After a another reboot and further patching attempt I poked around Failover Cluster Manager and wouldn’t you know it, The Cluster Name was offline.

Once I brought it online, Service Pack 1 went on fine. If only the Service Pack Installer spotted that, could have saved me a few worried minutes!

Overall Summary Contents

Instance InstanceName overall summary:

Final result: The patch installer has failed to update the shared features. To determine the reason for failure, review the log files.

Exit code (Decimal): -595541211

Exit facility code: 1152

Exit error code: 49957

Exit message: The patch installer has failed to update the shared features. To determine the reason for failure, review the log files.

Start time: 2011-11-13 12:22:06

End time: 2011-11-13 12:23:12

Requested action: Patch

Log with failure: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20111113_121410\InstanceName\Detail.txt

Exception help link: http%3a%2f%2fgo.microsoft.com%2ffwlink%3fLinkId%3d20476%26ProdName%3dMicrosoft%2bSQL%2bServer%26EvtSrc%3dsetup.rll%26EvtID%3d50000%26ProdVer%3d10.50.2500.0%26EvtType%3d0xBF50B949%400xDC80C325

Details.txt Contents

The first error I found was “The RPC server is unavailable”. After that error, several more errors were logged but the RPC server error is where it all started.

2011-11-13 13:42:25 Slp: Sco: Attempting to write hklm registry key SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall to file C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20111113_133842\InstanceName\Registry_SOFTWARE_Wow6432Node_Microsoft_Windows_CurrentVersion_Uninstall.reg_

2011-11-13 13:42:25 Slp: Sco: Attempting to write hklm registry key SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\MSSQLServer to file C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20111113_133842\InstanceName\Registry_SOFTWARE_Wow6432Node_Microsoft_MSSQLServer.reg_

2011-11-13 13:42:25 Slp: The RPC server is unavailable

2011-11-13 13:42:26 Slp: Watson bucket for exception based failure has been created

2011-11-13 13:42:26 Slp: Error: Action "SqlEngineConfigAction_patch_configrc_Cpu64" failed during execution.

2011-11-13 13:42:28 Slp: Error result: -595541211

2011-11-13 13:42:28 Slp: Result facility code: 1152

2011-11-13 13:42:28 Slp: Result error code: 49957

2011-11-13 13:42:28 Slp: Sco: Attempting to create base registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, machine

2011-11-13 13:42:28 Slp: Sco: Attempting to open registry subkey

2011-11-13 13:42:28 Slp: Sco: Attempting to open registry subkey Software\Microsoft\PCHealth\ErrorReporting\DW\Installed

2011-11-13 13:42:28 Slp: Sco: Attempting to get registry value DW0201

2011-11-13 13:42:28 Slp: Submitted 1 of 1 failures to the Watson data repository

1) Backup, Backup and verify!

wbadmin get versions

Backup time: 14/05/2011 00:00
Backup location: Network Share labeled \thefullcircle.localBackups
Version identifier: 05/13/2011-23:00
Can recover: Volume(s), File(s), Application(s), Bare Metal Recovery, System State

2) Read the Release Notes and the Readme, read the MS TechNet SQL blog post

3) Note the warnings..

then ignore it

4) Don’t Analyze Your Upgrade with Upgrade Advisor – already on SQL 2008 R2!!

In the readme it mentions to Analyze Your Upgrade with Upgrade Advisor although clearly if we are installing SP1 for R2 we are already on R2!?! – I’ll skip this step me thinks!

5) Do check your Edition, Version and Installed SQL Server features

but are you absolutely sure of your edition? (only recently The Full Circle performed a SQL Cluster Edition downgrade for a major London Financial Index, the main one.. due to a mistaken edition installation that would have proved VERY costly to license – like £4K per processor)

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Setup Discovery Report

Product	Instance	Instance ID	Feature	Language	Edition	Version	Clustered
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2	MSSQLSERVER	MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER	Database Engine Services	1033	Enterprise Edition	10.50.1600.1	No
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2	MSSQLSERVER	MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER	SQL Server Replication	1033	Enterprise Edition	10.50.1600.1	No
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2	MSSQLSERVER	MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER	Full-Text Search	1033	Enterprise Edition	10.50.1600.1	No
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2	MSSQLSERVER	MSAS10_50.MSSQLSERVER	Analysis Services	1033	Enterprise Edition	10.50.1600.1	No
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2	MSSQLSERVER	MSRS10_50.MSSQLSERVER	Reporting Services	1033	Enterprise Edition	10.50.1600.1	No

 

6) Run the big one!

