Tag: SQL Server

Am I affected by MrbMiner malware?

SQL Server hardware can be powerful. Lots of CPU cores and memory. Just what a crypto miner may need in their quest to generate cryptocurrency. In the case of the MrbMiner exploit, numerous SQL Servers have been exploited with brute-force attacks. These attacks are scanning for servers exposed directly to the internet and are using…
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Azure shared disks – Failover Clustered Instance – SQL Server 2016

In my last post, I wrote about a new option in Azure – shared disks. Have you ever needed to build a Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) in Azure? This post will provide a few steps to get you started. To follow along with the demo, you’ll need an Azure account (available for free here )…
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Azure shared disks – Failover Clustered Instances

Azure offers a large array of options when it comes to high availability and disaster recovery. Failover clustered instances (FCIs) is a well known option, for SQL Server, that’s been available for years on premises. However, FCIs traditionally required shared storage. New versions of the Windows OS and SQL Server now support other options such…
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rope safety net

How to Create SQL Server 2019 Failover Clustered Instances in Azure

Most of what you see in this post is similar to our prior post in the series – Azure shared disks – Failover Clustered Instance – SQL Server 2016. The key difference when setting up Failover Clustered Instances with SQL Server 2019 in Azure is we’re not going to utilize an Azure Load Balancer to…
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Vollgar: 6 Scripts to Help Review Your SQL Servers

Last week, Guardicore released information about a newly discovered attack that uses SQL Servers to compromise servers and networks. Here’s a link; I’d really encourage you to read it. The attack known as Vollgar uses a simple brute force attack to gain access to SQL Servers exposed to the internet. It then uses the elevated…
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Is There an Update for My SQL Server?

We’ve all asked that question at some point. Maybe we inherited a new-to-us SQL Server that hasn’t been maintained regularly. Or, perhaps we’re prepping for a maintenance window and we want to get the latest update into Test as soon as possible. Regardless, we want to know two things. First, what product version is my…
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Camp, Hike, and SQL

Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down to talk with Thom Coats of The Unstuck Business Academy for their “Stories from the C|Suite” podcast. Thom is a wonderful host and we had a lot of fun talking about everything from camping and hiking, to professional development, to effectively managing SQL Server infrastructures. Here’s a…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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