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Enabling Verbal Alerting Through SQL Sentry
A question that comes up a lot during demos and proof of concepts is "Can your software tell me when there is a problem?". The answer to that is of course, there are many integration points to notify you. In a previous post, I spoke about how it is possible to extend what is already a fantastic offering around alerting you…
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T-SQL Tuesday: It's 2016!
This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Michael J Swart (b/t), and is on SQL Server 2016. This post is going to be short and sweet because, to be honest, I haven't played that much with SQL Server 2016. There is, however, one feature that I wanted to look into - system-versioned temporal tables. I just realized though,…
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Monitoring Tintri VM Stores
This post has been updated to include a link to our Strategies and Best Practices for Virtualizing SQL Server guide. The widespread deployment of production SQL Servers in virtualized environments is moving forward at a rapid rate. Monitoring, troubleshooting, and performance tuning storage systems supporting SQL Server…
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Event Chains in the Event Calendar
In Event Chains in SQL Sentry , I wrote about Event Calendar and how it helps our customers to visualize all of the events that are occurring within your environment in an Outlook-style calendar view. I also alluded to a way of dynamically scheduling jobs that need to run in a specific order. We can do that in the Event…
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Common Criteria Compliance: A True Story
In the latest SQL Sentry Custom Conditions Pack, a new condition named 'Common Criteria Compliance' Enabled was added. This setting, as its name implies, assists in meeting international computer security compliance standards known as Common Criteria. The setting is found on the Security page of Server Properties: Common…
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VMWare Workstation: "Internal Error"
Every so often I need to access a virtual machine using VMware Workstation, but unfortunately it decides that it doesn't want to do any work today and just pops up with a rather unhelpful "Internal Error" message. Thanks for that VMware; most enlightening. I guess I should at least be thankful that it was not an…
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Delayed Durability While Purging Data
Delayed Durability Background It is January, which means a new year, a new you, time to purge everything from your closet to your pantry, and perhaps your database, too! This whole data purge related topic at the beginning of the year is nothing more than a happy little accident, but I thought I would roll with it just…
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Get SQL Sentry Alerts on Slack
Team collaboration tools seem to be all the rage these days, and rightfully so. With more and more people working from remote locations, tools like Slack and HipChat have become valuable productivity boosters. Our Product Management team has grown recently, and we decided to give slack a try. Being the geeks that we are,…
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T-SQL Tuesday: Always Encrypted Limitations
This month's T-SQL Tuesday event is being hosted by Ken Wilson (@_KenWilson), and the topic is encryption. I've been playing with SQL Server 2016 quite a bit, so I thought I would talk about a new feature there, Always Encrypted. There are plenty of materials out there singing its praises (and rightfully so); I decided to…
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T-SQL Tuesday: Managing an Enterprise
This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Jen McCown (b|t), and is on strategies for managing an enterprise. My first job as an actual SQL Server DBA was for a local hospital. Between two of us we were responsible for about 90 SQL Server instances, including the backend databases for the Electronic Health Record system and…