Tag: administration

Every time you shrink a database, an angel gets its wings torn off. Or Paul Randal feels a disturbance in The Force. In other words, don’t do it.

But people continually do shrink databases. Despite the constant advice and guidance from Microsoft, MVPs, and more, the fact that shrink is available easily in maintenance plans and with a DBCC command, people do it. I understand it since it’s natural to not waste space and so many other tools, like Access and Outlook, have files that only use the spaced needed.  Why not SQL Server?

It’s Friday, and I thought I might see if there might be a oslution tht makes sense. For this poll, I want to ask you about shrink:

Should shrink be removed or fixed?

By removed, I don’t mean completely take it out of SQL Server, but make it harder. Maybe require a trace flag, maybe something else that might reduce the regularity with which it’s run. I’d certainly recommend it be completely removed from maintenance plans, both the wizard and the designer.

Is there a better solution, however? Should perhaps shrink be fixed to be a more intelligent operation that doesn’t cause lots of fragmentation? Even if it’s slower, or maybe an operation that requires more resources to complete, would it be better to actually “fix” shrink?

Put your answers in the discussion and let us know what you think

Steve Jones

One of the things that I’ve had to do in my career is manage large numbers of servers. There was a time when two of us managed several hundred instances of SQL Server, and managed to do it very well with a lot of automation. Recently I saw someone post a note about having 400+ servers to manage, and they were wondering how to perform enterprise management. In Oracle environments, they mentioned using OEM, RMAN and other tools to manage backups centrally and wanted to know what SQL Server solutions were out there.

I know things have changed quite a bit from the SQL Server 2000 days when we had to build all our own tools, so I wanted to ask the question as a poll this Friday:

What do you do for central management of lots of instances?

If you have more than 50 instances, what tools do you use to try and ensure you have a well managed environment. With the addition of the Central Management Server and Policy Based Management  to SQL Server, it definitely is easier to handle a larger load of instances

This Friday I’m wondering what tips and techniques you think work well for managing lots of instances. Any tricks you’ve used? Any third party products that are very handy? Share you knowledge this Friday.

Steve Jones