How to create and configure a linked server in SQL Server Management Studio June 9, 2017 by Marko Zivkovic Linked servers allow submitting a T-SQL statement on a SQL Server instance, which returns data from other SQL Server instances. A linked server allows joining data from several SQL Server instances using a single T-SQL statement when data exists on multiple databases on different SQL instances. By using a linked server to retrieve data from several SQL instances, the only thing that should be done is to connect to one SQL instance. Read more »
How to install SQL Server on Ubuntu May 18, 2017 by Stefan Veselinovic Introduction With an increasing number of new servers running on Linux, and even a third of Microsoft’s Azure virtual machines running Linux, they have made a choice to bring SQL Server to Linux in order to increase their market share and attract new customers. Read more »
Installation of SQL Server vNext CTP on Linux Distribution CentOS 7 May 10, 2017 by Prashanth Jayaram It was a paradigm shift in December 2016, when Microsoft made their SQL Server database available for Linux; it was the first time in history that Microsoft ever designed SQL Server to run on a non-Windows operating system. SQL Server vNext was released for public preview so the user community could test and deploy SQL Server on a Linux operating system. Microsoft took a major step in diversifying the database technology into the non-windows platform for the first time. Read more »
How to install Microsoft SQL Server Express LocalDB May 9, 2017 by Marko Zivkovic Microsoft SQL Server Express LocalDB, a solution primarily intended for developers, is a lightweight version of SQL Server Express. It is very easy to install and set up. The installation copies a minimum set of files which are necessary to start SQL Server Database Engine. LocalDB supports the same T-SQL language and has the same limitations as SQL Server Express. Read more »
Running SQL Server Containers on Windows Server 2016 Core April 21, 2017 by Andrew Pruski SQL Server & Containers There’s a lot of buzz around containers at the moment but not so much in the SQL Server world which I find odd as, to me as a SQL Server DBA, the technology has a lot of benefits that are worth exploring especially when it comes to development environments. Read more »
How to download and install the SQL Server Database Experimentation Assistant (DEA v2.0) April 19, 2017 by Vitor Montalvão Introduction I had the opportunity to work and perform various tests with Database Experimentation Assistant (DEA) Technical Preview 1 (DEA v1) and also worked closely to DEA’s development team by reporting some issues and have their feedback on how to solve most of them. Some issues were really bugs and they had them fixed in this new release, the DEA Technical Preview 2 (DEA v2.0). Read more »
How to Configure Read-Only Routing for an Availability Group in SQL Server 2016 March 23, 2017 by Ahmad Yaseen The SQL Server Always On Availability Groups concept was introduced the first time in SQL Server 2012 as an enterprise-level high availability and disaster recovery solution that will replace the database mirroring feature. Always On Availability Group provides a high availability solution on the groups level, where each group can contain any number of databases that can be replicated to multiple secondary servers known as Replicas. Read more »
Configuring the Azure SQL Database Firewall February 28, 2017 by Minette Steynberg Introduction The Azure SQL Database firewall lets you decide which IP addresses may or may not have access to either your Azure SQL Server or your Azure SQL database. When creating an Azure SQL Database, the firewall needs to be configured before anyone will be able to access the database. By default, no external access to your SQL Database will be allowed until you explicitly assign permission by creating a firewall rule. Read more »
How to install, configure and use SQL Server Distributed Replay February 1, 2017 by Vitor Montalvão Introduction The Microsoft SQL Server Distributed Replay feature has been provided by Microsoft since SQL Server 2012 and it is used to replay captured traces against an upgraded test environment. Read more »
Best Practices for Configuring Newly Installed SQL Server Instances January 20, 2017 by Musab Umair Often we install SQL Server on clients or we get to clients where they have pre-installed SQL Server Instances. As a DBA we have the Primary responsibility of keeping the Database Up and Running. This responsibility leads to optimizing, performance tuning and many other stuff related to database’s internal objects. While keeping the other aspects in mind many of us have to go through the configuration of the newly installed or pre-installed but un-configured instances. Configuring SQL Server newly instances are not an easy task and a DBA might want to configure an Instance in many ways. Read more »
How to install the SQL Server Utility Control Point and configure multiple instances for monitoring January 16, 2017 by Musab Umair As we progress in our career as a SQL Server Database Administrators we encounter situations where managing and monitoring a large number of SQL Servers is the daily job requirement. Monitoring SQL Server is a very vast and detailed area of study. Out of all the monitoring the very basis and critical monitoring in the Resource Utilization Monitoring for SQL Server. Read more »
How to download and install the SQL Server Database Experimentation Assistant (DEA) January 12, 2017 by Vitor Montalvão Introduction The Database Experimentation Assistant (DEA) is a new Experimental solution provided by Microsoft used to help upgrading databases from older SQL Server versions (MSSQL 2005 or higher versions) to the more recent ones (MSSQL 2012 or higher versions). It accomplished this based in a given workload that is previously captured from the source database and later replayed on the target SQL Server instances for comparison. Read more »
How to create and configure Microsoft Azure HDInsight November 18, 2016 by Daniel Calbimonte Introduction In our chapter about PolyBase, we presented this new SQL Server 2016 feature to query CSV files stored in Azure Storage accounts. We mentioned that in PolyBase you can query data in Hadoop (HDInsight) using SQL Server. HDInsight is a very popular system in Azure that eventually you will need to interact with if you use SQL Server. That is why we will give an explanation for newbies about it. Read more »
