Disaster Recovery and High Availability Solutions in SQL Server (2024-04-15)

SQLServerCentral Newsletter for April 15, 2024 Problems displaying this newsletter? [View online](. [SQL Server Central]( Featured Contents - [Disaster Recovery and High Availability Solutions in SQL Server]( - [Finding Sister Locations to Help Each Other: Answers & Discussion]( - [From the SQL Server Central Blogs - How Do You Decide What to Learn?]( - [From the SQL Server Central Blogs - When was my SQL Server Database Last Accessed?]( - [The Phoenix Project]( Question of the Day - [Express In-Memory OLTP]( The Voice of the DBA  Kendra’s Top 3 Tips for Working Remotely Today we have a guest editorial from Kendra Little because she has amazing things to say and Steve is traveling today for the Redgate Summit. As concerns about COVID-19 spread, I’ve seen lots of folks online sharing their tips for working remotely. While I’ve recently moved to the UK and have begun working regularly from the Redgate office in Cambridge, prior to this I worked remotely in the United States for around 10 years. Trial and error led me to develop three important habits which I recommend for successful remote workers. Use a webcam in meetings whenever you possibly can I know, I know: most of us database types don’t love the idea of turning on a webcam. In fact, we often feel the urge to stay hidden during calls. However, I’ve found that remote meetings work dramatically better when as many people in the meeting as possible use webcams. This isn’t about looking pretty, it’s about helping people feel they are being listened to, and about helping people pick up nuance about what you are saying. I also find that when I have a webcam on, I am far less likely to multi-task and I tend to focus more on the meeting. I recommend asking your employer if they will reimburse you for a reasonably priced USB webcam for joining meetings remotely, if you are open to using one. The built-in webcam on a laptop usually doesn’t make for the best experience due to poor camera quality and awkward camera positioning. Don’t work out of Slack/Teams or your Inbox; check them regularly instead When you change your work environment, it’s easy to spend all your time staring into a team chat window or your email inbox. This becomes your way to be connected to people, and the next thing you know you’re in a mode of constant response to things as soon as they come in. Then, after a few hours, you’re exhausted and you aren’t even sure what you’ve accomplished. Remote work is much more productive for me if I regularly close out my email and chat windows to focus on a task, and re-open them periodically to update status and check in on what my team is doing. If I need to be reachable for a critical task or project, I’ll look at alerts on my phone, but otherwise I try to leave it be for 30 minute periods. I also find that some of those issues which creep up in email may be solved by someone else if they sit for a few minutes. Use a timer if you need help breaking up your work day For some of us, it’s easy to accidentally over-work if we are working from home. Sure, I took a break during lunch to watch a Netflix show for half an hour, but … did I actually get up from my desk at all in the afternoon? It’s easy to end up dehydrated with a bad neck ache at the end of the day. When working remotely, I use different tools to make sure I get up throughout the day: sometimes I use calendar entries, sometimes I use a free [Pomodoro]( app, sometimes I use a time-tracking tool like Toggl (their [free tier]( is enough for me). Want to read more about work practices in light of COVID-19? Our team has written a few posts on the Redgate blog recently with our thoughts on this topic: - Grant Fritchey wrote, “[Does DevOps Deliver in a Health Crisis?]( - I wrote, “[How Database DevOps can support remote working in the age of Coronavirus]( - Jeremiah Peschka wrote, “[Key actions to take with your monitoring system in preparation for COVID-19]( Kendra.Little [Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums](   Featured Contents [SQLServerCentral Article]( [Disaster Recovery and High Availability Solutions in SQL Server]( Smit Dagli from SQLServerCentral Learn about disaster recovery and high availability options in SQL Server with details on the tradeoffs you make when choosing from Availability Groups, Log Shipping, Database Mirroring, and Replication. [External Article]( [Finding Sister Locations to Help Each Other: Answers & Discussion]( Additional Articles from Brent Ozar Blog This week’s query exercise asked you to find two kinds of locations in the Stack Overflow database. [Blog Post]( From the SQL Server Central Blogs - [How Do You Decide What to Learn?]( hellosqlkitty from SQLKitty There are so many choices and so little time. How do you go about deciding what to learn? I have to delicately balance everything I think I want to... From the SQL Server Central Blogs - [When was my SQL Server Database Last Accessed?]( david.fowler 42596 from SQL Undercover Your boss walks up to you one morning and says, “Hey, I wanna list of all of our databases and when they were last accessed”. If you’ve got some... [The Phoenix Project]( [The Phoenix Project]( Additional Articles from SQLServerCentral In this newly updated and expanded edition of the bestselling The Phoenix Project, co-author Gene Kim includes a new afterword and a deeper delve into the Three Ways as described in The DevOps Handbook.   Question of the Day Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):  Express In-Memory OLTP Can I create In-Memory OLTP tables in SQL Server Express? Think you know the answer? [Click here]( and find out if you are right.    Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor) Default Objects in Clones On SQL Server 2022, I do this: USE model GO CREATE TABLE dbo.DBALog (logdate DATETIME2(3), logmsg VARCHAR(2000)) GO I then create a new database: CREATE DATABASE INVENTORY GO I install a new database application in here with multiple tables, views, etc. I do not run any queries. I then decide to run this code: DBCC CLONEDATABASE(INVENTORY, Inventory_clone); GO What happens? Answer: The clone is not created and a duplicate key row error is returned Explanation: If there are user created objects in model that are also in the source database, the clone cannot be created. Ref: DBCC Clonedatabase - [ [Discuss this question and answer on the forums](    Database Pros Who Need Your Help Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, [visit the forums](. --------------------------------------------------------------- SQL Server 2017 - Administration [Downgrade from Enterprise to Standard (incl. SSAS, SSIS, SSRS)]( - Hi there, thanks for listening! We are preparing to downgrade one or our Instance from Enterprise to Standard. Thankfully, this is not a production server, so some downtime is not an issue. We are planning to make a snapshot of the VM so that we can rollback in case something goes wrong. I want to […] SQL Server 2017 - Development [Query help please]( - I have a history table that tracks changes to client records, im having trouble writing a query that will capture BOTH of these records based on (Where changedcolumns = 'Paid'). I need the OLD and NEW history in the result. [SQL agent help]( - Hi Guys, I have an SQL Agent job. It is called an SSIS Package and is stored in SSIS DB. I can see the SSIS Package completed without any problem. Job has only one step. However, the SQL Agent job never ends. Just for my testing, I created an SQL Agent job and used SQL […] SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL [Tracking Database Growth - Script Automation & Reporting]( - Hello,  I found this script that helps me in populate a table with information about my database; specifically sizes. I am a looking for a way to automate the process wherein the data can be extracted to an excel spreadsheet for us to do reporting against to track our database size growth overtime. Your […] Development - SQL Server 2014 [Outer join table where there is 2 foreign keys to join]( - I am asked to provide a date in a query from a table that may or may not have a record. Thus the outer join. The issue is the joined table may have many records for the ID (foreign key) being joined, and the query is returning the first result not the last.  There […] SQL Server 2019 - Administration [Optimizing Always On failover alert]( - Hello, We are trying to optimize the no. of alerts generating while Availability Group fails over. Event ID: 1480: Database Replica Role Changed Event ID: 19406: Availability Group Replica Role changed. As per my understanding Event 1480 can never happen without 19406. Hence it is ok to disable alert for 1480. Please let me know […] SQL Server 2019 - Development [how to do this in SQL?]( - Hi everyone I am working on a query and I am totally stumped. I don't even know where to begin. I will give test data, expected outcome, and explanation of logic. Test Data: create table #test_table ( company char(4), trade_date date, type char(1), level int, price decimal(6,2) ) insert into #test_table values ('ABC','2024-03-21','L','100','23.45'), ('ABC','2024-03-21','L','200','33.12'), ('ABC','2024-03-21','L','300','21.05'), […] [Need Help: Polybase external table on Parquet file stored in Azure StorageV2]( - My goal is to create a Polybase external table from a Parquet file located in an Azure storage container. SQL Server 2019 (RTM-CU22-GDR) (KB5029378) - 15.0.4326.1 (X64) StorageV2 (general purpose v2) (LRS) File was exported from SQL Server using: parquet-cpp-arrow version 4.0.0 I know that the SAS token I'm using is probably good in terms […] [Help with reading from JSON array]( - Hi all, I am trying to read the following JSON code in SQL Server: declare @json nvarchar(max) set @json = ' { "WorkId":121, "Code":"UK_AAT", "UpdateAttributes": { "TriggerDateMapping": { "3N":"N/A", "10N": "N/A" }, "OverrideRules": [ {"Busket Rule":"A1", "Exit_Window": 15, "Strategy": "STE Triggered", "Start_Date": "Month 2" }, {"Busket Rule":"C2", "Exit_Window": 44, "Strategy": "STE", "Start_Date": "Month 2" }, […] [test sql servers]( - Hi we run 2019 standard. I'm torn between asking my dept head for 3 test sql servers for use by everybody so that we can test 3 projects at once vs enough horsepower on my local to run 3 instances.  I'm leaning toward one that is shared and whatever it takes to run 3 instances […] [error using #temp tables]( - Hi I am getting this error message when I try to re-use a temp table. The code is a bit long so I won't post it here. Here is a template on how the temp tables are being used. What am I doing wrong? Code: DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #TEMP1 DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #TEMP2 […] SQL Azure - Administration [Database Snapshot Alternative in SQL MI]( - Database snapshots are not supported in SQL Managed Instance, Is there a workaround for Database snapshot feature. Restore from point in time backups will take a lot of time for us. I want to create a readonly copy of a database from a specific point, how can this be achieved in SQL MI? Analysis Services [Dates are rendered in multiple formats in Excel against Cube]( - We upgraded a SQL2014 environment to a sql2016 one recently with a customer. This customer still uses the traditional SSAS Multidimensional cubes. After the upgrade the dates no longer present themselves in the singular same format within Excel reports. A value of 14 march 2024 is represented as '2024-03-14' correctly , but 4 march 2024 […] SQL Server 2022 - Administration [Post Upgrade Access issues - Databases in 120 Compatibility and Read_Only Status]( - I recently did an in place upgrade from 2014 to 2022, and couldn't connect to any of the databases that were in Read_Only state AND still in 120 compatibility mode, with the following error: "Cannot open database 'DBName' version 782. Upgrade the database to the latest version." After setting all the databases to 160 mode […] [SQL2022 CU12 Question]( - Hi. I installed SQL2022 CU12 and in the notes it says:  2937584 Fixes an issue in which the sp_server_diagnostics stored procedure doesn't respond to the Always On availability group (AG) resource DLL within the HealthCheckTimeout when the I/O takes a long time, which causes unnecessary restart and failover. For example, when the sp_server_diagnostics stored procedure is waiting for the PREEMPTIVE_OS_GETFINALFILEPATHBYHANDLE wait type. […]   [RSS Feed]( This email has been sent to {EMAIL}. To be removed from this list, please click [here](. If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the webmaster@sqlservercentral.com. This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com. ©2019 Redgate Software Ltd, Newnham House, Cambridge Business Park, Cambridge, CB4 0WZ, United Kingdom. All rights reserved. webmaster@sqlservercentral.com  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -