There was a question that came up on the MCM mailing list about what are these files: model_msdbdata.mdf, model_msdblog.ldf, model_replicatedmaster.mdf, model_replicatedmaster.ldf? It was pointed out that the files don’t show up in the typical DMVs and seem to not really be used at the moment. These are the databases used as the basis for the […]
Issue Introduction I was asked if I knew any reason why SQL Agent would be using “a bunch” of memory and more cpu than normal. You and I, reader, now have the same information to go on. What do you do? Think about for a minute or two if you want before reading on. I’m […]
When SQL Server 2019 came out, there was a new service installed along with SQL Server called, “AzureAttestService”, however there was no documentation and the service continues to be installed with SQL Server 2022. To this day there still isn’t any. To be fair, the question only comes up a handful of times and each […]
Setup If you’re using availability groups with read-scale or linux (cluster type = None/External), you might want to watch the number of databases put into a single availability group. There seems to be an issue where having a very large number (~200) of databases in an AG works without issue, however going higher may result […]
I was recently asked a question, while fixing a cluster connectivity issue, about how the cluster resource dll knows on which port to connect to SQL Server. It’s not a very exciting answer, which is, “It doesn’t.”. After some days passed I was thinking about the question and answer as though the response I had […]
I see many questions, and have been on the receiving end of many myself, about out of support items and removing them from their SQL Server servers. One of these items is the SQL Server Native Client, aka SNAC, aka SQLNCLI, and I’m sure many others. I remember investigating the connections a very long time […]
Let me start off by saying that DBATools is a great tool that is immensely helpful to the community, if you haven’t heard about it or tried it, please give it a shot! I personally believe that the SQL Server community is truly the best out there, with so many people helping each other and […]
Primer If you haven’t already read up on cooperative and preemptive scheduling or aren’t sure what those are, please read the intro to that first, otherwise you’ll be lost. Much as I’ve discussed before, SQL Server uses a cooperative scheduling model. This doesn’t mean that Windows does, nor does it mean Windows will scheduler whatever […]
The Dude I get asked if I know anything about <newest SQL vulnerability as reported by random website>, quite often. Generally, my answer is that I don’t for two main reasons… the first being that none of them are actual vulnerabilities, and the second being that none of them are particularly new but merely items […]
You’ve Asked, It’s Now Here! The largest complaint, by far, for Availability Groups (AG) has been that system databases could not be part of the AG. This is how mirroring worked, and AGs were an evolution of mirroring, solving many of the problems that mirroring had (although mirroring solved many of the problems log shipping […]
