Category: SQL Server Consulting

Vintage databases are not as good as vintage cars

Should I Upgrade SQL Servers that Are Out of Support?

Do All SQL Servers Need to Be Upgraded? Running production systems on a platform that is no longer supported by the vendor is worrisome. If something goes wrong, you’ll no longer be able to call the vendor and receive technical support. But worse, you’ll no longer release updates, fixes, security patches, etc, for the out…
Read more

A properly configured SQL Server is like a well tuned race engine.

Identify Disk I/O Performance Issues for Your SQL Server Using DiskSpd

“We need faster storage.” Sound familiar? Or what about “No, the storage is good; we need to tune the database.” Often teams will have very different opinions about the root cause of a performance issue. Microsoft’s free DiskSpd utility can help identify disk I/O performance issues for your SQL server systems. Here’s a short introduction…
Read more

Want to Learn SQL Server? Here Are 3 Free Sources

Many companies have lean IT organizations and find themselves with five, ten, or even twenty production SQL Servers and no dedicated Database Administrator to care for them. Instead, they rely on other IT Professionals to ensure the database servers are performant. We’ve worked with many companies where SysAdmins, Application Developers, and Network Administrators have been…
Read more

Is My SQL Server Configured Properly?

Installing SQL Server is surprisingly easy. Download the media, double-click the setup file, answer a few configuration questions, and in less than 15 minutes you have a fully functional database server. And the server performs well. For a while. Then it slows down and maybe even a database corrupts. You recover by restoring the prior…
Read more

4 Options Now That Your SQL Server 2008 Is Out of Support

As of July 9, 2019, SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 have officially passed from Extended Support to No Longer Supported. What does that mean? It means that Microsoft will no longer release any updates for any version of SQL Server 2008. That includes security patches and data integrity fixes. If a hacker…
Read more