Microsoft Team

Windows Cluster vNext and cloud witness

The next version of Windows will provide some interesting features about WFSC architectures. One of them is the new quorum type: “Node majority and cloud witness” which will solve many cases where a third datacenter is mandatory and missing to(…)

A funny story with recompile hint at statement level

Last night, I had an interesting discussion with one of my MVP French friend that faces a weird situation where a query that uses a statement level RECOMPILE hint produces an execution plan that disappointed him. He told me we(…)

Venturing into bulk insert a SQL Server error log and data order

Have you ever attempted to bulk import a SQL Server error log in order to use the information inside a report for example? If yes, you have probably wondered how to keep data in the correct order in a query(…)

Analyzing easily the blocked process report

Which DBA has not yet face a performance problem issued by several blocked processes? In reality, I’m sure a very little number of them. Troubleshooting a blocked issue scenario is not always easy and may require to use some useful(…)

Case of monitoring snapshot replication from the subscriber side

I don’t work often with SQL Server replication. The main reason is that the number of customers that use replication is pretty low and each time that I have to deal with it, it’s a good opportunity to improve my(…)

Considerations about SQL Server database files placement, Netapp storage and SnapManager

When you install SQL Server, you have to consider how to place the database files. At this point you will probably meet the well-known best practices and guidelines provided by Microsoft but are you really aware of the storage vendor(…)

Vsphere 6.0 improvements for Windows Failover Clusters

A couple of days ago, VMWare announced vSphere 6.0. I guess many of our customers have been waiting for this new release and probably I will see in the next few months this new version rolled out on the(…)

SQL Server: Online index rebuild & minimally logged operations

A couple of days ago, I encountered an interesting case with a customer concerning a rebuild index operation on a datawarehouse environment. Let me introduce the situation: a “usual DBA day” with an almost usual error message found in your(…)

Memory management, OOM issues with SQL Server 2014 In-memory OLTP

Last week I gave a workshop about SQL Server 2014 and the new features. The first day we worked on new In-memory OLTP and different topics such as the new internal storage, the new transaction processing behavior or the(…)

SQL Server 2014: FCIs, availability groups, and TCP port conflict issues

After giving my session about SQL Server AlwaysOn and availability groups at the last French event “Les journées SQL Server 2014”, I had several questions concerning the port conflict issues, particularly the differences that exist(…)