In our case it’s the x64 version – SQLServer2008R2SP1-KB2463333-x64-ENU (314MB’s worth although will expand out to c.525MB and in our case the SP consumed c.2GB on the C: drive which is where our instance binaries reside (data & logs on another volume of course).

 

I’m not going to paste screen shot after screen shot, but the steps are:

 

6.1) A normal SQL upgrade/update process

6.2) Accept the License terms and do check the box to send feature usage data to Microsoft – it really does help steer the product!

 

6.3) Select your Features (okay another screen grab!) – let the tool select, and you check/confirm

6.4) Check for files in use (not you!, the tool does this)

 

6.5) Let the update go and make tea, sweep the deck, tidy your desk, etc. ours took c.25 minutes

 

6.6) If all goes well you should get a screen per below advising to Restart your engines!

Checking the version number should reveal 10.50.2425.0    SP1

 

Also checking SSMS for version info, in our case gave:

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio                        10.50.2425.0
Microsoft Analysis Services Client Tools                        10.50.2425.0
Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC)                        6.1.7601.17514
Microsoft MSXML                        3.0 4.0 6.0
Microsoft Internet Explorer                        8.0.7601.17514
Microsoft .NET Framework                        2.0.50727.5444
Operating System                        6.1.7601

And if it hasn’t gone well…? you’ve got the rest of the day to interrogate SQL setup logs in the usual place (C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server100Setup BootstrapLog) – we’ve 80MB and 340 files in the last entry alone (of 4 today!), and at worst case start thinking about your restore process!

7) If you are a developer, do some more reading!

There are a lot of enhancements, fixes, and new features and that’s a different topic all together, however by the best cover I’ve seen thus far is Aaron Bertrand’s most excellent blog, and specifically the following posts:

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/aaron_bertrand/archive/2011/04/25/more-changes-you-might-not-have-noticed-in-the-sql-server-2008-r2-sp1-ctp.aspx,

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/aaron_bertrand/archive/2011/04/22/sql-server-2008-r2-sp1-ctp-is-now-available.aspx

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/aaron_bertrand/archive/2010/05/18/new-cumulative-updates-for-sql-server-2008-sp1-r2.aspx

As a UK Microsoft Gold partner (www.thefullcircle.com) staying up to date with the latest trends in technology, and in particular Microsoft’s take on those trends is essential.

Today we are at the ExCeL London conference centre in the heart of Docklands to hear Steve Ballmer and others tell us about Cloud computing solutions in a Microsoft Partner Business Briefing called ‘Transitioning to the Cloud’

Below is Microsoft’s marketing introduction on the event and then the agenda, then my notes from the day..

Event Overview

There is no doubt that the market around us is in a transition period, whether this is from an economic, societal or technological standpoint, and we want to work together with you to ensure we are all making the most of these opportunities in 2011. 

We’ve made a Microsoft-sized commitment to the cloud and through our London Partner Business Briefing we want to share our vision with you and your sales teams. Cloud technology is now a CIO’s #1 priority. Worldwide more than 40 million people have adopted Microsoft cloud services, and AMI Research predicts a rapid transition through 2010-2013 in the UK as businesses purchase cloud solutions. Join us for an exciting day with guest speakers and Microsoft executives.  Expect to receive more information on this event and how to prepare over the coming weeks.

Agenda

My  notes from the day..

Welcome – Katie Ledger
Various marketing videos featuring partners who have embraced..
ThinkScape “I used to go out to customers, now they come to me!”
MD’s and CFO’s love the cloud – move from capex to opex
Katie presented/hosted a Microsoft Cloud event 2 years ago.. – show of hands on who was there and who’s changing their business to embrace cloud… not many!  Will the show of hands be different at the end of the day?

