Looking to use LiteSpeed for SQL Server for Log Shipping?  Check out this video, created by Nina Philippova our lead technical writer for LiteSpeed, for a step-by-step overview of configuring a Log Ship plan through the LiteSpeed UI.  Please provide any feedback that you may have, we’d love to hear it.  Thanks!

When an issue occurs during your backup and recovery process such as performance spikes, it is extremely beneficial to get as clear a picture as possible of what activities are occurring in your SQL Server environment.  LiteSpeed for SQL Server offers this clarity by logging these activities for immediate analysis and isolation of any bottlenecks.  This video takes you through the process of enabling logging through the LiteSpeed for SQL Server console and will cover four different areas within the product.

• Backup Wizard
• Restore Wizard
• Maintanance Plans
• Console Logging

Special thanks to April Bucher on the LiteSpeed QA team for putting this short video together. 

Sound familiar?

“The SQL Server was performing great yesterday and all of a sudden today the performance is terrible.”

Foglight Performance Analysis has a very powerful feature that allows you compare two different properties of your SQL Server workload.  This scenarios could be:

• Comparing the performance of a database over two different time ranges. 
• Comparing the performance of a single stored procedure over two different time ranges.
• Comparing the performance of database A to database B over the same time range.
• etc…

Take a look at this short tutorial and see how the feature could help you in your environment!  Any questions, feel free to comment.

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.

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:

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:

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:

Quest LiteSpeed for SQL Server can read transaction log files (LDFs), transaction backups (TRNs) and the online transaction log – including transactions that haven’t even been backed up yet.  Learn how in this video by Brent Ozar:

Toad for SQL Server also has this transaction log reader built-in, too!

Christian Bolton is a name some of you might recognize, but even if you don’t, and as Brent blogged – the guy is good. Here’s a recap that Brent put together that illustrates how SQL Server uses memory and some considerations (high level, but note the reference to his recent book) for memory resource planning.

As Brent mentioned, many DBAs still don’t leverage wait events to tune SQL Server. I have to believe that’s because either they don’t know about them, or because wait events are still really not very well documented anywhere…but if you take a look at Quest’s Foglight Performance Analysis for SQL Server you’ll see how leveraging wait events to tune SQL Server can be both easy and powerful.