our metadata tables. Now we are starting to see contention on the deletes from the cache because of the increase in table metadata that comes along with some of the new features implemented in this version. To address this problem, we have made 3 main changes to how we prune the temp table cache: (1) We changed the process from synchronous to asynchronous. (2)  We reduced the number of helper threads to one per NUMA node and increased the number of tables that get removed with each pass. (3) We optimized the latching strategy used when we scan for metadata.
    • So how do you know if you have this metadata contention? Rather than PFS and SGAM pages, these will be pages that belong to system objects such as sysobjvalues and sysseobjvalues
    • We are continuing to work on improving tempdb performance and metadata contention, but in the meantime, there are some best practices you can employ in your code that might help avoid the contention: (1) Do not explicitly drop temp tables at the end of a stored procedure, they will get cleaned up when the session that created them ends. (2) Do not alter temp tables after they have been created. (3) Do not truncate temp tables (4) Move index creation statements to the new inline index creation syntax that was introduced in SQL Server 2014.
    • Auditing Overhead:  We introduced functionality to allow for transaction-level auditing in  Common Criteria Compliance (CCC) which can cause additional overhead, particularly in workloads that do heavy inserts and updates in temp tables, even if CCC is not enabled. In SQL Server 2016 you can enable trace flag 3427 to bypass this overhead starting with SP1 CU2. Starting in SQL Server 2017 CU4, we automatically bypass this code if CCC is disabled.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/tempdb-files-and-trace-flags-and-updates-oh-my/
  • Lift SQL Server Integration Services packages to Azure with Azure Data Factory
  • New memory options for Analysis Services
  • Cross-instance point-in-time restore in Azure SQL Database Managed Instance
    • Azure SQL Database Managed Instance enables you to create a database as a copy of another database at some point in time in the past. This is known as point-in-time restore feature, and up till now you could perform point-in-time restore only within the same instance.
    • The latest release of Azure SQL Database Managed Instance enables you to perform point-in-time restore of a database from one instance to another. This might be useful if you need to be sure that you could easily restore a database to another instance if there is some issue on the original instance, or if you need a database for testing or auditing purposes on the test instance and you want to use copy of some of the existing database on another server.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/06/07/cross-instance-point-in-time-restore-in-azure-sql-database-managed-instance/
 

Recent Training and Technical Guides

   

Script and Tool Tips

  Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services]]> SQL Updates Newsletter – May 2018 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/sql-updates-newsletter-may-2018 Thu, 31 May 2018 22:28:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlupdates/?p=545 Recent Releases and Announcements  

Troubleshooting and Issue Alerts

  • Critical: Do NOT delete files from the Windows Installer folder. C:\windows\Installer is not a temporary folder and files in it should not be deleted. If you do it on machines on which you have SQL Server installed, you may have to rebuild the operating system and reinstall SQL Server.
  • Critical: Please be aware of a critical Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 runtime pre-requisite update that may be required on machines where SQL Server 2016 will be, or has been, installed.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlcat/2016/07/28/installing-sql-server-2016-rtm-you-must-do-this/
    • If KB3164398 or KB3138367 are installed, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3164398
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3138367
    • If the version of %SystemRoot%\system32\msvcr120.dll is 12.0.40649.5 or later, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell "get-item %systemroot%\system32\msvcr120.dll | select versioninfo | fl"
  • Important: If the Update Cache folder or some patches are removed from this folder, you can no longer uninstall an update to your SQL Server instance and then revert to an earlier update build.
    • In that situation, Add/Remove Programs entries point to non-existing binaries, and therefore the uninstall process does not work. Therefore, Microsoft strongly encourages you to keep the folder and its contents intact.
    • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3196535
  • Important: You must precede all Unicode strings with a prefix N when you deal with Unicode string constants in SQL Server
  • Important: Default auto statistics update threshold change for SQL Server 2016
  • Replication Enhancement – Improved Distribution Database Cleanup
    • The Distribution Cleanup job, which runs every 10 minutes on the Distributor Server is responsible for cleaning up the transactions and commands based on the specified transaction retention period.
    • In case of a highly active environment the cleanup job would need to delete a substantially large set of expired transactions and commands. The cleanup job uses a while loop to delete entries from the MSRepl_Commands and MSRepl_Transactions in batches of 2000 and 5000 rows, respectively.
    • The new implementation of the procedure allows users to parameterize the batch sizes inside the cleanup stored procedure and introduces a new adaptive approach to determine the batch sizes for each iteration. The procedure will, by default, honor any batch sizes that are mentioned explicitly as parameters. If no parameters are supplied, then the procedure will start with the default batch sizes of 2000 and 5000 rows and increase/decrease the batch sizes based on the performance of the previous iteration of the delete operation.
    • The new implementation also separates the subscription cleanup task from the main distribution cleanup work, by moving the subscription cleanup to the Expired subscription cleanup job that runs at the publisher.
    • Finally, In the older implementation the cleanup job reports the row counts based on the last iteration of the while loop and not the cumulative values for the rows deleted. This has been changed to accumulate and report out the cumulative numbers.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/replication-enhancement-improved-distribution-database-cleanup/
 