A Changing World – Barry Ridgeway, new GM of SMS&P
Small Medium Business is the fastest growing part of the Microsoft business.
A new acronym.. PaaS – Platform as a Service e.g. Azure
Opportunity – projection in 3yrs $148B… Microsoft investing $10M in UK marketing (opportunities to ride on that wave by timing marketing releases carefully to coincide)

Customer: Why we chose Microsoft – Bert Craven, Architect, easyJet
65 IT team (59 full-time), IT Budget only 0.75% of revenue, 100% SLA requirement, £3B retail business, 20% per year growth! – a challenge!
Reliance on partners
Started with classifying systems – a commodity tier, airline system tier, easyJet specific tier – silver, gold, platinum – then defined SLA strategy for each – top tier is 100% uptime and has been achieved
Simple, standard systems by default!
The potential cloud offers as a Integration platform cannot be understated – Azure AppFabric “the ace in the pack” (origins in BizTalk)
 - small step – easy to swallow, perceived as lower risk
misconception of putting your data in the cloud makes it more vulnerable – a double edged sword
Project Sydney VPN’s…?  wazthat!?!

James Akrigg – Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist
Enterprise class systems used to require Enterprise class infrastructure – not anymore!

Why partner with Microsoft – Martin Neale, MD ICS Solutions
Started a cloud practise after the event 2yrs ago, built up on BPOS at the start of ’09 – 23 customers in the last year, but signed 6 in the last week!  both public & private sector, a lot of support from Microsoft – the best they have had in all their time as partners… did I tell you about our 7 account managers in 7 years…!?!?  (You’ll be one of few I haven’t.. )

Dealing with change.. – Chris Moon (www.chrismoon.co.uk)

Chris is an inspirational & motivational speaker extraordinaire – a former Army officer who then worked for the charity HALO clearing landmines in Asia and Africa, and is one of the few westerners to have survived kidnap by the Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia.

Two years later he became a double amputee when blown up whilst walking in a supposedly cleared minefield in 1995, the blast resulted in the loss of his lower right arm and leg. Doctors say he survived against the odds due to his determination and fitness.

Within a year of leaving hospital he then ran and finished the London Marathon, plus threw in a Masters Degree in Security Management for good measure!

He’s since done numerous marathons and many of the world’s toughest ultra-marathons including the Great Sahara Run and Badwater – the 135-mile ‘fun run’ through Death Valley to the mountains on the hottest day of the year – mental! (yes mentally a hero and physically a superman!).
During his amazing speech he described the Death Valley run as ‘the death fun run’ and revealed comments from others re: ultra-distance as runs that amputees simply don’t do – he clearly doesn’t believe in don’t or can’t

Chris was inspirational, motivational, heart-warming, and very funny at the same time, a few notes from his speech are below:

Keep up or get left behind!  The biggest issue to keeping up is the way that you think..

Never be a victim, take the initiative

What can I do to avoid Being a victim and Create a victimless environment?
Engage-Listen-Understand

Why don’t we like change?
- fear of the unknown
- maybe worse off as a result
- out of comfort zone
- requires effort & hard work
- easier not to
- can cause headaches
- creatures of habit
- loss of territory or control
- puts us in the spotlight
- previous efforts maybe wasted
- we don’t like imposition or ‘have to’

crossing the change curve, instead of following the U-bend, get across it to Aspirational

Stay calm.. see the wood and trees – lead by example

Who doesn’t finish an ultra-marathon?  Those who don’t believe that they can
Never underestimate the power of belief

Dealing with sudden change
- be realistic
- choose a positive perspective
- choose a positive attitude
- use imagination

No matter how great the change, never adopt an attitude that allows you to be crushed
(followed story of an auzzie vet castrating a water buffalo – circle of life, what goes around comes around, next life, past life..)

And finally.. What is it like being blown up?   ….VERY LOUD!  (what a guy!)

Chris has published an autobiography called ‘One Step Beyond’ – indeed I’ve just bought 4 copies for our company from Amazon at http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Step-Beyond-Chris-Moon/dp/033037155X
Our Commitment to the Cloud – Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft
A new era of opportunity…
What is the Cloud – lots of things!
Cloud services for business – Microsoft claim to be the market leader in cloud services with the largest spread of cloud offerings
A key question was how important will the private cloud vs. public cloud be – we are discovering that now..
Factoring in the connectivity costs into the equation – it’s in the calculations

Steve had never been east of Tower Bridge… I think that was obvious! and it sounded like the guys at the front were lined up with pre-screened questions…?  Is that cynical or just an obvious safety net..?

