17Nov 2009 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Record of a PSS Call

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Not everyone has the opportunity to call Microsoft Premier Support. For those who have not yet had this experience, I'll document my most recent, non-critical, call. Critical calls are a different critter entirely. We were experiencing a very odd error on one server in our system. When a particular procedure was run with a particularly large set of data, it would produce an error, but only when called from the application. The exact same error with exactly the same data called from SSMS did not produce an error. We went through a very extensive set of tests and were unable to fix the problem on the server. After moving the production system that was experiencing the issue to a different server, we decided to contact PSS. 8:48 Am, Tuesday: I made the…
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10Nov 2009 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

SQL Connections

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I'm flying off to the SQL Server Magazine Connections part of DevConnections in Las Vegas later this afternoon. I'm presenting three sessions while I'm there, Wednesday & Thursday. I'm hanging around on Friday. Please track me down if you want to chat. Wednesday I'll be putting on "Scouting Out Execution Plans" in the morning, 9:30-10:45AM. Thursday I've got two sessions, "MUQT: More Unnecessary Query Tuning" from 8:00-9:15AM (which should be a lot of fun at a developers conference), and "DMV's for Performance Tuning" from 11:45-1:00PM. I've brought bribery material (signed books) to encourage interaction, so please stop by, ask questions, make comments, just don't throw things (except for money). I'll blog a recap of each day from my point of view. I won't be live-blogging the key notes because I'm not registered…
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05Nov 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit 2009 Key Note 2

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Patrick Ortiz from Dell, the platinum sponsor for the PASS Summit. The goal will be to discuss the Dell Microsoft Practice, Configuration Management, Disaster Recovery and Consolidation. The MS Practice team has server tools, messaging & communications and collaboration & databases. Lots of work going on there.The see the CM, DR & Consolodation as linking cogs, if you trust the slide. They want to start implementing CM management systems. He's driving the data suggested with Asset Data and physical server information. Then you drill down and collect SQL Server information followed by drilling down further to collect DB info. He's gone on to show some of the benefits of CM. The idea behind CM is so that, once you've defined your servers, you can define disaster recovery and start looking into server…
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10Oct 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Another Book

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Well, part of one anyway. I wrote three chapters of Rob Walter's new book, Beginning SQL Server 2008 Administration. I think I've mentioned it before. Well, my copies showed up in the mail. Nothing like holding that book in your hands as proof that you've done it. When everything is electronic and we stop printing dead tree books... I don't think it's going to be nearly as satisfying to finish a book. Please, look it over. I think it's going to be a good resource for people just getting started as DBA's.
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03Sep 2009 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Debuting: Beginning SQL Server 2008 Administration

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The new book is up on Amazon. I only worked on three chapters of Rob Walter's new book and that was after begging to only work on two, so I can't take much credit for the effort that went into this book. However, thanks to our editor Jonathan Gennick, I was privileged to work with Rob & Carmen, if pretty indirectly. I know I mentioned the book before when it was put up on the Apress web site, but this is Amazon. Once it's up on Amazon, it's real.
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24Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

New Book

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Well, three chapters. The latest book I worked on is up at Apress. I only have three chapters in this one, backup, restore & performance monitoring & tuning. It's written as an introductory book, targeted to help get people started as a DBA. I haven't read the chapters from the other authors, but Rob Walters is a terrific writer & a great guy and Carmen Taglienti has a wonderful reputation, so I suspect their work will be everything you could ask for. Of course, it's not real until you can get it on Amazon.
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