Recent Blog Posts and Articles

  • Emerging AI Patterns
    • In this blog we’ll dive into the patterns we see emerging for the use of AI across industries and experiences.
    • Virtual Agents: The first pattern is the use of virtual agents to interact with employees, customers, and partners on behalf of a company.
    • Ambient Intelligence:  This is using AI to both map a physical space and activity to a digital space, and then allowing actions on top of the digital graph.  Think about a warehouse that can detect a person walking in one aisle and a forklift driving in another that are on a collision course, the AI can prevent the pending accident.
    • AI-Assisting Professionals: AI can be used to help almost any professional be more effective. For example, we can help people in finance with forecasting. We also see AI starting to assist doctors in areas like genomics and public health. There are great examples in sales, marketing, legal and practically every other profession.
    • Autonomous Systems: You might think of self-driving cars when you think about autonomous systems, but it also extends to robotic process automation and network protection.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/stevengu/2018/05/24/emerging-ai-patterns/
  • CPU and Memory Allocation on Azure SQL Database Managed Instance
    • There is no explicit configuration option for memory allocated to a Managed Instance (MI) because on an MI, memory allocation is proportional to the number of vCores used.
    • Traditional SQL Server methods will not determine the actual amount of memory your MI instance can use.
    • MI instance is resource-governed at the OS level using a job object. Running a process such as SQL Server in a job object provides resource governance for the process at the OS level, including CPU, memory, and IO. This resource governance is what allows the service to share the same VM among multiple instances belonging to the same customer, without resource contention and “noisy neighbor” problems.
    • The sys.dm_os_job_object DMV exposes job object configuration for the MI instance. This is the DMV that should be used to determine the actual compute resources (vCores and memory) allocated to the MI instance
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlcat/2018/05/04/cpu-and-memory-allocation-on-azure-sql-database-managed-instance/
  • Azure SQL DB Managed Instance – sp_readMIerrorlog
    • When you connect to an MI instance, you can view its error log, via sp_readerrorlog.  But when you look at the MI error log, you may be surprised by the large volume of messages.  This diagnostic data is needed for Microsoft engineers to manage the service and troubleshoot any problems efficiently.
    • Sp_readmierrorlog is a simple stored procedure that returns the contents of the instance error log, filtering out messages that are unlikely to be useful to an MI customer.
    • The procedure is open source and is hosted on GitHub.
    • sp_readmierrorlog has the same familiar parameters and result set that sp_readerrorlog has.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlcat/2018/05/04/azure-sql-db-managed-instance-sp_readmierrorlog/
  • How to Develop a Currency Detection Model using Azure Machine Learning
  • A Scalable End-to-End Anomaly Detection System using Azure Batch AI
  • Extract management insights from SQL Data Warehouse with SQL Operations Studio
 