Overall I didn’t really get Ballmer, whilst he’s a passionate and powerful speaker (boy does he project!) I can’t say I really took anything major away from his speech whereas seeing Gates in the flesh you really got the feeling that he truly believed in the role of technology to help improve people’s lives for the better.
The main point that came across was the insistence that the shift to the cloud was one of the most important changes in the history of computing after the Internet – maybe that’s all he wanted to get across, that and the key numbers from Microsoft’s view being:
- 580M Windows Live customers
- 40M users of Azure
- $10M spend in the UK alone on Cloud marketing

What he did leak was that Windows Phone 7 release in UK in next week or so – I’m keen to jump from the iPhone back to a Windows phone so will be keen to watch the last session of the day… a Windows Phone 7 preview.
Microsoft Online Services - Shaun Frohlich, James Akrigg, Myles Jeffery (ThinkScape), Katie Ledger

Demonstration of Software plus Services – SharePoint online, PowerPoint, Outlook migration from a.n.other Email platform to Exchange online, etc.  Lots of tools to make it easy!

Partner Case Study – We chose to Partner with Microsoft for Online Service
Myles Jeffery, MD ThinkScape
Embraced MS cloud technology after watching an online Ray Ozzie presentation in 2008 – a software development company realised they could focus on development and integration rather than platform.  Moved internally (small IT consultancy <10) to BPOS in early 2009 and recommends any prospective partner to do the same.
Believes the sweet spot for ease of migration is up to 25.
Coexistence tools are available to assist trials – SharePoint easy, but what about Exchange..? sub-domain for a project team or something better?

40-million Azure users already, caching in 22 countries keeps the performance good, plus offline caching capabilities

Product Demonstration/Roadmap – Microsoft CRM Online
Dynamics CRM 2011 online – Sean Frohlich, James Akrigg & Roger Collins
Outlook experience, very BCM 2010 look and feel… however its better..
Can we move to it although we have traditional on-premise Exchange? Yes!
Is the only CRM application available today that can be switched between on-premise and cloud and vice-versa – is the same codebase.
Top tip – 40% margin available for new business.
Dynamics CRM 2011 is available in beta now, and should be publically available in March-April 2011.
Partners have inclusive seats for CRM online – e.g. as a Gold Partner we would get 250!

Partner Case Study – We chose to Partner adopt Windows Azure – James Scarfe, Dot Net Software

How do you make money from selling Azure… there is a small kickback on the referral (5%), however services revenue is where the money is.
Reduction in time to market is one of the major advantages
Software virtualisation rather than hardware virtualisation – removing the dependancy on IT platform builds, and the delays in architecture planning such as capacity & resliance planning that a typical corporate IT department needs to do and can take months.  With Azure you can deploy the envionment in minutes and start developing on the production platform striaght away!

Windows Intune – Sean Frohlich, James Akrigg
Microsoft recently announced the Windows Intune Beta, a new solution that aims to simplify how businesses manage and secure PCs using Windows cloud services and Windows 7.
Intune is designed for businesses without an existing PC management infrastructure that need a cost-effective, simple way to manage and secure their PCs (not servers.. for servers and/or over 250 desktops there is System Center Essentials – SCE, or for larger environments Operations Manager).

For businesses with a highly mobile and/or distributed workforce, the Windows Intune cloud service can help manage and secure PCs across multiple offices, remote & mobile and manage them from anywhere.  If you have multiple smaller offices not on the corporate VPN then Cloud services can work very well, especially for security & remote management avoiding costly site visits.

Intune fits very well with our long term support of ASP, and now cloud based solutions – two of the three directors of The Full Circle have been heavily involved in managed AV and Security-as-a-Service since early 2002 building one of the first McAfee ASaP (formerly MyCIO) UK platforms, then as a reseller for SecureResolutions, and now with Panda Security with their Managed Office & Email Protection services.

