Monthly Archives: September 2012
SQL Cluster Failover Issues
Today’s topic is ‘oh crap, I manually failed over my SQL Server cluster during a lunch-time scheduled maintenance window and SQL Server and SQL Server Agent did not come back online.’ The key words in their being OH CRAP!
Looking at the ‘oh so informative cluster events’ I see the following:
The Cluster service failed to bring clustered service or application ‘SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)’ completely online or offline. One or more resources may be in a failed state. This may impact the availability of the clustered service or application.
That did not help, let’s move onto the Windows Event Viewer. It gave us: “The specified account’s password has expired.” Wait a minute! These are service accounts created by our active directory administrator that are supposed to never expire. Hmmm, I better investigate further. I look at a big group of my SQL Server service accounts and noticed about half of them are set this way. When I questioned the AD administrator, he indicated that he was training a new person and he must have done the half that was incorrect. Problem solved. Thus, it is a good idea to always check to make sure that your accounts are setup properly before you use them in SQL Server.
Enjoy!
Sunday Funday Returns
Sunday Funday has returned after our month-long series of questions and answers. In today’s installment of Sunday Funday, we bring you a great SQL song by Rob Lambert as we get ramped up for #SQLKaraoke at this year’s SQL PASS Summit. Enjoy!
Take Time for Yourself
Friday, we left the office early and headed an hour east to Orlando. The wife and I checked into the Bohemian Hotel Celebration right outside of the Walt Disney World property. The Bohemian is a beautiful hotel on the Celebration property, which is a planned community developed by Disney to have a quaint, small town feel with small shops and great scenery.
From there we headed to the Magic Kingdom for a night of wild rides and shopping. It was a great night for my wife and I capped off by a morning swim in the hotel pool. Little get-aways like this are great for your marriage as well as dealing with the day-to-day stress of life. We came home this afternoon refreshed and ready to enjoy the remainder of our weekend recharged for the next week. Do you take time for yourself? Enjoy!
I’m Going to the SQL PASS Summit!
For quite some time, I have hated November. Don’t get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving, let’s not get crazy there. But, to watch everyone get excited about going to the annual SQL PASS Summit was almost like being the only guy at the prom without a date. I never had that problem, but I can imagine it vividly thanks to having to sit out previous Summits because my employers did not see the benefit in flying me across the country.
It was quite painful to sit on the sidelines and see everyone enjoying #SQLKaraoke, seeing everyone meeting up with people that they had met on twitter in the #SQLFamily, and seeing bonds created and new friends made all in the name of SQL Server. I had a front row seat each time from my couch. A better analogy would be that of a professional football player at home watching other teams in the playoffs enjoying the sweet smell of success while he suffered the agony of the feet (or is that defeat). Thousand of SQL Server professionals were enjoying the learning, the training, and the networking while I had to simply watch from home. NO MORE! NOT THIS YEAR BABY! I GOT A DATE FOR THE PROM! I AM GOING TO THE SUMMIT! Look out Seattle, let the Big Gator Growl!
I am going to send many glorious tweets and facebook updates showing all of the new things I am learning, all of the new people I am meeting, and the friends I got to meet in real life. Also, let’s not forget the crazy songs I will sing at #SQLKaraoke, so when people talk to me throughout the year they will remember the good times we had that November when the planets aligned and I got to finally attend the SQL PASS Summit. Good times, good friends, and maybe I will get to see the unicorn. Is it time to go yet? Can I go now?
Troubleshooting Skills
One of the hardest concepts that new IT workers struggle with is the ability to troubleshoot. In my seventeen years in the field, I have never seen two employees tackle a problem in exactly the same manner. Troubleshooting is an art form derived out of experience and education.
You can learn how to troubleshoot various problems in a certain manner, but you have to be ready to switch gears and go another direction based upon the results of each step in your logic. Mentoring can help shape the way in which you tackle problems, but it is essentially your style which will determine how you logically break down problems and solve them step by step. The ability to troubleshoot will help determine the level of success in the IT field. What do you think?
What Are You Working For?
I’ve been asking myself this lately as I prepare to move into a new phase shortly with my youngest daughter being a senior in high school. For the last twenty years, it was providing for my children and family to make sure they had opportunities for growth and development. Now my youngest will go off to college and our home will be quiet.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not kicking my children to the curb, but they don’t need my security as much as they prepare to spread their wings and fly away. My wife and I love to travel and I love SQL Server, so I will most likely dive more into my career with the intent of traveling and spending more time with her as well as socializing more in order to fill the nest so to speak.
It’s a great time to be alive, but what are you working for?
Getting to Know sp_helpuser
The stored procedure, sp_helpuser, is useful in showing various information about the users such as login name, default database, default schema and the SID. You can also see if a user name is aliased. I hope you find this useful. Enjoy!
SQL Saturday Orlando
When looking back over the past month to determine things that I have no blogged about while doing my series of question’s and answers, I realized that I did not get a chance to announce the biggest news received during that months. The fine organizers for SQL Saturday #151 Orlando have chosen my submission to speak on September 29, 2012. This will be my first full-length speaking session and needless to say I am nervous and excited.
This past weekend, I began laying out my slide deck and starting to really think about the format of my session. This in itself is exciting trying to visualize what I want to say and how I want to convey the message. Stay tuned and I will let you know the progress of my slide deck. If you haven’t registered yet, please do so now!
Series of Posts Wrapped Up
Yesterday concluded my month-long journey with a question and answer series. That was fun having a structured series to follow and it really helped me with two projects I was working on because I had limited amount of time to dedicate to my blog. I think I will do that again sometime in the near future, but I missed being able to update everyone with daily solutions to problems or changes to my goals.
Next week I will look back into the last month of my life and see what things you have missed while on our journey and try to revisit them for you. In essence we can DVR the moments and fast forward the commercials. Enjoy!
Question of the Day Thirty
Let us continue our question of the day series with our final day, day thirty.
What is replication?
SQL Server replication is a process of distributing database objects across different instances and then synchronizing the data between the instances involved. This is great for remote application as well as mobile users across slower networks. I’ve personally worked with replication where data was synchronized over air cards to laptops with workers in the field with great success.
Enjoy!
SQL Swampland 