There are a couple of new CU’s for SQL Server 2016 that you should be aware of as it looks like there are a number of nasty looking bugs fixed. There is CU5 for 2016 SP1 and CU8 for 2016 RTM.         SQL Server 2016 SP1 CU5         SQL Server 2016 RTM CU8 Happy ...

    SQL Updates Newsletter – July 2017 It has been a few months since my last post on these but here is the latest update about the monthly newsletter that a good friend of mine (Fany Carolina Vargas) from Microsoft puts together each month. This shows a whole host of goodies related to SQL Server which include but are not limited to ...

  I missed posting the last few months of these but here is the latest update about the monthly newsletter that a good friend of mine (Fany Carolina Vargas) from Microsoft puts together each month. This shows a whole host of goodies related to SQL Server which include but are not limited to the following: Recent Releases and ...

  Microsoft released a few more Cumulative Updates for SQL Server 2014 as listed below. There are a number of interesting fixes so I highly recommend if you have SQL Server 2014 to take a look at the list of hotfixes included in each update. SQL 2014 SP1 CU11 SQL 2014 SP2 CU4 Happy patching, Andy

  Here is the latest update about the monthly newsletter that a good friend of mine (Fany Carolina Vargas) from Microsoft puts together each month which shows a whole host of goodies related to SQL Server which include but are not limited to the following: Recent Releases and Announcements Recent White Papers, E-Books, Training and ...

  This is a friendly reminder about a monthly newsletter that a good friend of mine (Fany Carolina Vargas) from Microsoft puts together each month which shows a whole host of goodies related to SQL Server which include but are not limited to the following: Recent Releases and Announcements Recent White Papers, E-Books, Training and ...

  Some big news today in the world of SQL Server and Visual Studio announced at Connect.  One of the announcements that will spark the interest of most of the people here on this blog is that SP1 for SQL Server 2016 is available for download now.  Why is this important? Well there are a ton of changes related to what features are ...

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 working on a PowerShell script to show me the trending durations of my backup activities. The first thing I need is the data, so I looked at the Standard Reports in SQL Server Management Studio, and found a report that suited my needs, so I pulled out the script that it runs and modified it to this T-SQL Script. A few words here - you need ...

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 ...