So in summary it’s a cloud based PC management solution aimed at the small to medium market that takes key parts of Operations Manager, WSUS, ForeFront plus an Enterprise license of Windows 7 to deliver:

-          Updates (from what I could I see the interface is quite simple and not as feature rich as WSUS, nor as complicated)
-          Malware protection (based on Security Essentials and Forefront)
-          Monitoring (alerting for all major functions;  malware, updates, etc.)
-          Remote Assistance (EA taken as used by Microsoft Support, initiated by the end user, allows remote control & file transfer, is firewall friendly as uses TCP Port 443 – same as https)
-          Security Policies (malware, updates, Windows Firewall, what about existing Group Policy?)
-          Hardware and software inventory (quite a simple inventory solution)
-          Licensing (only Microsoft software)

Goto http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsintune/windowsintune-experience.aspx for more info, and if you are lucky enough to be on the beta login to the console via https://manage.microsoft.com

Intune is due to be released in 2011 for 11$ per PC per month, and possible another dollar for MDOP on top – which as you can pay £40 per desktop per year for AV alone makes it a compelling offer esp. if you are currently running XP or Vista due to the upgrade license to Windows 7 Enterprise.

There are c.450 UK partners in the 1^st technical beta (now closed – worldwide cap at 10,000), but the next beta wave will be in the New Year – signup for notification of next wave at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsintune/register.aspx

Windows Phone 7 preview – more to follow…

http://www.windowsphone7.com/

http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/five-uk-networks-will-carry-windows-phone-7-10003
other useful links..

https://www.quickstartonlineservices.com/pages/default.aspx

Summary
Step-by-step understanding is key to successfully implementing and deploying SharePoint 2010. This 15-module course will guide you through each critical stage, giving you exactly the skills you need to leverage full value from the latest SharePoint technology.

Agenda
Module 0 – Getting Ready for a SharePoint 2010 Implementation: Why Governance and Business Requirements are Essential for a Successful Implementation.
Module 1 – Understanding the Architecture of SharePoint Server 2010
Module 2 – Installing SharePoint Server 2010.
Module 3 – Administrating and Configuring Farm Settings in SharePoint Server 2010
Module 4 – Understanding and Administrating Web applications
Module 5 – Managing Web Applications
Module 6 – Introduction to Site Collections
Module 7 – Creating Site Collections
Module 8 – Managing Site Collections
Module 9 – Working with SharePoint Server 2010 Portals
Module 10 – Governance and Information Assurance
Module 11 – Enterprise Content Types & Managed Metadata
Module 12 – Managing Documents and Records
Module 13 – Workflow
Module 14 – Implementing and Managing Search
Module 15 – People & Social Networking
Module 16 – Disaster Recovery

A handful of notes from the week..

Installation Preparation for Service & Install Accounts 

The SharePoint Installation Account

While I’ve become used to installing applications on servers with either the local or domain admin account, SharePoint 2010 really really really needs to have its own account created for the installation process. If you don’t you’ll have to correct the various service and app pool accounts later and that’s a pain.

Key points about the account used to install with -

• It will become the application pool account used in IIS for the Central Admin
• If you do plan to let SharePoint create your databases (content DBs’ etc…) this account needs rights to the SQL database to create DB’s (DBCreator and DBAdmin)
• If DB’s are already created then it only needs DBAdmin
• It only needs Local Admin permissions on the installation machine
• Not to be used in day-to-day admin
• Imagine this account to be “enterprise admin” of SharePoint.
• It should never be used again after the initial install, obviously that doesn’t mean disable or delete it.

Example User Account – spinstall

The Farm Admin Account

 The farm admin account is an account that should be used by as few people as possible.

• It either needs to be a local admin on the SharePoint front end or create a new supper user or login as spinstall(logging in as spinstall is not recommended)
• The farm admin account change services running on the machine hence the need for local admin rights, farm admin right in SharePoint central admin isn’t enough

Example User Account - spfarmadmin

During the SharePoint 2010 install

 Make sure you move index location during install off from the C:…14data location

 This index file is a flat file used in search and can grow very large in next to no time.

After the install – the Configuration Wizard

Do not use it, it doesn’t follow best practice.

