Category: Monitoring
-
sp_who vs sp_who2 vs sp_whoisactive in SQL Server
Ever wondered what is happening inside your SQL Server instance right now? sp_who, sp_who2 and sp_whoisactive all answer that question, at very different depths. The first ships documented, the second ships undocumented but better, and the third is a free community procedure that most working DBAs treat as the real answer. This post is the…
Written by
-
Silent Failures: The SQL Server Problems That Never Raise an Error
Twelve SQL Server failures that produce no error, no failed job and no alert, why each stays silent, and one script that finds them all.
Written by
-
Log and Filter sp_who2 Results in SQL Server
sp_who2 has no WHERE clause. Capture its output into a thirteen column table with INSERT … EXEC and it becomes queryable, including a logging table you can run on a schedule. Plus the two errors that stop most people, and the DMV to use instead.
Written by
-
Disable Change Data Capture in SQL Server
Disabling Change Data Capture (CDC) is straightforward, but it has to happen in the right order: every tracked table first, then the database. Skip a step and SQL Server tells you plainly rather than doing it anyway, which is the safe behaviour but confusing the first time you hit it. This post covers disabling CDC…
Written by
-
How to Enable Change Data Capture (CDC) in SQL Server
Change Data Capture (CDC) allows SQL Server to track inserts, updates, and deletes on selected tables by reading the transaction log and storing changes in system tables. From a DBA point of view, CDC is easy to enable but easy to underestimate. It adds background jobs, ongoing storage growth, and operational overhead that needs to…
Written by
-
How to Check if Query Store Is Enabled in SQL Server
Query Store is one of the most useful features for troubleshooting query performance in SQL Server, but it is not always enabled or usable in the way people expect. In practice, Query Store might be: This post walks through how to check whether Query Store is enabled, how to see its current state, and how…
Written by
-
How to Check SQL Server Version
Knowing exactly which SQL Server version and build is running is foundational DBA work. It comes up during patching, incident response, audits, upgrades, and when engaging Microsoft support. SQL Server exposes version information in several ways. Some are fast and visual, others are scriptable, and a few provide deeper installation detail when you need it.…
Written by
-
Check When SQL Server Was Last Restarted
Knowing when SQL Server last restarted is one of the simplest checks a DBA can perform, and one of the most useful. It immediately answers questions around patching, failovers, configuration changes, and unexplained behaviour. Before assuming anything else, confirming uptime is always worth doing first. This post shows the most reliable way to check SQL…
Written by
-
Get Database File Names and Paths in SQL Server
As a DBA, you regularly need to know where your database files live, how big they are, and how they’re configured to grow. Capacity planning, migration prep, new environment review, disk space incidents: they all start here. This script gives you a full picture of every user database file on the instance: physical path, drive…
Written by
- SQL Server Row-Level Security: The Filter Does Not Stop Cross-Tenant Writes
- View the Definition of a Stored Procedure in SQL Server
- TempDB Is Full or Still Growing: Find What Is Using It, Right Now
- SQL Server Service Will Not Start: Error 17113, 17058, 1067 and Where the Real Reason Is
- How to Move TempDB Files in SQL Server
- RAND() vs NEWID() in SQL Server
- Backups & Recovery (17)
- DBA Scripts (151)
- High Availability (HA) (12)
- Installation & Configuration (49)
- Maintenance (25)
- Migration & Upgrades (14)
- Monitoring (9)
- Performance Tuning (37)
- Security (Encryption & Permissions) (20)
- Storage & Capacity (16)
- T-SQL Fundamentals (15)
- Troubleshooting (94)
- Wait Types (235)