After having a period of logshipping failures going unnoticed (due to a stopped SQL Agent on the secondary server) I'm looking at configuring some monitoring.
Having seen the ability to specify a "Monitor Server instance" on the SQL Server 2008 log shipping setup and the relavant MSDN docs (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb510705.aspx), I'm keen to setup a "Monitor Server". However having trawled MSDN and google I actually can't find any information on how to configure a Monitor Server.
At this point I don't even know what a monitor server is (i.e. is it just another SQL Server instance?)! Also, is this separate from the monitoring modules in SQL Server Management Studio?
Any guidance or pointers to documentation would be much appreciated.
The log shipping monitor is a third server that watches the primary and standby servers and keeps a log of the backups, copies and restores so you can find out what's going on. The benefit of using a monitor is that you still know your status even if one or both of the participating servers goes down. For instance, if the primary server goes down you know how much data you will lose if you fail over to the standby server.
I'm pretty sure you can add a monitor to your existing log shipping setup. This article should help you learn more:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190640.aspx
Well the monitor in the sql server what bee see is this Monitor in English, I don't know if i'm right but for me the SQL Monitor is not an Instance, is a Module, and in this post explains what happend with the monitor in the last release, i hoppe this information helps you, and how to configurate i found this information only for the options Activity Monitor
See you
Related
We have an application which has a SQL Server 2000 Database attached to it. After every couple of days the application hangs, and we have to restart SQL Server service and then it works fine. SQL Server logs show nothing about the problem. Can anyone tell me how to identify this issue? Is it an application problem or a SQL Server problem?
Thanks.
Is it an application problem or a SQL Server problem?
Is it possible to connect to MS SQL Server using Query Analyzer or another instance of your application?
General tips:
Use Activity Monitor to find information about concurrent processes, locks and resource utilization.
Use Sql Server Profiler to trace server and database activity, to capture and save data to a table or file to analyze it later.
You can use Dynamic Management Views (\Database name\Views\System Views folder (in the Management Studio)) to get more detailed information about MS SQL Server internals.
If you have the problems with perfomance (not your case) - you can use Perfomance Monitor and Data Collector Sets to gather perfomance information
Hard to predict the issue, I will suggest you to check your application first.Check what all operations you are performing against data base, are you taking care of connection pooling, unused open connections can create issues.
Check if you can get any log from your application. Without any log information hardly we can suggest anything.
Read this
Application may be hanging due to Deadlock
check the SP runs at that time using Profiler
and check the table manipulation(use nolock),
check the buffer size and segregate the DB into two or three module.
What are my options for achieving a cold backup server for SQL Server Express instance running a single database?
I have an SQL Server 2008 Express instance in production that currently represents a single point of failure for my application. I have a second physical box sitting at the installation that is currently doing nothing. I want to somehow replicate my database in near real time (a little bit of data loss is acceptable) to the second box. The database is very small and resources are utilized very lightly.
In the case that the production server dies, I would manually reconfigure my application to point to the backup server instead.
Although Express doesn't support log shipping, I am thinking that I could manually script a poor man's version of it, where I use batch files to take the logs and copy them across the network and apply them to the second server at 5 minute intervals.
Does anyone have any advice on whether this is technically achievable, or if there is a better way to do what I am trying to do?
Note that I want to avoid having to pay for the full version of SQL Server and configure mirroring as I think it is an overkill for this application. I understand that other DB platforms may present suitable options (eg. a MySQL Cluster), but for the purposes of this discussion, let's assume we have to stick to SQL Server.
I would also advise for a script based log shipping. After all, this is how log shipping started. All you need is a time based agent to schedule the scripts (ie. Tasks Scheduler), and a smart(er) file copy (robocopy).
I am trying to get our DBA's to enable DTC on a cluster of SQL Server 2005. Unfortunately they keep refusing. Their argument that they would need to set up a dedicated host for DTC (Could take months!!) as it is not a matter of ticking a few boxes. Is this true? How intrusive is DTC on a shared environment such as a SQL farm. Do I have an argument against this?
