Author: Peter Whyte

  • How to Shrink SQL Server Database Files in Chunks

    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Storage & Capacity A data file that’s grown far past what the database actually needs, after a one-off bulk load, an archive cleanup, a migration that left behind a much bigger footprint than the data now occupies, eventually needs to come back down.…

    Written by

    Peter Whyte

  • DBA Scripts: Get Lock Escalation, Contention Analysis, and Blocking Chains with Plan

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    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Performance & Troubleshooting › Blocking & Locking Three Different Views of the Same Underlying Problem Blocking Chains shows what’s blocked right now. These three scripts go wider and deeper: Get-LockEscalationStats finds which tables have converted row/page locks into full table locks (a common,…

    Written by

    Peter Whyte

  • AM_INDBUILD_ALLOCATION and AM_SCHEMAMGR_UNSHARED_CACHE Wait Types in SQL Server

    ⏳Part of the SQL Server Wait Types Library, every wait type explained.Related deep dive: IO_COMPLETION Wait TypeRelated pillar: Performance & Troubleshooting Two Access Methods (AM) waits share this page: AM_INDBUILD_ALLOCATION: a thread waiting for exclusive access to an extent during allocations while building or rebuilding indexes. Parallel index builds allocate space aggressively, and workers occasionally…

    Written by

    Peter Whyte

  • WAITFOR Wait Type in SQL Server

    ⏳Part of the SQL Server Wait Types Library, every wait type explained.Related deep dive: SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD Wait TypeRelated pillar: Performance & Troubleshooting WAITFOR is the most literal wait type in the DMV: it records sessions executing a WAITFOR DELAY or WAITFOR TIME statement. The duration is exactly what the T-SQL asked for. Nothing is contended and…

    Written by

    Peter Whyte

  • BACKUP Wait Type in SQL Server

    ⏳Part of the SQL Server Wait Types Library, every wait type explained.Related deep dive: BACKUPIO and BACKUPBUFFER Wait TypesRelated pillar: Backup & Recovery BACKUP is recorded when a thread involved in backup processing waits to synchronise with the other threads of the same backup. Backups run as a multi-threaded pipeline (readers, writers, a coordinator), and…

    Written by

    Peter Whyte

  • BACKUPTHREAD Wait Type in SQL Server

    ⏳Part of the SQL Server Wait Types Library, every wait type explained.Related deep dive: BACKUPIO and BACKUPBUFFER Wait TypesRelated pillar: Backup & Recovery BACKUPTHREAD is recorded when a thread involved in a backup or restore waits for other threads in the same operation to finish their part. Backups are multi-threaded pipelines, readers pulling pages, writers…

    Written by

    Peter Whyte

  • DBA Scripts: Get Trace Flags and Resource Governor Configuration

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    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Server & Configuration Two Things a Previous DBA Might Have Set and Never Told You Trace flags and Resource Governor are both instance-wide behavior changes that don’t show up in sp_configure at a glance, don’t appear in the database, and can sit silently…

    Written by

    Peter Whyte

  • BAD_PAGE_PROCESS Wait Type in SQL Server

    ⏳Part of the SQL Server Wait Types Library, every wait type explained.Related deep dive: PAGEIOLATCH_SH Wait TypeRelated pillar: Performance & Troubleshooting BAD_PAGE_PROCESS is recorded by the background suspect page logger, the process that records 823 and 824 I/O errors into msdb.dbo.suspect_pages, as it throttles itself to run no more than once every five seconds. You…

    Written by

    Peter Whyte

  • DBA Scripts: Get CPU Topology and OS Configuration Checks

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    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Server & Configuration What CPU and OS Settings Are Actually Doing to SQL Server OS and Hardware Info tells you what hardware exists. These two scripts go one level deeper: how SQL Server is actually scheduling work across that hardware, and whether a…

    Written by

    Peter Whyte

  • BROKER_TASK_STOP Wait Type in SQL Server

    ⏳Part of the SQL Server Wait Types Library, every wait type explained.Related deep dive: SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD Wait TypeRelated pillar: Performance & Troubleshooting BROKER_TASK_STOP is recorded when a Service Broker internal task handler waits (up to ten seconds at a time) to shut itself down because there are no Broker tasks, message transmission, receipt, or other asynchronous…

    Written by

    Peter Whyte
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