If you’re familiar with Foglight Performance Analysis for SQL Server (PA SQL), you know how useful it can be to spend a couple of hours with a product expert.  Whether you have questions about preparing the installation environment, or about how to make the most of your investment in PA SQL, having someone show you the way instead of reading through the manuals is always a welcome alternative. Well, Quest has just initiated a program in conjunction with LeadThem Consulting to offer 2 fully remote, 2 hour engagements with a seasoned PA SQL expert to cover product scoping and sizing, and product usage training.  The cost for each of the workshops is $350, and you can sign up for these at http://www.quest.com/sql-training-leadthem/.

Following the initial rollout of this program, we will be implementing equivalent offerings for Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise and Foglight for SQL Server.  Stay tuned for updates!

Quest’s new LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server is a transparent way to compress and encrypt your Microsoft SQL Server backups – without changing your existing backup scripts or maintenance plans.  Instead of calling special stored procedures at backup time, just configure the Engine once and be done with it.  Learn how to set it and forget it in this video by Brent Ozar.

I read a post recently on The Grateful DBA that describes his analysis in testing different compression levels in LiteSpeed for SQL Server and their impact on both backup size and efficiency.  In his own words this is a “non-scientific, ground-level look at LiteSpeed’s compression ratios”, but I think this approach is a real world approach.  The post describes the pros and cons of higher vs. lower compression levels and where each is appropriate depending on the database environment.  There’s good food for thought in the blog entry and there’s  a pretty graph!  Mmm…food for thought and pretty graph….

Anyway, again, I just waned to repost the blog entry and invite discussion.  Here’s the link again:  http://troygallant.com/?p=155  -  thank you Grateful DBA.

Have a great weekend everybody and good luck getting your last minute Christmas  shopping out of the way.

When it absolutely, positively has to be backed up, don’t just rely on one backup file.  Quest LiteSpeed for SQL Server can write database backups simultaneously to two places.  This protects DBAs from other users accidentally deleting backup files, from crashed file servers, and from corrupted tapes.  Learn how to mirror your LiteSpeed backups in this video by Brent Ozar:

Selling products that interact with SQL Server and Windows makes troubleshooting tougher: when people call in with problems, sometimes they’re not really related to our products.  Sometimes – heck, even often – the problem boils down to a Microsoft, hardware, or configuration issue totally unrelated to Quest products.

When our support team can’t get the right answer for the customer, they kick it up to the escalations team.  Escalations works with developers, product managers, and subject matter experts like me to drill deeper into issues.  This is when things get to be a little more challenging, because we have to ask questions about the customer’s environment – and sometimes we turn up answers that nobody wants to hear.

For example, I’m currently working with a customer who’s having trouble with their backups taking too long.  In the course of investigating the issue, we found that they were never purging their backup history in MSDB – ever.  The server had years and years of backup history, and as each backup job finished, SQL Server took longer and longer to update the history.  I’ve tried suggesting that native backups will also face that same problem, but the customer can’t try native backups – because they take even longer!  Ouch.

Awww, How....Cute?

I’ve blogged about this backup bottleneck before, and SQL Server MVP Geoff Hiten has blogged about making MSDB backup histories faster, but I can’t seem to find a definitive article from Microsoft explaining the importance of this issue.  If it’s not in Books Online, some folks just don’t believe it – especially when it’s coming from a third party vendor like us.  Telling someone they have problems in their SQL Server environment is like calling their baby ugly; as far as they’re concerned, it’s all just a matter of opinion.

Need to send a SQL Server backup to someone, but it’s too big and you’re not sure if they use LiteSpeed?  Quest LiteSpeed for SQL Server can back up databases into a single executable file.  You can send that file to someone else or copy it to another server, and that other server doesn’t need LiteSpeed.  The person doing the restore doesn’t even have to understand how SQL Server works – LiteSpeed takes care of all the details.

In this video, Brent Ozar shows how both the backup and restore process works:

We’re excited to announce that Toad for SQL Server has been awarded Gold for Best Development Tool in SQL Server Magazine’s – Editor’s Best and Community Choice awards.

