Recently I encountered this issue. Customer was trying to install SMO by using the following switch in the setup command line for SQL 2008: /FEATURES=SNAC_SDK However, the installation didn’t cache the SMO dll’s in the c:\program...

This blog describes a very simple but tricky issue. A Backup software was unable to take system state back up. The issue was narrowed down to a situation where the SQL Server VSS writer service fails to connect to a non existing SQL instance. When we...

After Preparing and Installing SQL Server 2008 Cluster on a Windows 2008 Server Cluster from the "Advanced" option in the Landing Page, we are unable to see the properties of one of the Instances of DTC in the Component Services UI. It appears blank with...

Below is one of the scenarios, I recently witnessed where a query was failing when executed from SSMS (SQL 2008) on windows client machine. There is no local SQL installation on the machine and had registered a remote SQL Server instance. When tried to...

In this post, I shall explain why monotonically increasing or decreasing clustered index key columns can create hot spots for your index pages with the help of an example. A hot spot is simply an active portion of the table which is accessed more frequently...

I recently read a blog post on what was better using GUIDs or Integer values. This is been an age long debate and there are advocates in both camps stressing on the disadvantages of the other. Well both implementations have their advantages and disadvantages...

SQL Server Performance Dashboard Reports in SSMS – Introduction, Install, DateDiff error & Modified for SQL 2008 Many of you seasoned DBA’s out there would have heard about the SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports and used...

ISSUE: You have SQL 2005 SP2 Express Edition or any of earlier version of SQL Express and you decide to apply SP3 to SQL Express edition. You download the http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3181842a-4090-4431-acdd-9a1c832e65a6&displaylang...

Continued from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverfaq/archive/2010/05/13/inf-new-sql-server-features-in-sql-server-2008-r2-part-1.aspx There are a host of enhancements that come as a part of SQL Server 2008 R2. I have outlined some more features below...

SQL Server 2008 R2 expands on the value delivered in SQL Server 2008 by providing a wealth of new features and capabilities that can benefit your entire organization. Many of these features are already documented in SQL Server Books Online at http://msdn...

“ We’re getting questions on whether folks can upgrade directly from CTP3 to RTM. The recommended and supported approach is to uninstall CTP3 and install the final release version when it is available. We apologise for any conflicting information you...

SQL Server Books Online holds information on a variety of topics concerning the product which can overwhelm any user. Today, I shall demystify two parameter options for the most commonly automated DBA activity: Database Backups. SQL Server database backups...

As part of Encryption Key management in SQL Server 2008 Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) implementation, SQL server allows re-encryption of a mirrored database without breaking the Mirroring setup. In the following post I would be describing the script...

Problem: SQL Server Agent cannot start because the instance of the Server Instance is not the expected Instance The SQL Server Agent may fail to start after a restart of the SQL Services. You may see this issue when you have multiple SQL Server...

1. Can I use SQL 2008 slipstreamed installer to install SQL Server 2008 failover cluster? Yes. Launch the setup.exe from command prompt with PCUSource = <path to extracted SP1>. Refer http://blogs.msdn.com/petersad/archive/2009/03/02/sql-server...

Issue : The Service Pack 1 installation on SQL Server 2008 fails with the following errors : detail.txt: Instance INST01 overall summary: Final result: The patch installer has failed to update the shared features. To determine the reason...

· Disclaimer : Microsoft does not currently recommend, and does not support, Automation of Microsoft Office applications from any unattended, non-interactive client application or component (including ASP, ASP.NET, DCOM, and NT Services), because Office...

Problem Description: ================ You may notice that when you configure logshipping in SQL server 2005 from primary server, it gets configured successfully without any error but no logshipping job is created on primary server. Also logshipping...

Thanks for overwhelming response of part 1 of the series. As a part of this series, we have created a Domain Controller (Win2k8MyDC). Let’s go ahead and follow the steps below to add two more machines into my domain (blakhani.com). For this you need two...

Consider a scenario where we have set up a transactional replication between two servers and you want to MOVE the publication database and Distribution database to a different location.  The procedure for moving the system database ‘Distribution...

It’s a very common scenario where customers have their database encrypted and hold multiple certificates on their SQL Server environment. In this blog I would be sharing some good information on steps to restore full backup that was taken at the time...

Network Binding Order Rule Warning in SQL Server 2008 Cluster Setup Explained This blog present some more information about the “network binding order” setup rule that is present in SQL Server 2008. We have another blog that talks about the issues...

Here is a scenario where you might end up receiving a Fatal Error while installing SQL 2005 on Windows 2008 environments. Below is the snippet from the Setup logs: Summary Log: ========== OS Version : Server 4.0, Enterprise Edition Service...

Problem Description =============== · After role reversal in a log shipping setup, the stored procedure sp_help_log_shipping_monitor may return the following error OR we may find the error in the log shipping report in SQL Server Management Studio...

(How to uninstall SQL Server 2005 Cluster / How to break SQL Server 2005 Cluster ) There will be situations where you want to perform any of below task: 1.        Convert two node SQL cluster to standalone instance of SQL...