Nathan Courtine

Automate encryption-in-transit for SQL Server

Encryption-in-transit is part of the essential security baseline for SQL Server.Without TLS, TDS packets travel in clear text across the network, making them vulnerable to interception or modification by an attacker attempting to gain access to the system.This is why(…)

Guidance for a SQL Server backup strategy in AWS EC2

INTRODUCTION S3 storage is the most resilient and available service in AWS: is a trusted service for storing backups over the long term. From a Windows Server machine, in AWS EC2 or elsewhere, the easiest and most reliable way(…)

Random permission denied when backing up SQL Server databases to AWS Storage Gateway

Before addressing the issue of backup size reduction with compression enabled, let me provide some context. When SQL Server is hosted on AWS EC2 instances, you’ll need to manage the backup strategy appropriate to your business. In order to persist(…)

SQL Server 2025 – AG Commit Time

SQL Server 2025 preview has been publicly available for a week now: you can find all the details in this blog “SQL Server 2025 Public Preview and SSMS 21 now available“.In this blog, I want to make an highlight(…)

SQL Konferenz 2024 – Microsoft Copilots

Today, we followed (with Roger Schönmann) the first day of the SQL Konferenz 2024.  We will be attending this event from October 01 to 02 in Hanau. At dbi services, we are no strangers to this conference, as(…)

Attach database error (SMB Fileshare)

Starting with SQL Server 2012, SQL Server supports databases using the Server Message Block (SMB) file server as a storage option. For performance and reliability reasons, SMB 3.0 or later is preferred to use.For architectures like Always On(…)

Move SQL Server database files to different folders with PowerShell

In my previous post, I explained how to move SQL Server databases files programmatically by leveraging the high availability of an Availability Group (AG).But when you can afford to have a database unavailable for a short time, and if(…)

Move secondary database files in SQL Server AG with PowerShell

For some circumstances, you may want to move data and log files for a database to a different location.Usually, this operation has to be made offline. But with an Availability Group (AG) environment, it is possible to choose an approach(…)

Installing Azure AZ Module on Windows

Since Azure (or AzureRM) module is marked as deprecated some years ago, AZ module is the official replacement to manage Azure resources with PowerShell. This module is running with at least PowerShell 7.0.6 LTS (Long Term Support) or(…)

Get SQL Server database size with PowerShell

Introduction For various reasons, following the evolution of the data size of databases is interesting for a dba or for the application team. Most of the time, this is something built-in for monitoring tools – convenient to follow the evolution(…)