Internals. Experience. Perspective.
When no one else will tell you that you're holding it wrong...
I was recently asked about T-SQL Snapshot backups on secondary replicas, which I hadn’t looked at for many years as it’s kind of a niche item. I was definitely surprised to find little caveats here and there, thus you get this wonderful post. If you’re unfamiliar with T-SQL Snapshot backups, it’s a way to flush […]
There were a few emails about login times so I figured it warranted a blog post. Strap in, this one goes sideways fast. Some people noted that the amount of time to log in with a SQL Login in SQL Server 2025 all of a sudden took longer. This is clearly stated in the Docs, […]
This used to be a very hot topic around SQL Server 2016 when automatic seeding first came out, then everyone learned how automatic seeding was just manual seeding but done for you and the topic went away. A decade later, it’s somehow back to being a hot topic. I guess all that is old is […]
Memories Sparked by my friends at Straight Path SQL, we’re going to look at a rare cause of non-yielding scheduler dumps. This is another one of those items that I meant to write about a long time ago when I worked in Support and then, well, I suck and clearly forgot about it. This should […]
Issue Introduction Someone asked if I’ve ever had a CU install where you run it and it goes through the extraction process, then right as it hits 100% just exits and nothing happens. Well, that’s pretty weird, and no, I hadn’t. I was, however, intrigued! Since I love my readers, I made a repro of […]
This issue was a fun one, brought to me due to a single replica in an availability group constantly having an issue where it seemed that SQL Server just stopped processing certain requests. If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, “Just one replica in the topology? What’s different with that one replica?” then give […]
I meant to write this almost a year ago, but then I was asked to take a look at high cluster service privileged time usage and realized I had forgotten! I guess better late than never? If you’re using WSFC integrated AGs (cluster_type = WSFC) then the cluster database is the location in which availability […]
It feels like only yesterday I was complaining about Sentinel One trying to take the crown for shittiest security software. Afraid they may be dethroned, CrowdStrike hit back and hit back hard! It started off with a report that Erik loves some big memory grants and cannot lie. One of the worst monitoring tools for […]
There’s been a resurgence of people pointing out dumps occurring in SQL Server when using linked servers with the ACE drivers. It’s been on the MCM email list, forums, SQL Server Feedback site, everywhere, and it’s basically the same response every time… ACE drivers were not made to be used as linked server drivers in […]
I have a long history shitting on CrowdStrike – and well, with their past it’s pretty warranted – but antivirus software is general does bother the hell out of me. You’re essentially installing something that interrogates everything on your system and injects itself everywhere hoping it stops a known issue but generally ends up causing […]