 Performance Tip for SharePoint databases 

Turn off Auto Growth

While it’s been mentioned a thousand times and shouldn’t need to be mentioned…

To prevent it happening in existing installations for any new databases:

SQL Management  Studio > Database > Model. Under the file groups section  change the properties for .mdf to grow by 50MB at a time

Fixing it for existing databases:

Open the properties of each database and under the file groups section, change the properties for .mdf to grow by 50MB at a time

Note: Why 50MB? Because it’s just right for SharePoint since it aligns with the default maximum upload file size.

Registering Managed Service Accounts for SharePoint 2010

• Best practice is to add them here first then start to use them to run services
• All are generally fine  as just domain user accounts without elevated privileges

Application Pool Accounts in IIS for SharePoint 2010

 Never change the app pool account from inside IIS as the config DB will not know about the change, web apps will not know about the change and new servers added to the farm will not know which account to use.

One of the few things you can and do need to configure in IIS is SSL certificates and also needs to be done on each and every web front end.

Today is a good day for that mantra as we are attending an excellent training seminar by SQL MVP’s and founders of www.SQLskills.com - SQL Server MasterClass

My scribbles from the day.. and the formal agenda, speaker bio’s, etc. at the end

Bridging the gap between Development & Production..

DBA’s & Developers not communicating and the reluctant/involentary DBA..

The dilema of development, change control, production scheduling, and customer demands for new features

4 features that break an Enterprise to Standard restore – Partitioning, data compression, …, …

How Design Affects Production
Design considerations such as capacity planning up front to scale databases correctly, try to avoid autogrowth! & Log file fragmentation (LVF’s etc.)

Use of correct data types e.g. Use of bigint for small numbers, datetime when you only really need date, etc. – why use 16-bytes when you can use 4!

Disk maybe cheap, but memory overhead across a system is not.

Indexing – design them, not ad-hoc!

Resouce Governer – limit ad-hoc SQL query users

Naming conventions – obvious in any system (or should be!), makes long term management easier

Design choices affecting maintenance e.g. Fixed vs. Variable length impacting the ability to perform online index rebuilds or not!

Even some some MS apps break this such as SharePoint!

Nested Transactions – avoid!  ..they are evil!  (nested begins, only free resource at end of first transaction)

Instant File Initialisation (IFI) – restores create the file the full with zeros unless IFI is enabled.

Parameterization – trying to get your plan in cache, optimize at dB level.

Phyical dB layout – as dB’s become larger partioning into multiple filegroups is necessary – what’s a large dB? over 100GB you need to consider, TB absolutely!

Measuring your restores to check against your SLA’s – restores take longer than backup, ballpark 25% more, you can break your maintenance window (& SLA’s) by underestimating the restore time.

Primary Key Choice – obvious but not always followed.

Indexing Strategies – difficult!

Database Maintenance – lack of causes problems!

Real Testing!!! – developers need access to similar environment to live otherwise

Myth Buster – top 10 myths debunked, taken from Paul’s Myth a day posts in April at SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul/Misconceptions

e.g. Failover Clustering is best HA for SQL..? It depends!
Read more at “Proven SQL Server Architectures for High Availability and Disaster Recovery – http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/D/5BD13FFA-5E34-4AE1-9AA0-C6E6951B8FC8/SQL%20Server%202008%20R2%20High%20Availability%20Architecture%20White%20Paper.docx”

Tempdb or transaction log should be x% of the size of the largest dB – it depends! If you had a 10TB dB would you have 25% allocated for the log? e.g. 2.5TB wasted on logs.. NO!

use of single user mode, and admin connections.. the :m. and :a. startup switches

DR handbook should be written  by the most experienced member of the team, but tested by the most junior – who’d going to be holding the pager when the system goes bang at 02:00 on a Sunday…?  likely not the architect!

GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward
Dilema of GUIDs everywere, great for uniqueness, not so great if used for non-clustered indexes and used as a primary key (due to it’s uniqueness) – back to using the correct data types, why use a 64-byte key when a 4-byte key will suffice – for a 10,000 row table this can mean an internal system index of 400Mb, a 64-byte key will be nearer 5GB – just for the system!

