During deployment of Azure SQL Server in Canada East location (new Azure Subscription) I got the following error: Using Azure Portal   Using Powershell   At the same time if I list all available azure location for the current subscription I can see that Canada East is there Get-AzureRmLocation | select displayname   The reason is that Canada East region is not activated for my new Azure Subscription. To resolve this issue just contact the Azure support to have this enabled for you. You can do this for free using support page on...

Creating a new and altering existing indexes on the big tables can be time-consuming. There is a simple way to see the progress of the CREATE / ALTER INDEX command. Since SQL Server 2014 we can use sys.dm_exec_query_profiles DMV to monitor real-time query progress. sys.dm_exec_query_profiles (SQL SERVER 2014 and above) “Monitors real-time query progress while the query is in execution. For example, use this DMV to determine which part of the query is running slow. Join this DMV with other system DMVs using the columns identified in the...

Recently I had an issue with a database backup PowerShell script one of our customer using. The script was working fine until trying to do a backup of the large database. During backup attempts script starts failing with the following error: Exception calling "SqlBackup" with "1" argument(s): "Backup failed for Server 'ServerName'. " At line:67 char:1 + $dbBackup.SqlBackup($s) + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : FailedOperationException Exception calling...

SQL SERVER 2019 Update Version: MSSQL 2019 BETA (CTP2.2), Build: 15.0.1200.24, Release Date: December 2018, Download: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/sql-server-ver15-release-notes?view=sqlallproducts-allversions; Update Version: MSSQL 2019 BETA (CTP2.1), Build: 15.0.1100.94, Release Date: November 2018, Download: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/sql-server-ver15-release-notes?view=sqlallproducts-allversions#ctp-21-october-2018; Update Version: MSSQL 2019 BETA (CTP2.0), Build: 15.0.1000.34, Release Date:...

In one of my previous posts, I show you how to use PowerShell to manage your SQL Server database backups and how to install the SQL Server PowerShell module. To be able to manage SQL Server Database Backups you will need to load Microsoft.SqlServer.SmoExtended assembly. If not you can end up with the following error. PS>TerminatingError(New-Object): “Cannot find type [Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Backup]: verify that the assembly containing this type is loaded.” new-object : Cannot find type...

Some user complained that they cannot use my PowerShell script published on TechNet https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Use-PowerShell-to-Backup-3bb0a397 It is a PowerShell script to Backup all user databases to Azure Storage. They experienced the following error: 8/14/2018 11:18 AM – Setting Folders PS>TerminatingError(New-Object): “Cannot find type [Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server]: verify that the assembly containing this type is loaded.” new-object : Cannot find type...

This is an example of missing index query (DMV) of the database within email alert, we already had examples how you can use sp_send_dbmail stored procedure from msdb database to send backup size email daily,  long-running queries report and how to send missing indexes (Cached Plans) report via email. This is just another use case of sp_send_dbmail stored procedure. I used following arguments to achieve this @profile_name (name of an existing Database Mail profile, type sysname, default NULL), If you are not sure about your profile account use...

This will be a simple example of how you can delete older containers in the Azure storage account. I will use Azure automation to scan storage containers and delete those matching the certain date pattern. First, you need to choose an existing one or create new automation account to run your Runbooks   You should put the script within your Runbooks under the process automation. You will have some useful tutorial Runbooks as well.   We will use connection name with information needed to authenticate with Azure so that we can manage...

Recently I had a customer with a really slow query execution and a case of large page splits number on the temporary database. In this example, I tried to replicate the similar issue on my local SQL instance using StackOverflow database. You can download this StackOverflow DB from Brent Ozar web page, just follow the instructions How to Download the Stack Overflow Database via BitTorrent   Firstly I created an Extended Event session to follow up if the page splits occur. DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS CREATE EVENT SESSION [PageSplits] ON SERVER...

Recently we had really nice meetup gathering here in Auckland. Was a beautiful evening, there were 20 people talking about SQL server, was perfect. One of the topics was “Merge Join Operator” For this demo I used SQL Server 2014 Developer Edition. As a database I used StackOverflow, you can download this DB from Brent Ozar web page, just follow the instructions How to Download the Stack Overflow Database via BitTorrent In this example I will use two tables Badges (25 million rows) and Users (8 million rows) and I will join them on Userid...