HADR is an acronym that stands for High Availability / Disaster Recovery. Although you can think of these two concepts individually, I prefer to think of them on a continuum. If your system is spread out across multiple locations, for instance, it can be both highly available and able to quickly recover from a disaster. The “D” stands for ...

Periodically I back up the keys within my servers and databases, and when I do, I blog a reminder here. This should be part of your standard backup rotation – the keys should be backed up often enough to have at hand and again when they change. The first key you need to back up is the Service Master Key, which each Instance already has built-in. ...

I'm unable to sleep tonight so I thought I would push this post out VERY early. When you don't sleep your mind takes interesting turns, which can be a good thing. I was watching a briefing today by a couple of friends as they were talking about various ways to arrange a Windows Server Cluster for SQL Server. I often see an ''active'' node ...

Did you know that you already have a Server Master Key (SMK) generated for your system? That’s right – while a Database Master Key (DMK) is generated when you encrypt a certificate or Asymmetric Key with code, the Server Master Key is generated automatically when you start the Instance. So you should back all of those keys up periodically, and ...

Here's a tidbit for those who might have SQL server in their environments, maybe without knowing all the nitty gritty low-down: if you try to use file system replication (robocopy, xcopy, repli-whatever) to maintain a DR server from your production SQL Server, you might be in for a nasty surprise. I recently had to troubleshoot a scenario ...

I'm kind of a type ''A'' person. OK, I'm a VERY type ''A'' person. I even cook by setting things up ahead of time. I'm definitely more in the ''Plan and Prepare'' camp than the ''Just Do It'' camp. But I do realize that there are times when you just can't stop and prepare. Sure, it would be great to know that server is going to melt down just ...

Consolidation, as it applies to databases, is simply putting more databases or SQL Server Instances on less hardware. This is a good thing, normally, because it allows you to save on hardware costs and use what you have at it’s highest capacity. It also saves on energy costs, floor and rack space, and in some cases even licensing and ...

Last night I had to do something on a production system that you're not supposed to do. It's not important what I did or where I did it, but I will explain why I did it. A friend was in a situation where it was either ''break the rules'' or lose the system. So I did what I had to do, with lots of caveats and explanations on why ...

I realize that there are some cases where, in an emergency, you need to shrink a log file because it took over the drive.  In SQL Server 2005 and earlier, you could get out of the jam quickly, by issuing a BACKUP LOG WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY (followed by DBCC SHRINKFILE).  In SQL Server 2008, this ''feature'' within BACKUP LOG is no longer ...

I think that people have been lulled into the false sense of security that you can set up a SQL Server database, leave all the defaults in place, and never have to do anything.  While it is true that Microsoft has added many features to SQL Server that make the ''hard'' parts of being a DBA easier, there is no question in my mind that many ...