SQL Server comes with a wide array of tools for monitoring your environment. There are logs and traces that provide information when errors occur, but these are often used passively to react to events that have already occurred.  There's PerfMon, and Profiler, and loads of Dynamic Management Views to check.  But where to look? As ...

Remote Desktop Services Component Architecture Poster Grab your own poster! A visual guide to key Remote Desktop Services technologies in Windows Server 2008R2     Virtually Free Get the latest update rollup package for the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 R2 and be sure to bookmark the Windows Virtualization ...

Lucy, You Got Some 'Splainin to Do!' Quest Software's latest community initiative, Windows Azure-based Project Lucy, has debuted! Project Lucy is part infrastructure analytics, part social media experiment, and part performance data warehouse. The best things about Project Lucy include: It’s Free - just like our SQLServerPedia ...

I’ve posted a new entry on my SQL Server Magazine blog about two free DMV monitoring tools available on CodePlex.Read the article here:http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/ArticleID/102837/102837.html?Ad=1Take a look at the two tools and let me know which you like better and why.  Inquiring minds want to know!Cheers,-Kevin Twitter ...

This is a recommendation I believe is worth repeating from time to time: Make sure you match data types when you write TSQL code. Else you in most cases end up with an implicit data type conversion. And in worst case, this conversion is performed at the column side - not the literal side of your query. What does that mean? Consider below: WHERE ...

I'm very excited about the new Management Data Warehouse coming in SQL Server 2008 (which was called Performance Studio at one point), but keep in mind there are lots of available tools in the current versions. One of the students in my class last week put together this list of his favorites. Note that some of the tools can be used together. For ...