The editors were quick to point out that “Developers and DBAs get a lot of bang for the buck with this [Toad for SQL Server] comprehensive toolset. Quest Toad is a great set for administrators or developers with crossover responsibilities.”

We recently released version 4.6 of Toad for SQL Server which includes these new features that DBAs and database developers are sure to welcome:

• Advanced Group Execute – execute SQL against multiple database instances, intelligently group results, and save query and SQL Server connections for later execution
• Connection Colors – optionally color code connection tabs to provide a visual indication of the type of server to which you are connected
• Trace Management – see a list of running traces on the SQL Server instance, examine bound events and filters, and optionally pause or stop traces
• Pre-Defined SQL Formats – select a pre-defined SQL formatting template or create your own to quickly format your code based on company standards
• DBA Query Code Snippets – execute interesting queries from our included set of DBA Code Snippets that cover: Backup & Restore, Jobs, Server Information, SQL Activity, Table and Index information including fragmentation, and Trace Activity
• And more…

Combine that with our outstanding set of included features:

• SQL Tuning –performance tuning with automated optimization and benchmarking
• Compare and Sync  –compare and synchronize servers, schemas, and data to easily identifying differences between environments / databases
• SQL Script Recall – a time-saving feature designed to automatically capture and eliminate the need to retype commonly used SQL statements
• Transaction Log Reader — audit and recover data and schema stored in transaction log files by undoing or redoing any operation and reconstructing transactions
• Job Manager – an Outlook-style management console for SQL Server Agent Jobs and Windows Tasks
• Debugger – debug T-SQL scripts and stored procedures
• IntelliSense –simplify T-SQL script creation through our configurable keyword auto completion feature
• Version Control –integrates with your Visual Source Safe (VSS), Concurrent Version System (CVS), Subversion, and Team Foundation Server (TFS) version control systems
• Reporting, Charting, and Pivot tables 

LiteSpeed’s Backup Analyzer can do more than just find the right backup compression and encryption settings like I discussed in an earlier LiteSpeed video tutorial.  It can also help pinpoint your SQL Server’s backup bottleneck, showing why you can’t back up your databases faster.

Here’s a screenshot of the Backup Analyzer’s report:

LiteSpeed Backup Analyzer

When you’re looking for the backup bottleneck, check out these columns:

• Read Speed – indicates how fast your data files can pull the database off disk and give it to the CPU.  This is the first step in the backup process – getting the uncompressed data in.  This number is dictated by the speed of the storage subsystem where your SQL Server data files live, and by the connection between your server and the data files.
• Throughput – indicates how fast your CPUs can process the data.  The more compression and encryption performed, the less data can move through here.  To improve this performance, use less compression or a weaker encryption method.  (Generally, though, this isn’t a bottleneck except on very old servers with slow CPUs.)
• Write Speed – indicates how fast your storage subsystem can write out the compressed data.  This is the last step in the backup process.  To improve this number, you can use faster drive arrays or stripe the data between multiple drives, and the Backup Analyzer can be used to test those scenarios too.

In my screenshot above, my lab server’s data drives are connected via iSCSI.  Notice that my read speeds are consistent across all of my tests.  That’s because I just flat out can’t read the data any faster than I’m reading it.  The only solution to make this server faster is to upgrade the connection between the data file drives and the server itself.

However, since I know I just can’t read that fast, that means I can use as much encryption and compression as I want without affecting performance.  In this situation, I might retest with stronger encryption methods and higher compression levels.  Even though I’m read-constrained, that doesn’t mean I can’t get benefits from using LiteSpeed’s compression.

If you’re confused about the output from Backup Analyzer, feel free to contact Quest support or leave us a comment below with the output from your tests.

Most DBAs don’t read blogs.

They have “real jobs” that don’t afford them the time to surf the web, improve their training, or meet like-minded SQL Server professionals who want to help. When I talk to them about the power of the community and all this free help that’s available, they’re often completely surprised.

