Whether in the cloud or a data center, the cost of maintaining a SQL Server estate can escalate quickly. Beyond the direct expenses, indirect costs can quietly unbalance and outpace your IT budget. Let’s look at 8 ways to reduce the costs of your SQL Server estate. Direct and Indirect Costs of a SQL Server…
Read more
Your SQL Servers are the backbone of your company’s data operations. They power critical applications and store valuable information. They enable financial decisions, undergird operational activities, and support your sales processes. But what happens if there’s a problem? What happens when data is lost or corrupted? Or if one of your key systems is down…
Read more
The world of data is rapidly evolving, and the demand for skilled data professionals has continued to rise. But who are these data professionals? Those of us in the field have been asked many times about the nature of what we do. Students and prospective career changers, hiring managers, business partners, and prospective clients all…
Read more
I recently had a discussion with a client that turned to the question of SQL Server code compatibility with Azure SQL Database. We were designing a new pipeline for their on-premises SQL environment, and they mentioned their abandoned cloud migration effort from a few years earlier. The business ended up pausing this effort because of…
Read more
No one wants a slow, unreliable SQL Server that leaks data like a sieve. No, they want a fast, reliable, and secure database environment. However, they may not want it right now. Creating a better SQL environment can wait until later, right? It might seem that way, but the risks will only grow while you…
Read more
Does the perfect SQL Server exist? And what would that even look like? Let’s think about it for a moment. If the perfect SQL Server exists, it would be flawlessly tuned for its workload. It would have the ideal amount of hardware resources, and its settings would be perfectly optimized. The perfect SQL Server would…
Read more
“So, I’ve heard that SQL Server 2016 Extended Support expires on July 14, 2026. That doesn’t sound like a good thing, but what exactly does it mean? Can I still use my SQL Server, or do I have to upgrade? And what’s the difference between Mainstream and Extended Support anyway?” That’s a pretty common question.…
Read more
I’m my last post on SQL Server Setting, I discussed MAXDOP and how it can affect SQL Server performance. In this post, I’ll review another SQL Server configuration setting that can impact performance – Optimize for Ad-hoc Workloads. What is the plan cache? Every time you run a query in SQL Server, an execution plan…
Read more
In my last post, I broke down the parts of the anatomy of the SQL Server transaction log. In this post, I will share a few tips for keeping your transaction logs well-maintained and your SQL Server databases happy and healthy. Here are 7 important tips for managing your transaction logs: Now, let’s break these…
Read more
Recently, we discussed the role of the recovery model in establishing how SQL Server manages database transaction logs. But what is the SQL Server log composed of? How does the logging process work? In this post, we will dissect the SQL Server transaction log to uncover its core anatomy. First, what is the transaction log?…
Read more
Recent Comments