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How to patch SQL Server instances with Qualys Patch Management

By one of our Customers, I have to use Qualys to patch their production SQL Server instances. And to be more precise the Qualys Patch Management application which provides a solution to manage vulnerabilities and deploy patches to secure and keep assets up-to-date.I will use the job functionality of Qualys Patch Management to automate the patching based on a specific… 

Help yourself out with the ‘log_reuse_wait_desc’ column

A few days ago a customer called me to ask if I could help him with a problem with the log file. He tried to shrink it, but the system wasn’t doing anything and he didn’t know why. With the column ‘log_reuse_wait_desc’ you can find it out. When I asked him what was in the ‘log_reuse_wait_desc’ column for the database, there… 

SQL Server: Basic AG – One listener, multiple databases

Introduction When it is not possible to have SQL Server Enterprise and there is a need to set up an AlwaysOn cluster, it is possible to use SQL Server Standard and implement basic availability groups. However, the Standard edition of SQL Server comes with certain limitations when it comes to availability groups. Here are some of these limitations However some… 

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 it is of a reasonable size, then an offline approach may be desirable. This will have the advantage of also working… 

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 which is slightly transparent. If you have a lot of databases to process, you may want to automate this operation:… 

Automate CNOs and VCOs for SQL Server AAG

During the installation of a new SQL Server environment in a Project, we wanted to automate the whole process deployment and configuration when installing a new SQL Server Always On Availability Group (AAG). This installation requires to prestage cluster computer objects in Active Directory Domain Services, called Cluster Name Objects (CNOs) and Virutal Computer Objects (VCOs). For more information on… 

SQL Server AlwaysOn node “Add all eligible storage to the cluster”

I made a mistake recently when adding a new node to an existing Windows Failover Cluster supporting AlwaysOn SQL Server instances. When adding a new node using the GUI there’s this option checked by default named “Add all eligible storage to the cluster”. Before performing the operation the disks on the 2 nodes of my cluster were used by the… 

SQL Server – Collecting last backup information in an AlwaysOn environment

Introduction Sometimes you face interesting challenges with unusual environment. One of my customer needed a automated and flexible backup solution. Said like that nothing very complex you will say. But if I mention that some databases were 60TB big with more than 30 filegroups and around 600 database data files each and moreover synchronized in an AlwayOn availability group, it… 

SQL Server 2017 AlwaysOn AGs and new read-scale architectures

As you probably know Microsoft announced an official name for SQL Server vNext during the last Microsoft Data Amp event on April 19 2017. It becomes officially SQL Serve 2017. In my first blog post, I wrote about SQL Server on Linux and the introduction of availability groups features. At this moment the SQL Server release version was CTP 1.3. As… 

SQL Server AlwaysOn – Distributed availability groups, read-only with round-robin capabilities

This blog post comes from a very interesting discussion with one of my friends about the read-only capabilities of secondary replicas in the context of distributed availability groups. Initially, distributed availability groups are designed to address D/R scenarios and some migration scenario types as well. I already discussed about of one possible migration scenario here. However, we may also take… 

SQL Server 2016: Distributed availability groups and Cross Cluster migration

How to migrate an environment that includes availability groups from one Windows Failover Cluster to another one? This scenario is definitely uncommon and requires a good preparation. How to achieve this task depends mainly of your context. Indeed, we may use a plenty of scenarios according to the architecture in-place as well as the customer constraints in terms of maximum…