I think it has to do with the lonely nature of the DBA career. We usually stumble into this job by accident. We start as developers or network administrators, and for some odd reason we end up managing a SQL Server because nobody else is doing it. We tinker around with it, learn a lot of lessons the hard way, and struggle finding good training.

How Quest and SQLServerPedia Are Making a Difference

At the beginning of this year, we announced that SQLServerPedia would offer blog syndication.  We knew that a lot of bloggers were writing top-notch material, but they weren’t getting the exposure they deserved.  We wanted to help bloggers get their work to a wider audience.

Now, we’re kicking it up a notch.  Here’s the CPU diagnostics screen inside Quest Spotlight on SQL Server v6, and check out the links at the bottom right:

Quest Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise

When you’re trying to troubleshoot a complex issue like CPU bottlenecks due to insufficient plan cache reuse, or too many adhoc queries running, you need help.  So when you click on those links….

SQLServerPedia Search Results

You’re introduced to community members, bloggers, wiki authors, and other folks who want to share their knowledge with you.

This is a completely new way that syndication pays off for bloggers. When you cover topics users don’t understand, you can show up on end user screens everywhere.  We’re only including our syndicated blogs in this search.

How Bloggers Can Benefit

In my Syndication FAQ for Bloggers, I talked about some ways you can leverage syndication to bring more readers to your site. These tips include:

• Include links to your other posts. When someone’s reading one of your posts, that’s your chance to bring them deeper into your site. For example, in this very blog post just a couple of lines above, I linked to my own syndication FAQ, and I’m going to do it again in a second.
• Include sample code. If you’re discussing table partitioning, for example, include the scripts to demonstrate what you’re talking about. The more scripts you include, the more likely someone will stumble across your blog entry when they’ve got questions about a particular command.
• Toot your own horn. If you’re a consultant and you happen to specialize in the area you’re blogging about, include a footer on every post with links to contact you for more information. FeedBurner makes this particularly easy.
• Include affiliate links to books. If you’re a big fan of a particular book to dive deeper into the blog post’s subject matter, include an Amazon Affiliate link to buy the book. You get paid 4% of the Amazon purchase, and if you’re an author, this is above and beyond your normal cut of the proceeds.
• Read your web statistics reports. Every now and then, dig into your reports to find out if one of your posts has become popular. If it has, update it to include more links to your other posts, as I discussed in my Buried Treasure Blog Posts article.

To read more tips like this, check out my Syndication FAQ for Bloggers. See how I did that?

Suggested Topics for Maximum Exposure

If you’d like some ideas on topics to write about, here’s a sampling of the keywords used as SQLServerPedia search links:

• Adhoc Queries
• Blocking
• Buffer Cache
• CPU Bottleneck
• Memory
• Performance Counters
• Plan Cache Reuse
• Procedure Cache
• Query Optimization
• Query Plan Hash
• Query Plan Parallel
• Query Plan Sort
• Query Tuning

If you wanted to get more exposure to more readers, you might look for keywords with less competition.  You could hit those links, see what kinds of results they bring back, and figure out how you could write something better.

When writing, keep in mind that SQLServerPedia can’t syndicate posts about third party products – and that includes Quest’s own products. SQLServerPedia has a very firm editorial policy because we focus strictly on things you can do with the native SQL Server tools. Sharp-eyed readers will notice that this particular post isn’t syndicated to SSP, for example, but it IS syndicated somewhere else – and I’ll talk more about that soon!

How Quest is Bringing DBAs Online is a post from: Brent Ozar - Too Much Information.
If you'd like to quote this content on other sites, please read how to use my blog's content.

Are you the kind of database administrator who likes to get under the hood and tweak settings for CPU affinity masking, throttling, transfer sizes, and more?  This video is for you.

Quest LiteSpeed for SQL Server has advanced configuration options that will let you finely tune how much power LiteSpeed uses, and on which processors.  Learn how in this video by Brent Ozar: