Tibor Karaszi : Maintenance

Backup and the evil RETAINDAYS option

TiborKaraszi — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 12:25:00 GMT

"So what bad has this option done?", you probably as yourself. Well, not much, but I find it evil because it confuses people, especially those new to SQL Server. I have many times seen people specifying something like 3, and expect SQL Server to keep...(read more)

Analyzing the errorlog

TiborKaraszi — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 11:53:00 GMT

How often do you do this? Look over each message (type) in the errorlog file and determine whether this is something you want to act on. Sure, some (but not all) of you have some monitoring solution in place, but are you 100% confident that it really...(read more)

Ola Hallengren's maint procedures now supports logging to table

TiborKaraszi — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 01:19:00 GMT

This can for instance be very useful if you want to keep track how long time things take, over time. Check them out here .Version history here ....(read more)

Article released about moving databases

TiborKaraszi — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 13:26:00 GMT

Just a short notice that I've released an article about moving databases between SQL Server instances: You find it at http://www.karaszi.com/SQLServer/info_moving_database.asp ....(read more)

Why we never want to trick SQL Server into rebuilding a log file

TiborKaraszi — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:04:00 GMT

"Never" is a strong word, so let me say that we really really want to avoid it, if at all humanly possible. In short, we will have a (potentially) broken database, both at the physical level and at the logical level. Read on. Just to be clear, when I...(read more)

Ola Hallengren's maint procedures now supports exclusions

TiborKaraszi — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 05:02:00 GMT

Ola has a set of stored procedures to do maint operations, see http://ola.hallengren.com/ . Ola has now updated them to support exclusions or inclusions of tables, indexes or even whole schemas from index rebuild/reorg. Check out http://ola.hallengren.com/Documentation.html#SelectingIndexes...(read more)

Updated article "Agent Alerts Management Pack"

TiborKaraszi — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:07:00 GMT

I've just updated the "Agent Alerts Management Pack" found here . I realize that some don't feel confident in reading and executing T-SQL code and they instead prefer to point & click in SSMS instead. So I added two tables with my suggestion on the...(read more)

Do you perform log backup for the model database?

TiborKaraszi — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:05:00 GMT

Are you stupid, you might think... But stop and think for a while. Model is no different from other databases. And by default it is in full recovery model. So as soon as you do your first database backup (you do backup your system databases, right?) the...(read more)

Do maintenance plans require SSIS?

TiborKaraszi — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:06:00 GMT

To many, this is a non-issue, since SSIS is installed anyhow. But not everyody installs SSIS. I for instance prefer to keep my production systems as clean as possible and only have what I really need (a principle which is harder and harder to live after...(read more)

Watch out for that autogrow bug

TiborKaraszi — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:14:00 GMT

Under some circumstances, autogrow for database files can be set to some 12000 percent. I think this is limited to SQL Server 2005 and for databases upgraded from SQL Server 2000 (I didn't bother to search - feel free to comment if you know). So, if you...(read more)

sp_altermessage is back in business!

TiborKaraszi — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:36:00 GMT

Just a quick note that we again can modify whether system messages are to go to eventlog/errorlog again. I.e., we can change the is_event_logged column in sys.messages. This is very valuable in general and specifically is you want to define Agent alerts (for which Agent polls the Eventlog). For instance:

SELECT * FROM sys.messages
WHERE message_id = 1205
AND language_id = 1033

Notice the value for the is_event_logged column. Now, run below:

EXEC sp_altermessage
@message_id = 1205
,@parameter = 'WITH_LOG'
,@parameter_value = 'true'

Now, re-run the select statement and see that you modified the behavior for the system message. Now, re-run the sp_altermessage with 'false' to reset to default.

The ability to modify this behavior for system messages was available prior to SQL Server 2005, but some re-architecturing in 2005 removed the functionality. kozloski informed me in this blog post that 2005 sp3 re-introduced the functionality and obviously as of sp1 the functionlity is back in 2008 as well.

Where's that sys.messages management pack?

TiborKaraszi — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:37:00 GMT

I've often been thinking that "somebody" should produce a list and perhaps some ready-made TSQL code of the SQL Server error messages we want to be alerted for. Something like a Management Pack, but not tied to any particular sys mgmt software. Essentially, what error messages would we typically want to be alerted for, and some ready made TSQL code which defines an alert (msdb.dbo.sp_add_alert, see also http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/post/Easy-monitoring-of-high-severity-errors-create-Agent-alerts.aspx) and operator for each of those.

Honestly, how many of you have been going through all SQL Server messages and determined which of those we want to be alerted for? Sure, we can decide to specify alerts for all high-severity level messages (like 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25). But unfortunately the severity classification isn't as coherent and we would hope.

For instance, Paul Randal just recently blogged about error 825, which has as low severity as 10! Do we want to be alerted for 825? You bet! Check out Paul's blog at http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/post/A-little-known-sign-of-impending-doom-error-825.aspx.

We can, however make it a little bit easier for us. Since Agent detects the message by sniffing the eventlog, we can immediately discard all messages which aren't written to the eventlog (there's no use defining alert for something which the alerting mechanism never detects, right?):

SELECT * FROM sys.messages WHERE language_id = 1033 AND is_event_logged = 1 ORDER BY severity

Now we are down to 699 messages. It used to be that we could configure whether a message should be written to eventlog (sp_altermessage), but this functionality disappeared in 2005. I haven't checked Connect, but my guess is that if there is such a wish/entry in the first place, it doesn't have too many votes.

My suggestion is that we create some small community project somewhere where we add what messages we want to be alerted for. This can be as simple as a table with error numbers and some insert, and then we use this to generate our sp_add_alert commands based on that. Question is where to do this, so it can be maintained and refined over time? Or if it has already been done by somebody...

Updates of Ola Hallengren's maint procedures

TiborKaraszi — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:49:00 GMT

Ola Hallengren has updated his maint procedures. Support for SQL Server 2008 and some bug fixes. Check them out at:

http://ola.hallengren.com

More maint procedures

TiborKaraszi — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:57:00 GMT

A few months ago, I blogged about a simple procedure to do backup (http://sqlblog.com/blogs/tibor_karaszi/archive/2007/09/25/tsql-script-to-do-backup-like-maintenance-plans.aspx). Just to let you know that Ola Hallengren has some of his own. Much more elaborate than mine, including things like reorg. Check it out at http://ola.hallengren.com/.

TSQL script to do backup like Maintenance Plans

TiborKaraszi — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:20:00 GMT

This is frequently asked question, both in forums, as well as in class:

How can I though TSQL create new backup files for each backup and have date and time in the file names?

The reason for above is most often that you want a higher degree of customization than what maint plans allow for. An obvious such in 2005 is to add the CHECKSUM option to the BACKUP command. I know there already exist several script like mine "out there", this is just my simple version so I remember where to point whenever I get this question next. :-)

Since I probably have some bugs in it, I have it on my website. This way I can fix the bugs as needed. You are most welcome to report bugs in the script if you spot any! And here's the URL:

http://www.karaszi.com/SQLServer/util_backup_script_like_MP.asp