Thanks
Had to tone down the original response your 'DBA' team deserve!
In response to your questions:
Dedicated server - Not at all. Everywhere I've worked with clusters, the DTC service is installed when the cluster is commissioned. Typically it sits in its own resource group or within the cluster group. If in its own group its usually sits on whichever server is hosting the cluster group.
Intrusive? - Absolutely not. It should be installed when the cluster is created, as per MS best practice.
Do you have an argument? - You most certainly do. The links below should cover the why and how for getting it installed:
MSDTC and SQL on a Cluster
Clustered SQL Server do's, dont's and basic warnings
DTC needs to be enabled and running on both sides of the connection. In my organization, it took some research to figure out which four boxes to check and then some hand-holding to get those boxes checked on all db servers, all app servers and most laptops. There's still a couple of hold-out developer laptops... but they're ok as long as they don't write. :)
You should have some driving scenario (such as an atomic multiple database write) to hit the DBA's over the head with. Give them some time to guess at alternatives... then let them know that DTC is the only hammer for this kind of nail.
I'm unsure of the implications of DTC on a SQL farm. I imagine the whole farm could get involved in the transaction if it involves enough data... which can't be a good thing.
I'm running Sql Server Management Studio 2008 on a decent machine. Even if it is the only thing open with no other connections to the database, anything that has to do with the Database Diagram or simple schema changes in a designer take up to 10 minutes to complete and SQL Management Studio is unresponsive during that time. The same SQL code takes less than a second. This entirely defeats the purpose of the designers and diagramers.
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System Information
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Operating System: Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.080917-1612)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6700 # 2.66GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.7GHz
Memory: 6142MB RAM
Please tell me this isn't a WOW64 problem; if it is, I love MS, but step up your 64-bit support in development tools.
Is there anything I can do to get the performance anywhere near acceptable?
Edit:
I've got version 10.0.1600.22 of SQL Server Management Studio installed. Is this not the latest release? I'm sure I installed it from an MSDN CD and I pretty much rely on Windows Update these days. Is there any place I can quickly see what the latest release version number is for tools like this?
Edit:
Every time I go to open a database diagram I get the message "This database does not have one or more of the support objects required to use database diagramming. Do you wish to create them?" I say yes every time. Is this part of the problem? Also, if I press the copy icon, I get the message "Current thread must be set to single thread apartment (STA) mode before OLE calls can be made." Database corruption?
I'm running in a similar environment and not having that problem.
As with any performance problem, you'll have to analyze it a bit - just saying "it takes 10 minutes" give no information on the reason it takes so long, so no information you can use to solve the problem.
Here are some tools to play around with. I'd have mentioned them originally, but "play around" is all I've learned to do with them. I'd recommend you try learning a little about them, which I have not done. http://technet.microsoft.com is a good source on performance issues.
Start with Task Manager, believe it or not. It's been enhanced in Vista and Server 2008, and now has a better Performance tab, and a Services tab. Be sure to click "Show processes from all users", or you'll miss nasty things done by services.
The bottom of the Performance tab has a "Resource Monitor" button. Click it, watch it, learn what it can do for you.
The Resource Monitor is actually part of a larger "Reliability and Performance Monitor" tool in Administrative Tools. Try it. It even includes the new version of perfmon, which will be more useful when you have a better idea what counters to look at.
I will also suggest the Process Explorer and Process Monitor tools from Sysinternals. See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx.
Do your simple schema changes possibly mean that you're reordering the columns of a table?
In that case, what SQL Management Studio does behind the scenes is create a new table, move all the data from the old table to the newly created table, and then drop the old table.
Thus, if you reorder columns on a table with lots of data, lots of indices or both, you CAN incur a massive amount of "reorganization" work without really realizing it.
Marc
Can you try connecting your SQL Management Studio to a different instance of SQL Server or, better, an instance on a remote machine (and try to make similar changes)?
