This solution is for anyone that has a SQL failover cluster and wishes Reporting Service to be highly available and have failover capabilities. The solution I implemented seems the most natural and how Reporting Services should work right out of the box – but doesn’t. This solution makes Reporting Services highly available (HA) on both cluster nodes with failover capability… Read More »
Our tools can make us more efficient and productive – if we take the time to learn their secrets. I spend a lot of time in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and have learned valuable tips and features along the way from many others (links provided). SSMS Settings There are my favorite tweaks to improve your working environment. Register all your servers into… Read More »
I was working on a T-SQL query that had some very particular output requirements for decimal places. The problem seemed fairly easy, but when I tried to form a CASE WHEN statement that produced slightly different decimal lengths for each condition, the results were inconsistent. The reason wasn’t immediately apparent but involves SQL Data Type Precedence.… Read More »
As a follow up to my article Anatomy of a Successful Troubleshooter, I began thinking about the habits that I have found effective when troubleshooting. I was trying to coach a teammate with troubleshooting, which is what triggered this curiosity. I put together this catalog of what I have found valuable that could qualify as effective troubleshooting… Read More »
I recently found myself coaching a teammate with troubleshooting advice, but it seemed like no matter what I offered they were unable to improve their situation or correct bad habits. It seemed like it just wasn’t in their DNA so I started to wonder if they had the right stuff to become successful in this career. This… Read More »
Since I was installing a dual instance cluster, I had setup two virtual SQL database names with different IP address and the second instance required a non-default instance name. However, I wanted to access both instances using the virtual name and I found I could do that by setting both of them to listen on… Read More »
When installing SQL, it is too easy to click next and accept all the default settings. Kevin Boles has preached for years that SQL Server defaults suck! Joseph D’Antoni has also addressed bad default settings in Building Perfect SQL Servers Every Time with his best practices installation script. As a SQL DBA it is best… Read More »
I was building a new cluster with a dual instance of SQL 2012 and SQL 2008R2. Everything went easy with the SQL 2012 but not so well with the SQL 2008R2 install. As many have found out installing SQL 2008R2 on Windows Server 2012R2 is met with some strange errors due to the fact that… Read More »