Comments for SQLRockstar | Thomas LaRock

Comment on March Madness – SQL Server System Tables – sysjobhistory by How To Find Long Running Backups in SQL Server | SQLRockstar | Thomas LaRock

How To Find Long Running Backups in SQL Server | SQLRockstar | Thomas LaRock — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:55:59 +0000

[...] written before about how much I love looking for outliers. One example of this can be found in the post I did on the sysjobhistory table. Recently I was asked to put together some code to find out which backups were “running [...]

Comment on Junior DBA Interview Questions by Sean

Sean — Sat, 19 May 2012 00:44:00 +0000

Great tips here, I would like to add a few questions to consider:
What particular software do you use?
Are there specific criteria upon which I will be evaluated?
Will I be expected to work late nights or over the weekend? (Only if
“What is the typical work week? Is overtime expected?” doesn’t bring up
this information)

Thanks for sharing!

Comment on 2012 MVP Summit Preview by The Microsoft Secret Society | Blog

The Microsoft Secret Society | Blog — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:34:54 +0000

[...] extent to what us MVP’s minus the ‘M’ and ‘P’ can know. I believe the “SQL Rockstar” Thomas Larock, with the help of the infamous movie Fightclub, said it [...]

Comment on What Toy Story 2 Can Teach You About Testing Your Backups and Recovery Strategy by schubash

schubash — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:27:00 +0000

Wonderful video. This and the true story of the loss of all the SideKick data because Microsoft and Hitachi both insisted that a backup wasn’t necessary…… they let you know that even the biggest supposedly bestest of companies make basic backup mistakes.

At a client of mine backups had been failing for three months on an app server and the server team knew it but never told anybody who had data on that server. When some vital data was corrupted, there was no backup. Had the user known, they would have made manual backups until the normal backups were up again. It astounded me at the time, but seems like this kind of thing happens again and again.

Comment on The 3 DBA Mistakes You Don’t Know You Are Making by What Toy Story 2 Can Teach You About Testing Your Backups and Recovery Strategy | SQLRockstar | Thomas LaRock

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:26:48 +0000

[...] Test your recovery strategy. [...]

Comment on What 5 things Should SQL Server Get Rid Of? by Something for the Weekend - SQL Server Links for the week 16/05/10

Something for the Weekend - SQL Server Links for the week 16/05/10 — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:34:01 +0000

[...] Tom LaRock [...]

Comment on The 3 DBA Mistakes You Don’t Know You Are Making by TheJrDBA

TheJrDBA — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:15:00 +0000

Thanks for #2 – I like the CPU ready time metric. Our shop is virtualized, and I don’t have access to the hosts, so this is a nice one to track.

Comment on Misremembering Memory Settings by The 3 DBA Mistakes You Don't Know You Are Making | SQLRockstar | Thomas LaRock

The 3 DBA Mistakes You Don't Know You Are Making | SQLRockstar | Thomas LaRock — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:03:06 +0000

[...] on securing that memory. The easiest way to do this is to configure those memory settings. Even I can’t remember everything, so that’s why I just reference this post when I need general guidelines regarding the [...]

Comment on Stop Guessing About CPU Pressure by The 3 DBA Mistakes You Don't Know You Are Making | SQLRockstar | Thomas LaRock

The 3 DBA Mistakes You Don't Know You Are Making | SQLRockstar | Thomas LaRock — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:00:41 +0000

[...] would you prefer to spend five minutes examining the virtual layer to see if any bottlenecks exist. For example, if the host is seeing a spike in disk latency, then [...]

Comment on What Is Your ROE? by Marlon Ribunal

Marlon Ribunal — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:05:00 +0000

This reminds me of Tony Hsieh’s “Delivering Happiness”. It’s all about the experience. People will forget what you did for them but they will always remember the feeling or experience. If you made them happy, they just appreciate that feeling. Chances are they talk about how you made them feel good. Or blog about that experience, like in this case.