Massive performance and storage gains to be had from correct use of GUIDs – see Kimberly’s blog post on this for more info at http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/KIMBERLY/post/GUIDs-as-PRIMARY-KEYs-andor-the-clustering-key.aspx

The Top-Ten List…

10) Data File Management – you can have up to 32768 files per database, and a minimum of two being the MDF & LDF, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should!  However, careful placement of physical files on different storage types can add huge value to your SQL environment..

9) Transaction Log file management – only one log file is necessary, try and isolate from the data files to avoid disk head contention, use appropriate RAID (not RAID 5 as has high overheads for write & logs are write intensive)
Tempdb – tempdb is a special case as it is very susceptible to contention issues because only 1 per instance and 1 tempdb file per processor core, you can now create multiple files to spread the contention. KB328551 maybe suitable in your environment.
Guideline for number of tempdb files, .25-.5 the number of cores.

7) Indexing Best Practice – dont’t go crazy with indexes, as with data files, just because you can.. doesn’t mean you should!  if anything try to reduce your indexes!  Good workload analysis to determine characteristics and query priority as over-indexing can be worse than under indexing.  Poorly maintained indexes can be more trouble in the long term – be sure to automate index maintenance.  A narrow index has very few issues, a wide one has the potential for many more!

6) Statistics

5) Index Fragmentation – Fragmentation Defined.. two broad types: internal (wasted space on data/indexes aka physical defragmentation) & logical (..)
Main causes.. GUID as high-order key, updates to variable length columns, badly configured FILLFACTOR, wide schemas that only fit a small number of rows per page
Keys to success.. how to read the data
How to correct.. create index with drop_existing, rebuild the index, defrag the index
Most folks rebuild or reorganise but their are tradeoffs.. how much disk space have you got?  

4)

3) I/O errors – 823/824 errors have already been retried 4 times before you find out that the I/O subsystem has transient problems.  monitor for error 825 – read errors

2) DBCC CHECKDB – see the blog post http://sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/category/CHECKDB-From-Every-Angle.aspx
How often should you run CHECKDB – at least once per week – yikes!, how long will it take? – it depends!   but if it starts to take longer it normally means a problem.

1) Recovering Using Backups – best way to avoid data loss but not necessarily the best way to avoid downtime so consider other mechanisms to full backups such as log shipping, mirroring, etc.  Recommend at least Full & Log backups but frequently e.g. full weekly, logs as often as every 5 minutes… however Differentials are better – redundancy in the backups

Q&A – I asked about placement of tempdb in a failover cluster and if there is a downside to putting it on non-cluster shared storage e.g. a local SSD drive or RAMdisk – no, this is fine as long as the same drive letter is available on each node as the tempdb is flushed and recreated everytime SQL starts anyway & got yet another geek polo shirt – my wife will love that…

more info at.. www.SQLskills.com

www.SQLskills.com/webcasts.asp - over 50hrs of free online training resources

Formal Event notes, background, agenda, speaker bio’s, etc.

www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql
This special one-day event will focus on some of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. Very often there is no dedicated DBA and so the IT managers struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unaware of how application design choices affect database performance.

SESSIONS SNAPSHOT
During the day Kimberly and Paul will:
Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server’s behaviour
Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company’s life-blood – the data
Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database
Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a wellperforming and available data tier

SESSIONS ABSTRACTS
KEYNOTE: Bridging the Gap Between Development and Production
Applications are commonly developed with little regard for how design choices will affect performance in production. This is often because developers don’t realize the implications of their design on how SQL Server will be able to handle a high workload (e.g. blocking, fragmentation) and/or because there’s no full-time trained DBA that can recognize production problems and help educate developers. The keynote sets the stage for the rest of the day. Discussing some of the issues that can arise, explaining how some can be avoided and highlighting some of the features in SQL 2008 that can help developers and DBAs make better use of SQL Server, and troubleshoot when things go wrong.

SESSION ONE: SQL Server Mythbusters
It’s amazing how many myths and misconceptions have sprung up and persisted over the years about SQL Server - after many years helping people out on forums, newsgroups, and customer engagements, Paul and Kimberly have heard it all. Are there really non-logged operations? Can interrupting shrinks or rebuilds cause corruption?
Can you override the server’s MAXDOP setting? Will the server always do a table-scan to get a row count? Many myths lead to poor design choices and inappropriate maintenance practices so these are just a few of many, many myths that Paul and Kimberly will debunk in this fast-paced session on how SQL Server operates and should be managed and maintained.

