SQL Saturday #81 Birmingham

Today I had the great pleasure of meeting other SQL Server professionals from all over the Southeast, and listening to some great presentations on everything from design and statistics to the upcoming SQL "Denali".

We had five different sessions to choose from in each of the six time slots. My choices today were

Database Design
SQL "Denali" High Availability
SQL Statistics
Building a Professional Development Plan
Table Partitioning
Advanced DW Scenarios in SSIS

It was not just informative. These events are about networking and being a part of a community centered around the SQL Server product. Plus, on top of great sessions and door-prizes, we were provided with coffee, doughnuts, sodas, and a nice box lunch. If you have not been to one, I highly recommend it.

Upcoming SQL Saturday in Birmingham, AL

It is time for year three of the incredible FREE training day on SQL Server in Birmingham, AL.  This event has grown each year across the country, and this year will be no exception.  If you are anywhere in the Southeast region, I recommend you make the trip to Birmingham on July 30th.  Otherwise, please go to the main site and find a SQL Saturday closer to you.  You owe it to yourself to take advantage of these free events to continue your professional development and take advantage of networking with other SQL Server professionals.

http://sqlsaturday.com/81/eventhome.aspx

SQL Saturday Free Training

I just attended my first free SQL Saturday training day (#29 in Birmingham, AL) and it was an amazing day. The training was of the highest quality and as I went through the day with free coffee/soda and free lunch provided, I could not believe all of the value that was being provided for free. Of course it is not free, just free to we the trainees.

A big thank you to all the sponsors and the volunteers that made the day possible.

I want to encourage all of you reading this to go to the SQL Saturday website and find SQL Saturday's in your region. There were many people that I met in sessions who were from Tennessee and Georgia, and some had been to as many as three SQL Saturday's in different locations. It is worth a little driving time.

The hardest part was choosing which sessions to attend, since it was pretty common to have two or more sessions that I was interested in going at the same time. Here is the list that I finally went with.

Parallel Query Execution Dive Deep presented by Kevin Boles.
Database Design Patterns presented by Louis Davidson.
Tuna Helper for SQL Server DBAs presented by Janis Griffin.
Tricks & Tips for Writing Better Queries presented by Joe Webb.
SQL Server Locking and Blocking Made Simple presented by Joe Webb.

In each session, I already knew some of the material and I learned some new things, and most importantly gained some insight from people who approached problems from different angles. SQL Server is so robust, there are hundreds of ways to carve the turkey.

I hope if you have never attended SQL Saturday that you will make it a priority. All it costs you is one Saturday.

Domain Move Part 2

After the first attempt at moving a SQL 2005 Server from one domain to another, I learned several lessons to help me make the permanent transition to the new domain. Here are a few of the key things I checked and/or changed.

- Verify that the new DNS server has entries for the short names of all servers that SQL Server needs to access. I found that several servers would resolve to [servername].[full domain name] but not to simply [servername]. I had to request CNAME entries for all the resources that required (due to extensive existing code) the ability to access the server through the short name.
- Make sure all services are running under local accounts.
- Make sure the Reporting Services execution account is running under a local account.
- If any objects are owned by domain level accounts, change ownership to local accounts.
- If any SQL Agent Jobs are scheduled to run under domain accounts, change them to local accounts.
- Check SSIS packages for any domain account ownership and change to local account.

I still had a few issues, but for the most part I was able to change one SQL 2005 Server from one domain to another and add a SQL 2005 and a SQL 2000 server to the domain from a workgroup with little trouble after checking the previous list and making changes as needed.

If you have any more tips, please feel free to leave comments to flesh out the topic.

Preparing To Join A Domain and Change Domains

Currently I am managing three production SQL Servers:
SQL 2000 on Windows 2003 with Workgroup security.
SQL 2005 on Windows 2003 with Workgroup security.
SQL 2005 on Windows 2003 with Domain/AD security.

We just spent the weekend moving all the PC's to a brand new Domain controller with a new Active Directory. The servers are next.

I have been surprised at how little is on the web about joining an existing SQL Server installation to a domain, presumably because most people start on one or never move to one. There is a little more on changing domains, but it still seems a little sketchy.

So sometime in the next week, all three servers will be members of the new domain. These servers use IIS, heavy Reporting Services, heavy Integration Services, and extensive cross server connectivity.

Hopefully I will have a good report, but either way I will let you know the good, bad, and ugly.

Introduction

My name is Hugh Thomas and I finally decided to cut my teeth on my first professional blog about SQL Server. I have been developing databases for about fifteen years going back to Access version 2.0. In 2000 I started developing with SQL 2000 and I've never looked back.

As a database engine and feature-rich tool set, I consider the SQL Server platform to be the best bang for your buck and the easiest platform to have multiple tiers of support, from the very basic support user up to the Super DBA.

I have been using SQL 2005 in production since three months after it was released and am currently testing SQL 2008 for future development. Although my primary roll is that of a Database Developer, I have played the roll of our primary (well, really our only) DBA since 2000. That means I have installed SQL 2000-2008 multiple times, dealt with the configuration side of the server and services, and banged my head against the wall when things went South.

I plan to blog about what I learn, mistakes I make, and link to interesting resources that I find along the way. If my successes and failures can help someone else, all the better.

Until next time,

Hugh