Recent Training and Technical Guides

   

Script and Tool Tips

  Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services]]> SQL Updates Newsletter – April 2018 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/sql-updates-newsletter-april-2018 Mon, 30 Apr 2018 20:43:14 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlupdates/?p=535 Recent Releases and Announcements  

Troubleshooting and Issue Alerts

 

Recent Blog Posts and Articles

 

Recent Training and Technical Guides

 

Script and Tool Tips

 

Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services

]]> SQL Updates Newsletter – March 2018 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/sql-updates-newsletter-march-2018 Fri, 23 Mar 2018 16:03:35 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlupdates/?p=525 Recent Releases and Announcements  

Troubleshooting and Issue Alerts

  • Critical: Do NOT delete files from the Windows Installer folder. C:\windows\Installer is not a temporary folder and files in it should not be deleted. If you do it on machines on which you have SQL Server installed, you may have to rebuild the operating system and reinstall SQL Server.
  • Critical: Please be aware of a critical Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 runtime pre-requisite update that may be required on machines where SQL Server 2016 will be, or has been, installed.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlcat/2016/07/28/installing-sql-server-2016-rtm-you-must-do-this/
    • If KB3164398 or KB3138367 are installed, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3164398
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3138367
    • If the version of %SystemRoot%\system32\msvcr120.dll is 12.0.40649.5 or later, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell "get-item %systemroot%\system32\msvcr120.dll | select versioninfo | fl"
  • Important: If the Update Cache folder or some patches are removed from this folder, you can no longer uninstall an update to your SQL Server instance and then revert to an earlier update build.
    • In that situation, Add/Remove Programs entries point to non-existing binaries, and therefore the uninstall process does not work. Therefore, Microsoft strongly encourages you to keep the folder and its contents intact.
    • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3196535
  • Important: You must precede all Unicode strings with a prefix N when you deal with Unicode string constants in SQL Server
  • Important: Default auto statistics update threshold change for SQL Server 2016
  • Audit SQL Server stop, start, restart
  • Heuristic DNS detections in Azure Security Center
    • We have heard from many customers about their challenges with detecting highly evasive threats. To help provide guidance, we published Windows DNS server logging for network forensics and the introduction of the Azure DNS Analytics solution
    • The benefits of examining DNS is its ability to observe connections across all possible network protocols from all client operating systems in a relatively small dataset. The compactness of this data is further aided by the default behavior of on-host caching of common domains.
    • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/heuristic-dns-detections-in-azure-security-center/
  • How to configure tempdb in Azure SQL Managed Instance(preview)
    • One limitation in the current public preview is that tempdb settings are not maintained after fail-over. If you add new files to tempdb or change file size, these settings will not be preserved after fail-over, and original tempdb will be re-created on the new instance. This is a temporary limitation and it will be fixed during public preview.
    • However, since Managed Instance supports SQL Agent, and SQL Agent can be configured to execute some script when SQL Agent start, you can workaround this issue and create a SQL Agent job that will pre-configure your tempdb.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/03/13/how-to-configure-tempdb-in-azure-sql-managed-instance/
 

Recent Blog Articles

 

Recent Training and Technical Guides

 

Script and Tool Tips

  Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services]]> SQL Updates Newsletter - February 2018 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/sql-updates-newsletter-february-2018 Thu, 01 Mar 2018 04:50:35 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlupdates/?p=515 Recent Releases and Announcements