SQL Server 2016 Database Scoped Configuration October 21, 2016 by Ahmad Yaseen SQL Server 2016 introduces a new set of configurations that can be applied at the database level to control its performance and behavior. These configurations were previously applicable only at the SQL instance level before version SQL Server 2016, With the ability to configure settings at the database level, many databases that are hosted in the same instance can now be isolated from each other, with each database has its own customized configurations. The database level configurations allow us also to set different database configurations for the Always On Availability Groups primary and secondary databases to meet the different types of workloads. Read more »
What’s new in the SQL Server 2016 installation? July 13, 2016 by Ahmad Yaseen SQL Server 2016 introduced officially on the 1st of June 2016. It comes with many new features such as Query Store that maintains the execution plans history for the queries with its performance data in order to detect any slowness in the query caused by the new plans, so that the administrator can force the use of the better old plan. Read more »
SQL Server network configuration June 14, 2016 by Ahmad Yaseen SQL Server Network Configuration involves enabling the protocols that manage the connection to the SQL Server and configuring the available options for these network protocols. It also provides the means to encrypt the communication between the SQL Server instance and the client applications and hide the SQL Server instance from being browsed. SQL Server Network Configuration can be managed using the SQL Server Configuration Manager tool. Read more »
Installing SQL Server 2016 June 7, 2016 by Robert Seles Introduction Microsoft SQL Server 2016 provides faster transactions and queries, deeper insights on any device, advanced analytics, new security technology, and new hybrid cloud scenarios. Along with these features, comes the new installation setup. Although it is similar to the installation of SQL Server 2014 and other older versions, there are few notable differences: Read more »
How to install SQL Server Management Studio 2008 January 20, 2016 by Marko Zivkovic SQL Server Management Studio is a software application that helps users to easily access the SQL Server database engine and manipulate objects and data stored on SQL Server databases. The first version was released with Microsoft SQL Server 2005, replacing Enterprise Manager as the primary interface for Microsoft SQL Server. Read more »
Step by step installation of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2012 January 12, 2016 by Stefan Daniel Plačkov SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is the official Microsoft application used for managing all components within Microsoft SQL Server. It is a powerful tool which allows users to control any objects in the SQL Server. It also provides script editing and GUI tools which are easy to use and user friendly.SQL Server has multiple editions including: Enterprise Edition, Enterprise Core Edition, Business Intelligence Edition, Standard Edition, Web Edition, Express and Developer Edition each with its own features and functions. Read more »
How to install SQL Server 2014 Management Studio December 30, 2015 by Stefan Bozovic There are multiple editions of SQL Server 2014 (Enterprise Edition, Enterprise Core Edition, Business Intelligence Edition, Standard Edition, Web Edition, Express and Developer Edition). SQL Server 2014 has a free edition – Express and while the server itself lacks some options that other editions have, SQL Server 2014 Management Studio is the same and can be used with each of these. Read more »
SQL Server 2014 – Install a clustered instance – step-by-step (3/3) March 12, 2015 by Murilo Miranda This article is divided in three parts, if you started here, check the first and second part to find the previous steps. Now we need to define if the instance will work in “Windows Authentication Mode” or “Mixed Mode”. I usually choose “Mixed Mode” because there’s always an application that don’t work with domain accounts. By choosing this option you need to specify the password for the famous “sa” login. Notice that you can change the authentication mode anytime! You also need to add accounts to receive the Sysadmin privilege, this is very important… Even more if you choose the “Windows Authentication Mode”. Read more »
SQL Server 2014 – Install a clustered instance – step-by-step (2/3) March 11, 2015 by Murilo Miranda This article is divided in three parts, if you started here, check the first part to find the previous steps. Read more »
SQL Server 2014 – Install a clustered instance – step-by-step (1/3) March 9, 2015 by Murilo Miranda Do you want to install a SQL Server 2014 clustered instance? Not sure how to proceed? What are the requisites? This series of articles will show this, step-by-step. In this article I’m going to explain, step-by-step, how to install clustered SQL Server instance. The SQL Server version that we will be using is the 2014, or SQL Server 12, the latest SQL Server version, so far… Read more »
Unattended installation of SQL Server December 11, 2014 by Boris Hristov In my first article, we talked about how we can make our SQL Server installation include every single patch and hotfix we plan to install. That process is called slipstreaming and it’s a huge timesaver, so if you missed it, jump here and take a look at it. I seriously believe it could be a game changer for you and how you do some of your work. Read more »
Slipstreaming SQL Server 2012 and 2014 November 12, 2014 by Boris Hristov Let’s say that you care about your SQL Server environment, but let’s also say that you care about your time too. You are actually one of those people who always strive to do more with less. Now let’s say that you frequently have to install new SQL Server instances or probably you are in the middle of a project in which you have to provide the .iso file of your SQL installation to the System Center guys for them to deploy VMs with SQL Server pre-installed on them. However, because you don’t want to first install the RTM version of the product and then manually patch the instance with the Service Packs, Cumulative Updates or Hotfixes that you think are needed, you are searching for a solution to somehow “embed” all of those fixes into the installation itself! This way, once the instance is installed, it actually has everything already applied. How can you do this and is it possible at all? Read more »
