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SteveStedman

Podcast Episode 91: DBA Tools – Listen and find out what you are missing.

Today Episode 91 released and it is our pleasure to present this episode on DBA Tools.  DBA Tools is an open source project (http://DBATools.io) that provides a number of powershell scripts to better help the DBA perform common SQL Server tasks. This was a fun episode with the panel of Chrissy, Rob, Constantine, and Aaron who were super excited to talk with us and we loved their energy.

We all want an easy button.  It is human nature.  We heard quite a bit about how easy PowerShell will make everything, but for those of us who aren’t programmers, it can be a bit intimidating to get started.  The PowerSHell tools from dbatools.io are shaping up to be the closest thing to an easy button for DBAs.  On this episode we invited some of the team to chat with us about their tool, how they got started and the types of problems they are looking to solve.

Episode Quotes

“The features that are now inside of DBA tools, honestly, I would describe them as really awesome.” – Constantine
“I promised you this is the best code ever used and that you will ever have.” – Aaron
“It is important to us that people do feel welcomed and that their codes gets merged in.” – Chrissy

Read More »Podcast Episode 91: DBA Tools – Listen and find out what you are missing.

My CheckDB Script

From time to time I get asked about checkDB, and there are many solutions out there, but I have one that I generally use that is very simple and does the job.

The script below created a stored procedure in the DBHealthHistory database that can be used to check as many databases as you can get through in a specific time interval. Here it is set to 5 minutes, but that usually gets extended for large databases.  If you set the job to daily, and the job doesn’t get through checking all the databases today, it will pick up where it left off and check the rest tomorrow.

 

Depending on the number and size of your databases you may want to run this more than once a day, or for a longer period than the 5 minutes.

Note: the 5 minute limitation is checked before starting the next check, so if you have a database that takes hours to check, that will kick off in the 5 minute interval and run until completion.

 

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February 2017 Release of Database Health Monitor

Today I had the opportunity to complete and launch the February 2017 version of Database Health Monitor.

I hope you like the latest version. Here are the Release Notes:

Version 2.5 Release Notes – February 2017.

Version 2.5 is the February 2017 release of Database Health Monitor, released on February 19, 2017.

What People Are Saying About Database Health Monitor

  • Outstanding app. Already referred it to several friends in the field. Well I do have to say the changes you have made (regarding version 2.5), seems to have made everything in the interface much snappier. Your work here is quite impressive. (Frank from Texas)
  • Outstanding! Besides enjoying the layout of your app, one thing I really like about the Quick Scan Report is each entry has a corresponding link that discusses the finding so I can go back and review recommendations, cautions, etc. (Michael)

New Features in 2.5

  • Upgraded application to use the .Net 4.5 runtime.
  • Fragmented Indexes Advisor – added buttons to rebuild or reorganize all fragmented indexes. Wow this will save some time when you have a bunch of indexes to defragment.
  • Added historic monitoring for disk space. Still need to add reports, but the tracking is there.
  • Added a menu to the main application window. Removed the big buttons for Connect, Settings, and About, and replaced them with menu items.
  • Added a menu item to link to the feedback survey.
  • Rearranged some of the columns on the What is Active report to make it easier to see what is running right away without scrolling.

Read More »February 2017 Release of Database Health Monitor

Azure PDW What is Active

Lately I have had the opportunity to work with performance tuning of queries running on the Azure Parallel Data Warehouse (Azure PDW). This has been interesting in that everything you thought you knew about SQL Server DMV’s, writing queries and overall performance tuning is just a little bit different.

My goal was to write a query to show me what is currently active and running on the Azure PDW database.

To start with, I discovered the view called SYS.DM_PDW_EXEC_REQUESTS which contains all kinds of great information to get us started. Specifically it hold information on queries that are currently running or have recently been run or attempted to be run on the Azure PDW database.

SELECT *
FROM SYS.DM_PDW_EXEC_REQUESTS;

Which returned hundreds of rows, and didn’t really get me to where I wanted to go.
Next I added a WHERE statement to filter out those queries that were “done”. In this case done means that were ‘Completed’, ‘Failed’ or ‘Cancelled’.

Read More »Azure PDW What is Active