Troubleshooting and Issue Alerts

  • Critical: Do NOT delete files from the Windows Installer folder. C:\windows\Installer is not a temporary folder and files in it should not be deleted. If you do it on machines on which you have SQL Server installed, you may have to rebuild the operating system and reinstall SQL Server.
  • Critical: Please be aware of a critical Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 runtime pre-requisite update that may be required on machines where SQL Server 2016 will be, or has been, installed.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlcat/2016/07/28/installing-sql-server-2016-rtm-you-must-do-this/
    • If KB3164398 or KB3138367 are installed, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3164398
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3138367
    • If the version of %SystemRoot%\system32\msvcr120.dll is 12.0.40649.5 or later, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell "get-item %systemroot%\system32\msvcr120.dll | select versioninfo | fl"
  • Important: If the Update Cache folder or some patches are removed from this folder, you can no longer uninstall an update to your SQL Server instance and then revert to an earlier update build.
    • In that situation, Add/Remove Programs entries point to non-existing binaries, and therefore the uninstall process does not work. Therefore, Microsoft strongly encourages you to keep the folder and its contents intact.
    • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3196535
  • Important: You must precede all Unicode strings with a prefix N when you deal with Unicode string constants in SQL Server
  • Important: Default auto statistics update threshold change for SQL Server 2016
  • Filtered Indexes and Forced Parameterization: Can’t we all just get along?
  • SET IMPLICIT_TRANSACTIONS Behavior On Azure SQL Data Warehouse and APS
  • Analyze Synchronous Commit Impact on High Commit Rate Workloads
  • Uniqueifier considerations and error 666
    • If the clustered index is not created with the UNIQUE property, the Database Engine automatically adds a 4-byte uniqueifier column to the table. When it is required, the Database Engine automatically adds a uniqueifier value to a row to make each key unique. This column and its values are used internally and cannot be seen or accessed by users.
    • While it´s unlikely that you will face an issue related with uniqueifiers, we have seen rare cases where customer reaches the uniqueifier limit of 2,147,483,648, generating error 666.
    • Msg 666, Level 16, State 2, Line 1: The maximum system-generated unique value for a duplicate group was exceeded for index with partition ID <PARTITIONID>. Dropping and re-creating the index may resolve this; otherwise, use another clustering key.
    • If you use the statement ALTER INDEX ALL ON <TABLE> REBUILD WITH (ONLINE = ON), it will reset the uniqueifiers (across all version starting SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2017)
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/psssql/2018/02/16/uniqueifier-considerations-and-error-666/
  • More Showplan enhancements – UDFs
    • We added two new attributes: UdfCpuTime and UdfElapsedTime. These provide the total CPU and elapsed time (again, both in ms) that is spent inside all scalar user-defined functions, during the execution of a query. Before this improvement, the internal execution of these functions was hidden from the query plan of the calling query.
    • These will also be available in the upcoming SQL Server 2016 SP2.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/more-showplan-enhancements-udfs/
  • More Showplan enhancements – Row Goal
    • To assist in the discoverability of Optimizer row goal use and its impact in query execution [we've added] a new operator property EstimateRowsWithoutRowGoal.
    • This will also be available in the upcoming SQL Server 2016 SP2.
    • When a query uses a TOP, IN or EXISTS clause, the FAST query hint, or a SET ROWCOUNT statement, that row goal is used as part of the query optimization process.
    • If the row goal plan is applied, the estimated number of rows in the query plan is reduced, because the Optimizer assumes that a smaller number of rows will have to be processed, in order to reach the row goal.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/more-showplan-enhancements-row-goal/
  • LogReader errors ‘Validating publisher’ after AlwaysOn failover.

Recent Blog Posts and Articles

Recent Training and Technical Guides

 

Monthly Script and Tool Tips

    Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services]]> SQL Updates Newsletter – January 2018 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/sql-updates-newsletter-january-2018 Mon, 05 Feb 2018 17:18:46 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlupdates/?p=505 Recent Releases and Announcements  

Troubleshooting and Issue Alerts

  • Critical: Do NOT delete files from the Windows Installer folder. C:\windows\Installer is not a temporary folder and files in it should not be deleted. If you do it on machines on which you have SQL Server installed, you may have to rebuild the operating system and reinstall SQL Server.
  • Critical: Please be aware of a critical Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 runtime pre-requisite update that may be required on machines where SQL Server 2016 will be, or has been, installed.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlcat/2016/07/28/installing-sql-server-2016-rtm-you-must-do-this/
    • If KB3164398 or KB3138367 are installed, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3164398
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3138367
    • If the version of %SystemRoot%\system32\msvcr120.dll is 12.0.40649.5 or later, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell "get-item %systemroot%\system32\msvcr120.dll | select versioninfo | fl"
  • Important: If the Update Cache folder or some patches are removed from this folder, you can no longer uninstall an update to your SQL Server instance and then revert to an earlier update build.
    • In that situation, Add/Remove Programs entries point to non-existing binaries, and therefore the uninstall process does not work. Therefore, Microsoft strongly encourages you to keep the folder and its contents intact.
    • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3196535
  • Important: You must precede all Unicode strings with a prefix N when you deal with Unicode string constants in SQL Server
  • Important: Default auto statistics update threshold change for SQL Server 2016
  • How Azure Security Center helps analyze attacks using Investigation and Log Search
  • Securing Azure customers from CPU vulnerability
 

Recent Blog Posts and Articles

 

Recent Training and Technical Guides

 

Monthly Script and Tool Tips

  Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services]]> SQL Updates Newsletter – December 2017 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/sql-updates-newsletter-december-2017 Fri, 29 Dec 2017 22:12:57 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlupdates/?p=495 Recent Releases and Announcements  

Troubleshooting and Issue Alerts

  • Critical: Do NOT delete files from the Windows Installer folder. C:\windows\Installer is not a temporary folder and files in it should not be deleted. If you do it on machines on which you have SQL Server installed, you may have to rebuild the operating system and reinstall SQL Server.
  • Critical: Please be aware of a critical Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 runtime pre-requisite update that may be required on machines where SQL Server 2016 will be, or has been, installed.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlcat/2016/07/28/installing-sql-server-2016-rtm-you-must-do-this/
    • If KB3164398 or KB3138367 are installed, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3164398
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3138367
    • If the version of %SystemRoot%\system32\msvcr120.dll is 12.0.40649.5 or later, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell "get-item %systemroot%\system32\msvcr120.dll | select versioninfo | fl"
  • Important: If the Update Cache folder or some patches are removed from this folder, you can no longer uninstall an update to your SQL Server instance and then revert to an earlier update build.
    • In that situation, Add/Remove Programs entries point to non-existing binaries, and therefore the uninstall process does not work. Therefore, Microsoft strongly encourages you to keep the folder and its contents intact.
    • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3196535
  • Important: You must precede all Unicode strings with a prefix N when you deal with Unicode string constants in SQL Server
  • Important: Default auto statistics update threshold change for SQL Server 2016
  • Analyze Network Latency Impact on Remote Availability Group Replica
    • When network latency becomes an issue the most common symptom you will observe is sustained or growing log send queue. [To monitor...] (1) Add the Log Send Queue size (KB) column in AlwaysOn Dashboard and (2) Add the SQLServer:Database Replica:Log Send Queue Counter
    • Measure Network Latency Impact Using Performance Monitor. On the secondary replica, launch Performance Monitor and add the following counters: (1) SQLServer:Database Replica:Log Bytes Received/sec for appropriate database instance and (2) SQLServer:Database Replica:Recovery Queue for appropriate database instance
    • On the primary replica, launch Performance Monitor and add the following counters: (1) SQLServer:Databases:Log Bytes Flushed/sec for appropriate database instance and (2) Network Interface:Sent Bytes/sec for appropriate adapter instance
    • In order to better understand how fast an application can push changes to the remote server, use a third-party network bandwidth performance tool, [such as] iPerf or NTttcp.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/alwaysonpro/2017/12/21/analyze-network-latency-impact-on-remote-availability-group-replica/
  • Availability Group Database Reports Not Synchronizing / Recovery Pending After Database Log File Inaccessible
  • Centennial apps/desktop bridge, SQL Server and error "The data area passed to a system call is too small."
    • Problem: Launching a Centennial application may fail with the following error: The data area passed to a system call is too small.
    • Cause: This issue may be due to miscommunication between two filter drivers, namely WCNFS (the desktop bridge) and RsFxXXXX.sys driver (filestream system driver). RsFx system driver doesn't honor flags being passed by WCNFS driver appropriately, which causes startup failure of any Centennial application with the aforementioned error.
    • Status: We will provide a fix for this issue in Cumulative updates for SQL Server versions which are still being serviced.
    • Workaround: Disable Filestream feature or Move Filestream data to a different volume
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/centennial-appsdesktop-bridge-sql-server-and-error-the-data-area-passed-to-a-system-call-is-too-small/

