Here's a quickie that I've just stumbled across. I've just tried to initiate a manual failover of an availability group and received the following error. After a spot of head scratching and thinking that there was something wrong with my AG setup, it turns out that there's a bug in SSMS. I was running SSMS... Continue Reading →
TempDB Filling Up On Secondary Replicas
Have you ever had an issue where TempDB was filling up on your secondary replicas? Do those secondaries happen to be read only replicas? When I have an issue with tempdb filling up the first thing that I usually do is try to figure out exactly what the space has been allocated to. You can... Continue Reading →
UNDERCOVER TOOLBOX: sp_WhatsMyAG
Here's a quick one for you. If you happen to be managing SQL Servers with a large number of databases and availability groups, it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of which database belongs to which availability group. sp_WhatsMyAG will tell you just that. You can either provide it with the database name and... Continue Reading →
Log Shipping – Error: Failed to update database “DATABASE NAME” because the database is read-only
Here's a strange one that I've recently come across. I had a customer report that their log shipping restore jobs were chock a block of errors. Now, the logs seem to have been restoring just fine but before every restore attempt, the job is reporting the error, Error: Failed to update database "DATABASE NAME" because... Continue Reading →
UNDERCOVER TOOLBOX: Get Details of All Open Transactions
It was 3am in the morning and I was asleep and enjoying a delightful dream (I knew it was a dream because I was surrounded by drifting clouds, singing angels and hundreds of softly humming SQL Servers where the hardware had been sensibly provisioned and all code carefully optimised) when I was rudely awoken by... Continue Reading →
SQL Undercover Podcast – Feb 2018
The first SQL Undercover podcast where Adrian introduces the Undercover Inspector, David releases sp_restorescript 1.2 along with a bit of nonsense chit chat.
Creating a SQL Server Test Lab On Your Workstation – Part One, Installing The Domain Controller
One of the most useful tools to the DBA when we need to test new features, recreate a fault that we've seen in production or just want to see 'what if...?' is a test lab. Other Posts In The Series Part Two, Creating a Domain Account and Joining a SQL Server to the Domain Part... Continue Reading →
GroupBy Slides and Demo Script is Now On GitHub
The slides and demo scripts from today's GroupBy session are now available on our GitHub repository https://github.com/SQLUndercover/UndercoverToolbox/tree/master/GroupBy Many thanks again for watching, I really hope that you found it useful 🙂
Using PowerShell To Deploy Scripts From GitHub to Multiple SQL Servers
Now I'm all for making my life easier and one thing that makes life easier for me is having a single process that I can run to install\update all my favourite utility stored procedures quickly and on all my SQL Servers. I've done this a few different ways in the past but this time I... Continue Reading →
SQL Smackdown!!! Cursors VS Loops
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the main event of the evening. The SQL Undercover Smackdown Heavy Weight Championship of the World! In the red corner, we hate him, we loath him, I've even heard people say he should be deprecated, it's the Cursor!!! Facing him in the blue corner, loved on the forums, praised by... Continue Reading →
