Author Archives: Amit Banerjee

Now SQL Server 2008 has BPA too

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This has been an ask from the community for a long time now. We just launched SQL Server 2008 R2 Best Practices Analyzer. The SQL Server rules are executed using the Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer framework. The rules are all Powershell based. So you need Powershell 2.0 and MBCA 2.0 to use SQL Server 2008 R2 BPA. This version of BPA has an extensive set of rules which can validate a lot of commonly known issues in areas like SQL Setup, Engine, Replication etc. This makes the work of a DBA much easier. Another cool feature about this tool is that you can run remote scans also against other SQL instances.

Addendum: April 13th, 2011

Note: It works with SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2.

Upcoming Zeollar Presentation

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I will be presenting a 30 minute demo on how to perform post mortem analysis for SQL Performance issues using RML Utilities and SQL Nexus on 24th June, 2010. The recorded and live session will be available on Zeollar. Zeollar is a Microsoft India DPE initiative that gets you the latest technical content on a daily basis in different channels. Think of it like a personal television that switches on every day at a specified hour allowing you to switch channels and view the channel of your interest.

You can download the calendar invite from here.

Token Perm issues on SQL Server 2008

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There were performance issues identified on SQL Server 2005 builds because of the large size of the access cache store on certain servers with huge ad-hoc query workloads. I had blogged about this earlier along with information on how to customize the cache store size using trace flags and registry entries after a certain build of SQL Server 2005.

With SQL Server 2008, we provide access check cache bucket count and access check cache quota size customization through sp_configure. So, if you do need to change these values, you do not have to add trace flags or make registry changes. It is as simple as changing the MaxDop or Max Server Memory on your server.

However, be advised that it is not recommended to change these values unless and until CSS recommends you to do so.

Reference:

Description of the "access check bucket count" and "access check cache quota" options that are available in the sp_configure stored procedure in SQL Server 2008

How to create a Profiler Trace during Server startup

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I think I answered this question more than once on multiple different forums. So, I thought it was time to create a blog post on it.   

One of my previous post has the steps to create a .sql file containing the server side trace definition. Once you have the .sql file generated by the SQL Profiler Trace GUI. Use the script to convert that into the stored procedure with the following changes:   

declare @tracefilename nvarchar(255) 

set @tracefilename = N'D:\StartupTrace'+CAST(DATEPART(d,GETDATE()) AS varchar(2))+CAST(DATEPART(M,GETDATE()) AS varchar(2))+CAST(DATEPART(YYYY,GETDATE()) AS varchar(4))+CAST(DATEPART(HH,GETDATE()) AS varchar(2))+CAST(DATEPART(MI,GETDATE()) AS varchar(2)) 

exec @rc = sp_trace_create @TraceID output, 0, @tracefilename, @maxfilesize, NULL

You will have to add the lines highlighted above and the make a change for the trace file name in the line that is not highlighted. This will ensure that every time your SQL instance starts up, you have a unique trace file name. If the filename is not unique, then the second time the service restarts you will get a trace creation error stating that the file already exists. You will see the following error in your SQL Errorlog:   

Launched startup procedure ‘usp_startup_trace’.

Windows error occurred while running SP_TRACE_CREATE. Error = 0x80070050(The file exists.).

Error: 19062, Severity: 16, State: 1.Could not create a trace file. 

After this is done, create the stored procedure to create the trace definition. Let’s say the proc name was “usp_startup_trace”.   

Now, you will need to mark this stored procedure as a startup procedure using the following:

EXEC sp_procoption 'usp_startup_trace','startup',true

 Once that is done, you will need to set the configuration options for the instance to scan for startup procedures. The default is set to 0.   

EXEC sp_configure 'scan for startup procs',1 RECONFIGURE

 When your SQL instance restarts the next time a new file will be created for the profiler trace and sys.traces will show you new trace active on the server.  

Reference: sp_procoption

Replication Agent has not logged a message in 10 minutes

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I saw multiple posts on MSDN regarding the following message: 

“The replication agent has not logged a progress message in 10 minutes. This might indicate an unresponsive agent or high system activity.” 

More often than not the above message can be ignored safely. The next obvious question is when can this message be ignored. If you find that your replication agent history is not reporting any error messages, then the above message is benign. Typically, this message means the agent is busy doing its work and has no resources to respond to status inquiries. 

Why does this error message get generated? 

This error message gets generated because of the Distribution heartbeat interval property. This property governs how long an agent can run without logging a progress message. If your replication agents are not reporting an error message and you are seeing the above message, then you could change your heartbeat interval to a higher value. One of the option could be that you changed the history logging option for your replication agent so that it doesn’t log any message. 

Query: 

exec sp_changedistributor_property @property = 'heartbeat_interval', @value = <value in minutes>;

 

Reference: sp_changedistributor_property (Transact-SQL) 

I have read lots of opinions as to why this is a bug and if you subscribe to that school of thought, please create a Connect item at http://connect.microsoft.com/sqlserver.