Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • SQL Dream Cars

    A mini debate on Twitter the other day got me thinking about cars. People that know me know I like cars. I’ve owned (or my wife has owned with me) 26 cars since I started driving. I used to write a car update, but found that there are a lot of passionate people out there about their vehicles, and too many people got upset during the debates, so I stopped.

    However this is my blog, and I decided to talk about dream cars, or any vehicle that you’d like to own. I’ve got my list of the cars that I’d like to own one day, but here is a good list of five:

    1929gazellembreplica071106

    1929 Mercedes Gazelle – Not a real one, but a kit car. The technology for running a car from that era isn’t great, but give me this body with a modern fuel infected engine, brakes, and a good transmission.

    magnum-pi-ferrari

    Ferrari 308 GTS – The Magnum PI car. This one always caught my eye, and I love the targa tops (my 911 has one), so this would be one that I’d like to drive. Once again, I’d consider a kit car because it’s hard to drive this one around town on a regular basis.

    vw-thing

    VW Thing – At the same time I was first shopping for a 911, I was also looking at Things, in case I couldn’t find a 911 in my budget range. Something about these cars just seems fun to me.

    CJ7_for_sale

    CJ-7 – I had a friend in high school who got one of these. He put a 308 8 cyl engine in it and I went with him to get 33” tires. I actually helped bolt on headers, and love cruising around with the doors off and a bikini top on it in the summer. One of these days…

    1965 lincoln Continental

    1965 Lincoln – Not necessarily this model, but a big old boat convertible with suicide doors. That would be cool.

    There are more I’d like, but these are some fun ones that I came up with today.

    I’ll tag Brent Ozar (blog | @brento), Allan Hirt ( blog | @sqlha), and Aaron Bertrand (blog | @aaronbertrand) to talk about what they’d like. Hopefully a few more of you will post your own dream cars.

  • The Desire for Control

    Do you want more or less knobs to turn?

    Most of the people working with SQL Server have some of that geek gene, the desire to control, change, and mold the environment in which they work into some new form. Some people build physical toys, and others work onvirtual tools, but there’s this desire for control for many of us.

    Each version of SQL Server has brought with it a great deal more control in terms of the metrics we get (DMVs, wait stats, etc.) as well as tuning knobs (sp_configure options, Resource Governor, plan hints, and more). It has become possible to exert more influence over how SQL Server runs than ever before, and I suspect we’ll get even more ways in the future.

    But is that what you want? As DBAs, do you want more control in how you work with SQL Server, and potentially a higher level of knowledge needed to tune an instance? I suspect many people would like more knobs to turn, but I wanted to ask the question this Friday:

    Do you want your efforts in tuning SQL Server to have more or less options?

    As a clarification, I don’t want to imply that your instance will perform at a lower level with less tuning options, but rather that Microsoft would invest more time into the automatic tuning and learning capabilities of the database engine. My thought would be that you check some configuration options at some level (instance, database, even batch), and the server then builds a more optimal execution plan, and balances the load better between all the clients. The server ends up doing most of the tuning work with a little guidance from you.

    The alternative is that you do more investigation, apply more knowledge, and tweak your code or a variety of settings to improve server performance. In essence, do you want to do more work to tune an instance or have the server do most of the work?

    I suspect more people want great flexibility in tuning and the ability to apply their own knowledge, but let us know this week.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • SQL Server Default Backup Directory

    Someone asked me in a webinar how to change the default backup directory. I knew, but realized that I didn’t have a reference and ended up with more explanation than needed if I’d had a post. So here it is:

    If you right click on a server in Management studio and select properties, you get dialog with lots of options.

    serverpropertoes

     

    If you click on the “Database Settings” you get this:

    serverdbsettings

    Note that there is a default path for data files and log files, not not one for backup files.

    serverdbsettings1

    So how do you change it? In XP or Win 7, click Start and type this right away “regedt32”

    regedior

    That will start the registry editor. You ought to get a UAC box to confirm access, which is fine. Do that and you’ll be in the registry. In the left pane, browse to this path:

    HKey_LocalMachine\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQLServer”

    Note that the “MSSQL.1” might be different, depending on your instance. For me it’s SSQL10.MSSQLServer.

    backupdir

    Note that there’s a “BackupDirectory” key here. You can double click it to change the path:

    backupdir2

    I changed mine to a new path, c:\sqlbackup. Note that I had to create this folder.

    change path

    That’s not enough, however. If you go into your adminstrative tools and find the Computer Management and look for Users and Groups (Select groups), you’ll find groups like this. The name varies, depending on the name of your workstation/server and instance.

    security

     

    Once you have this name, I’d copy it and go to your new folder. Right click, select properties, and then the security tab

    sevc1

    As you can see, my group isn’t in here, but this group, with the SQL Server service account in it, needs permissions to this folder. So add them, with modify.

     

    sec2

    Is my default changed? I could now run this:

    backup1

    and I find a file in my new default folder:

    backup2

  • [OT] Running With Steve

    I woke up to this very cool photo from my employer.

    rg

    I was checking my Twitter feed, and noticed quite a few #runwithsteve hash tags, from various people already knocking out mileage for the goal of 1,000 miles today. The tally survey is here: Running With Steve. I am looking forward to getting out there in a bit with my wife, maybe a kid if I can convince them. I hope to do five today.

    It’s been quite a journey to get to 1,000 days. I was inspired in Sept 2008 and was thinking to get to one year and then see. When I got to 366, I did a Forest Gump. I kept going since it was fairly easy. I made it to two years, and then started thinking 1,000 days, and made it today. I’ll run this afternoon, when my wife has some time, and enjoy day 1,000.

    The act of doing something every day has been amazing for me. It’s not so much the physical benefits, which seemed to peak after about 4-6 months, but more the mental benefits. I know I’ve accomplished something every day, and it inspires me. It becomes a habit that helps me manage the rest of my life, keeping perspective, thinking long term, and balancing out the various things in my life.

    Where do I go from here? I’ll run tomorrow, day 1,001, and see what happens after that.