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SQL Server

Database Corruption Webcast – May 3rd

Please join Carlos and I for our first Database Corruption webcast on May 3rd. I have teamed up with Carlos and we will be presenting some thoughts on database corruption with an extended Q&A session.

One important detail is we will be taking questions and answering them live on the webcast so this will be a great way to engage and ask a follow up if needed. I think you will love this format–way better than soaking up 50 minutes of boring and then calling it quits.

The webcast will cover these major topics.
1) Preparing for database corruption and taking the right steps to ensure you can recover
2) A few lessons learned about our experience with database corruption

This weeks session will cover:

corruptionpodcast1

Corruption Prevention is Different Than Disaster Recovery

The best DR plan still needs to account for corruption.

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DBCC ShrinkDatabase – I want to shrink my database.

TL;DR summary: Don’t do it. Stop reading here if you want, but just don’t do it.

This post refers to shrinking your database files (mdf, or ndf files), not shrinking the log file. The log file is a completely different conversation, however shrink database does shrink the log file.

Not shrinking your database is one of the more counter intuitive things out there. You might think that a smaller database is a good thing, however there are some negative side effect if you shrink your database regularly, or have the autoshrink option enabled. Side effects of shrinking your database include:

  • Excessive I/O due to the shrink.
  • Index fragmentation (most likely all of your indexes).
  • Excessive I/O to defragment your indexes.
  • After the shrink is complete, inserting or updating rows that require more space in your database will be slowed due to the time involved with growing your data file.

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Visualizing Log File VLF Sizing

One of my favorite queries this week is the following query that creates a text based bar chart to quickly help visualize the VLF files on any database log file. In the last month I have given the “TempDB Do This and Don’t Do That” presentation twice, once at the Bellingham SQL Server users group, and another time at SQL Saturday Redmond. One of the questions that came up after the users group meeting was around an easy way to visualize the Virtual Log Files. Its one thing to just get a count, but to see the sizing of each VLF is helpful to understand how VLFs work.

If you are not familiar with VLFs, these are Virtual Log Files, or the chunks that make up your entire log file. When your log file grows, VLFs are added to help manage the file space. For the log growth, between 4 and 16 VLFs are added for each growth of the log file (except on SQL Server 2014 and newer, which modifies the sizing algorithm a bit).

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A year in review – The first year of Stedman Solutions, LLC.

The TL;DR summary: Life is good, business is good, and I am loving it. Ready to roll with Year 2 of Stedman Solutions, LLC.

Stedman Solutions Remote Skilled DBA

The Details

It has been an interesting year.  I officially formed the business about 3 years ago, but never worked at it regularly until April 1, 2015. Prior to April 1, 2015 had a full time position at a company in Bellingham.

My long term plan had originally been to go full time at Stedman Solutions, LLC in June of 2016 at which point my wife would have completed her schooling to become a nurse, and we would have had some additional family income to help while I got things rolling with Stedman Solutions, LLC.

“the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”

In life, things don’t always work the way you plan. At the end of March 2015, my full time position came to an end due to what the company called a “lay-off”, one person in the lay-off, that’s me. I learned later that the employees there had been told by management that I had left of my own accord. Can you smell something fishy with that? Things are awesome today, and I am so glad every single day that I no longer work there.

So there I was March 31th, 2015 in a position felt much like that of a historic military leader who burned the ships after landing on the shore to prevent the troops from retreating. The point of no return, I was all in (or out depending on the perspective). I knew what I wanted to do, but I certainly wasn’t entirely ready; no business structure, no marketing plan, and no client leads. That was a very scary point in time, but I knew what I wanted to do, I was going to be an independent consultant focused on SQL Server.

With my 25 years of SQL Server database and programming background, at that point in time I was certainly up to the challenge technically. I was an overly skilled self-proclaimed consultant with no clients.

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