Monthly Archives: March 2010

Intel Xeon 7500 Series aka Nehalem-EX

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Glenn Berry

Intel has finally released the long awaited (at least by me) 45nm Xeon 7500 series processor. This beast has eight cores, plus hyper-threading and turbo boost, and 24MB of shared L3 cache. It also supports up to 16 DDR3 memory … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware | 2 Comments

SQL Server 2008 Database Mirroring: It takes a licking but it keeps on ticking!

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Glenn Berry

With apologies to Timex, I just wanted to relate a minor incident that happened with one of my mirrored databases last night. This database needed to grow its primary data file, and the autogrow amount was set to 5GB ( … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server 2008 | 1 Comment

Using Custom Connection Colors in SSMS

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Glenn Berry

One of the new features that was added to SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) in SQL Server 2008, which was continued in SQL Server 2008 R2, is the ability to set custom connection colors for individual instances of SQL Server. … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server 2008 R2 | 9 Comments

To Get Certified or Not Get Certified

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Glenn Berry

I have noticed quite a bit of discussion recently about the merits of Microsoft certification. Some people (like me) think that getting a Microsoft certification is a good thing. It proves that you have at least a certain level of … Continue reading →

Posted in Teaching | 10 Comments

Recovery Models and Backup Strategies for SQL Server 2008

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Glenn Berry

I had a question via e-mail from one of my new students at University of Denver, University College this morning, asking why the transaction log on one of his SQL Server databases seemed to fill up so quickly, and then … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server 2008 | 1 Comment

Creating SQL Server 2008 Databases with T-SQL

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Glenn Berry

Imagine you need to create a database on a customer’s machine, but you don’t know how they have their file system laid out. You can take advantage of the fact that SQL Server keeps track (at the instance level) of … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server 2008 | 4 Comments

Why UniqueIdentifier is a Bad Choice for a Clustered Index in SQL Server

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Glenn Berry

I had a question today about why it was “bad” to use a UniqueIdentifier as the data type for a clustered index in SQL Server. After all, on the surface that sounds like a good choice, since a UniqueIdentifier is … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server 2008 | 7 Comments

SSWUG Ultimate vConference Discount Code

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Glenn Berry

The SSWUG Ultimate Virtual Conference is coming up on April 7, 8, and 9th.  This is three days of very useful SQL Server content that you can watch from the comfort of your computer, with no travel time or travel … Continue reading →

Posted in Teaching | 6 Comments

The Coming Upgrade Tidal Wave

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Glenn Berry

Microsoft is poised to release new versions of several different products and technologies that have the potential to have a big, positive impact on the life of the average DBA, as long as you position yourself to take advantage of … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server 2008 R2 | 2 Comments

Intel Xeon 56xx Series Westmere-EP Review

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Glenn Berry

AnandTech IT has a quick review of the upcoming six-core, 32nm Intel Xeon 56xx processor, which includes several different database benchmarks. Their conclusion is that this CPU is a significant improvement over the very impressive Intel Xeon 55xx processor, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware | 10 Comments