Are there any entries in the System or Application Event Logs (or SQL logs for that matter)? Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling SQL Server on your machine? What version of SQL Server (database) are you running?
Lastly, can you open the Activity Monitor successfully? Right click on the server (machine name) - top of the three in the object explorer window - and click on 'Activity Monitor'.
Do you have problems with other software on your machine or only with SQL Server & Management Studio?
When you open SSMS it attempts to validate itself with Microsoft. You can speed this process by performing the second of the recommendations at the following link.
http://www.sql-server-performance.com/faq/sql_server_management_studio_load_time_p1.aspx
Also, are you using the registered servers feature? If so SSMS will attempt to validate all of these.
It seems as though it was a network configuration problem. Never trust a developer (myself) to setup a haphazard domain at his office.
I had my DNS server on my computer pointed to my ISP's (default because the wireless router we're using provided by the ISP doesn't allow me to override the DNS server to my own) instead of my DNS server here, so I have to remember to configure it manually on each computer, which I forgot for this particular computer.
I only discovered it when I tried to connect for the first time to a remote SQL Server instance form this PC. It was trying to resolve to an actual sub-domain of mycompany.com instead of my DNS server's authority of COMPUTERNAME.corp.mycompany.com
I can't say why this was an issue for the designers in SQL Server but not anything else, but my only hypothesis is that when I established a connection to my own computer locally using the computer name instead of "." or "localhost", SQL queries executed immediately, knowing it was local, but the designers still waited for a timeout from the external IP address before trying the local one.
Whatever the explanation is, changing my DNS server for my network card on the local machine to my DNS server's IP made it all work very quickly.
I had a similar issue with mine. Turned out to be some interference with the biometrics login service running on my laptop. Disabled the service and now it works.
Warm Standby SQL Server/Web Server
This question might fall into the IT category but as the lead developer I must come up with a solution to integration as well as pure software issues.
We just moved our web server off site and now I would like to keep a warm standby of both the website and database (SQL 2005) on site.
What are the best practices for going about doing this with the following environment?
Offsite: our website and database (SQL 2005) are on one Windows 2003 server. There is a firewall in front of the server which makes
replication or database mirroring not an option. A vpn is also not an option.
My thoughts as a developer were to write a service which runs at the remote site to zip up and ftp the database backup to an ftp server
on site. Then another process would unzip the backup and restore it to the warm standby database here.
I assume I could do this with the web site as well.
I would be open to all ideas including third party solutions.
If you want a remote standby you probably want to look into a log shipping solution.
This article may help you out. In the past I had to develop one of these solutions for the exact same problem, writing it from scratch is not too hard. The advantage you get with log shipping is that you have the ability to restore to any point in time and you avoid shipping these big heavy full backups around and instead ship light transaction log backups, and occasionally a big backup.
You have to keep in mind that transaction log backups are useless without having both the entire sequence of transaction log backups and a full backup.
You have exactly the right idea. You could maybe write a script that would insert the names of the files that you moved into a table that your warm server could read. Your job could then just poll this table at intervals and not worry about timing.
Forget about that - just found this. Sounds like what you are setting out to do.
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/customlogshipping/1201/
I've heard good things about Syncback:
http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbpro-features.html
Thanks for the link to the article sambo99. Transaction log shipping was my original idea, but I dismissed it because the servers are not in the same domain not even in the same time zone. My only method of moving the files from point A to point B is via FTP. I am going to experiment with just shipping the transaction logs. And see if there is a way to fire off a restore job at given intervals.
www.FolderShare.com is a good tool from Microsoft. You could log ship to a local directory and then synchronize the directory to any other machine. You could also syncrhronize the website folders as well.
"Set it and forget it" type solution. Setup your SQL jobs to clear older files and you'll never have to edit anything after the initial install.
FolderShare (free, in beta) is currently limited to 10,000 files per library.
For all interested the following question also ties into my overall plan to implement log shipping:
SQL Server sp_cmdshell