SQL DBA Blog: Home

  • DBA Scripts: SQL Server Change Management

    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Migration & Deployment Change window open and you need the checklist or the rollback criteria now? Start Here goes straight to them. The rest is the paperwork either side of the window: how a change gets approved, proved safe before you start and…

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  • Windows Server OS Upgrade Runbook for SQL Server

    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Migration & Deployment Upgrading the operating system underneath SQL Server is usually driven by someone else: a support deadline, a security policy, a hardware refresh. That does not make it someone else problem, because SQL Server is the thing that will be blamed…

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  • SQL Server Edition Change Runbook: Upgrade and Downgrade

    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Migration & Deployment Changing SQL Server edition is two completely different jobs depending on which way you are going. Upgrading is a setup.exe operation measured in minutes. Downgrading is a migration, because there is no supported in-place path, and it starts with an…

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  • SQL Server Version Upgrade Runbook: Side-by-Side and In-Place

    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Migration & Deployment There are two ways to upgrade a SQL Server version, and the choice is really a choice about what your rollback looks like. Side-by-side gives you a rollback that consists of pointing the application back at a server which is…

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  • SQL Server Migration Runbook: Availability Groups and Failover Clusters

    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Migration & Deployment Migrating a highly available instance is not one job, it is two different jobs that people frequently confuse. An Availability Group migration adds replicas and fails over. A Failover Cluster Instance migration builds a new cluster and cuts over. The…

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  • SQL Server Migration Runbook: Standalone Instance

    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Migration & Deployment Moving a standalone SQL Server instance to new hardware is the most common migration there is, and the one most often done from memory. The databases are the easy part. What catches people is everything around them: logins that arrive…

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  • The Filegroup Cannot Be Removed Because It Is Not Empty (Error 5042)

    SQL Server error 5042 means something still lives on the filegroup, often an index rather than the table you were thinking of. How to find it, move it, empty the files and remove it in the right order.

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  • Kerberos vs NTLM in SQL Server: Best Practices

    There are 2 ways in: a linked server failing as NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON, and the discovery that an estate everyone assumed was on Kerberos is running on NTLM. Both are the same question, and one query answers it. ⚡Run one query: auth_scheme in sys.dm_exec_connections says KERBEROS or NTLM per connection. NTLM is not an error…

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  • The SELECT Permission Was Denied on the Object (Error 229)

    🚨Part of the SQL Server Errors series, the exact messages and what actually causes them.Related pillar: Security Msg 229  ·  Level 14  ·  State 5 The SELECT permission was denied on the object ‘ErrOrder’, database ‘zz_shot_de’, schema ‘dbo’. ⚡The message already names object, schema and database. Look for a DENY before anything else, then fix…

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  • The Filegroup Has No Files Assigned to It (Error 622)

    SQL Server error 622 arrives long after the mistake: creating a table on an empty filegroup succeeds, and the first insert is what fails. Why it is late, and the one statement that fixes it.

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