SESSION TWO: Database Recovery Techniques Demo-Fest
Even if a company has a disaster recovery strategy in place, they need to practice to make sure that the plan will work when a disaster does strike. In this fast-paced demo session Paul and Kimberly will repeatedly do nasty things to databases and then show how they are recovered – demonstrating many techniques that can be used in production for disaster recovery. Not for the faint-hearted!

SESSION THREE: GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward
Since the addition of the GUID (Microsoft’s implementation of the UUID), my life as a consultant and “tuner” has been busy. I’ve seen databases designed with GUID keys run fairly well with small workloads but completely fall over and fail because they just cannot scale. And, I know why GUIDs are chosen – it simplifies the handling of parent/child rows in your batches so you can reduce round-trips or avoid dealing with identity values. And, yes, sometimes it’s even for distributed databases and/or security that GUIDs are chosen. I’m not entirely against ever using a GUID but overusing and abusing GUIDs just has to be stopped! Please, please, please let me give you better solutions and explanations on how to deal with your parent/child rows, round-trips and clustering keys!

SESSION 4: Essential Database Maintenance
In this session, Paul and Kimberly will run you through their top-ten database maintenance recommendations, with a lot of tips and tricks along the way. These are distilled from almost 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server customers and are geared towards making your databases more performant, more available, and more easily managed (to save you time!). Everything in this session will be practical and applicable to a wide variety of
databases. Topics covered include: backups, shrinks, fragmentation, statistics, and much more! Focus will be on 2005 but we’ll explain some of the key differences for 2000 and 2008 as well.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Paul and Kimberly are a husband-and-wife team who own and run SQLskills.com, a world-renowned SQL Server consulting and training company.
They are both SQL Server MVPs and Microsoft Regional Directors, with over 30 years of combined experience on SQL Server. Paul worked on the SQL Server team for nine years in development and management roles, writing many of the DBCC commands, and ultimately with responsibility for core Storage Engine for SQL Server 2008. Paul writes extensively on his blog
(SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul) and for TechNet Magazine, for which he is also a Contributing
Editor. Kimberly worked on the SQL Server team in the early 1990s as a tester and writer before leaving to found SQLskills and embrace her passion for teaching and consulting. Kimberly has been a staple at worldwide conferences since she first presented at TechEd in 1996, and she blogs at SQLskills.com/blogs/Kimberly. They have written Microsoft whitepapers and books for SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, and are regular, top-rated
presenters worldwide on database maintenance, high availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning, and SQL Server internals. Together they teach the SQL MCM certification and throughout Microsoft.
In their spare time, they like to find frogfish in remote corners of the world.

SPEAKER TESTIMONIALS
“To call them good trainers is an epic understatement. They know how to deliver
technical material in ways that illustrate it well. I had to stop Paul at one point and
ask him how long it took to build a particular slide because the animations were so
good at conveying a hard-to-describe process.”
“These are not beginner presenters, and they put an extreme amount of
preparation and attention to detail into everything that they do. Completely,
utterly professional.”
“When it comes to the instructors themselves, Kimberly and Paul simply have no
equal. Not only are they both ultimate authorities, but they have endless
enthusiasm about the material, and spot on delivery. If either ever got tired they
never showed it, even after going all day and all week. We witnessed countless
demos over the course of the week, some extremely involved, multi-step
processes, and I can’t recall one that didn’t go the way it was supposed to.”
“You might think that with this extreme level of skill comes extreme levels of
egotism and lack of patience. Nothing could be further from the truth. … They
simply know how to teach, and are approachable, humble, and patient.”
“The experience Paul and Kimberly have had with real live customers yields a lot
more information and things to watch out for than you’d ever get from
documentation alone.”
“Kimberly, I just wanted to send you an email to let you know how awesome you
are! I have applied some of your indexing strategies to our website’s homegrown
CMS and we are experiencing a significant performance increase. WOW….amazing
tips delivered in an exciting way! Thanks again”
Kimberley L. Tripp
Paul S.Randal