Recent Blog Posts and Articles

Recent Training and Technical Guides

Monthly Script and Tool Tips

  Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services]]> SQL Updates Newsletter – November 2017 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/sql-updates-newsletter-november-2017 Wed, 29 Nov 2017 19:03:04 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlupdates/?p=485 Recent Releases and Announcements

Troubleshooting and Issue Alerts

Recent Blog Posts and Articles

Recent Training and Technical Guides

Monthly Script and Tool Tips

  • Introducing Visual Studio Live Share
    • Live Share enables your team to quickly collaborate on the same codebase without the need to synchronize code or to configure the same development tools, settings, or environment
    • When you share a collaborative session, your teammate sees the context of the workspace in their editor. This means your teammate can read the code you shared without having to clone a repo or install any dependencies your code relies on. They can use rich language features to navigate within the code; not only just opening other files as text but using semantic analysis-based navigation like Go to Definition or Peek.
    • https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live-share
  • Tool which aides in the creation of your JSON file template for Power BI themes
  • Azure DevOps Project – public preview
    • Creating a DevOps Project provisions Azure resources and comes with a Git code repository, Application Insights integration and a continuous delivery pipeline setup to deploy to Azure. The DevOps Project dashboard lets you monitor code commits, builds and, deployments, from a single view in the Azure portal.
    • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-devops-project-public-preview/
 

Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services

]]> SQL Updates Newsletter – October 2017 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/sql-updates-newsletter-october-2017 Thu, 02 Nov 2017 05:40:23 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlupdates/?p=475 Recent Releases and Announcements

Issue Alert

  • Critical: Do NOT delete files from the Windows Installer folder. C:\windows\Installer is not a temporary folder and files in it should not be deleted. If you do it on machines on which you have SQL Server installed, you may have to rebuild the operating system and reinstall SQL Server.
  • Critical: Please be aware of a critical Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 runtime pre-requisite update that may be required on machines where SQL Server 2016 will be, or has been, installed.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlcat/2016/07/28/installing-sql-server-2016-rtm-you-must-do-this/
    • If KB3164398 or KB3138367 are installed, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3164398
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3138367
    • If the version of %SystemRoot%\system32\msvcr120.dll is 12.0.40649.5 or later, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell "get-item %systemroot%\system32\msvcr120.dll | select versioninfo | fl"
  • Important: If the Update Cache folder or some patches are removed from this folder, you can no longer uninstall an update to your SQL Server instance and then revert to an earlier update build.
    • In that situation, Add/Remove Programs entries point to non-existing binaries, and therefore the uninstall process does not work. Therefore, Microsoft strongly encourages you to keep the folder and its contents intact.
    • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3196535
  • Important: You must precede all Unicode strings with a prefix N when you deal with Unicode string constants in SQL Server
  • Important: Default auto statistics update threshold change for SQL Server 2016
  • Configure Azure Storage for SQL Database backups
  • How to safeguard SQL Server on Linux from OOM-Killer
    • SQL Server support team had the following customer scenario recently: When an index rebuild was kicked off on a large table (around 25GB), the reindex operation terminated, and the availability group had failed over to the other replica.
    • To begin with, SQL Server was only using a portion of 9.5GB leaving plenty of memory available on the system. However, when the index rebuild was executed, SQL Server used up all the 9.5GB of memory it can use. This condition had caused very little memory to be left on the Linux server, causing the oom-killer to be invoked. SQL Server was chosen as a victim as it has the highest memory usage(oom-score). This behavior is expected.
    • To make SQL Server less susceptible for termination by oom-killer, we recommend one or both of the following suggestions. 1) Adjust memory.memorylimitmb configuration option carefully to leave enough memory on the system even if SQL Server were to use all of the memory configured through this setting. 2) Ensure that swap file exists and sized properly.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/psssql/2017/10/17/how-to-safeguard-sql-server-on-linux-from-oom-killer/
  • Performance implications of using multi-Statement TVFs with optional parameters

Recent Blog Posts and Articles

Recent Training and Technical Guides

Monthly Script and Tool Tips

 

Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services

]]> SQL Updates Newsletter – September 2017 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/sqlupdates/sql-updates-newsletter-september-2017 Sat, 30 Sep 2017 14:39:23 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlupdates/?p=467 Recent Releases and Announcements

Issue Alert

  • Critical: Do NOT delete files from the Windows Installer folder. C:\windows\Installer is not a temporary folder and files in it should not be deleted. If you do it on machines on which you have SQL Server installed, you may have to rebuild the operating system and reinstall SQL Server.
  • Critical: Please be aware of a critical Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 runtime pre-requisite update that may be required on machines where SQL Server 2016 will be, or has been, installed.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlcat/2016/07/28/installing-sql-server-2016-rtm-you-must-do-this/
    • If KB3164398 or KB3138367 are installed, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3164398
    • powershell get-hotfix KB3138367
    • If the version of %SystemRoot%\system32\msvcr120.dll is 12.0.40649.5 or later, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
    • powershell "get-item %systemroot%\system32\msvcr120.dll | select versioninfo | fl"
  • Important: If the Update Cache folder or some patches are removed from this folder, you can no longer uninstall an update to your SQL Server instance and then revert to an earlier update build.
    • In that situation, Add/Remove Programs entries point to non-existing binaries, and therefore the uninstall process does not work. Therefore, Microsoft strongly encourages you to keep the folder and its contents intact.
    • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3196535
  • Important: You must precede all Unicode strings with a prefix N when you deal with Unicode string constants in SQL Server
  • Important: Default auto statistics update threshold change for SQL Server 2016
  • Backup Compression for TDE-enabled Databases: Important fixes in SQL 2016 SP1 CU4 and SQL 2016 RTM CU7

Recent Blog Posts and Articles

Recent Training and Technical Guides

Monthly Script and Tool Tips

  • Get the most out of your Azure portal experience
  • Five more reasons why you should download the Azure mobile app
    • The Azure mobile app allows you to quickly check your resources status at a glance
    • Use Bash and now even PowerShell on Cloud Shell to take full control of your Azure resources.
    • "Favorite" your most important resources across subscriptions and keep them in your Favorites tab for easy access.
    • Share a direct link to the Azure resource via email, text message or other apps with the click of a button.
    • The Azure mobile app can even help you track Azure Health incidents. Just scan the QR code from the portal and track the incident from your phone
    • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/five-more-reasons-why-you-should-download-the-azure-mobile-app/
  • DSC Future Direction Update
    • As a Windows product, Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration will continue to be supported and security fixes will be released for it but all new features and functionality will be driven in and released in DSC Core.
    • Windows PowerShell DSC: Requires WMI; Requires Windows PowerShell 4.0, 5.0, 5.1; Cmdlets use WinRM or CIM for remote connections
    • DSC on Linux: Requires OMI; Is separate open source code base; Is not at feature parity with Windows DSC
    • DSC Core: A soon to be released version of DSC that aligns with PowerShell Core; No dependency on WMI; Xcopy-able package; Runs on Windows and Linux; Requires (includes in package) PowerShell Core and .NET Core
    • Azure Automation DSC is the recommended pull server solution for enterprise and cloud environments. It supports both Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration and will support DSC Core.
    • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2017/09/12/dsc-future-direction-update/
  • Run your Hive LLAP & PySpark Job in Visual Studio Code
  • SQL Server Database Objects and Dependencies Report
 

Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services

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