What gift do I want MS to leave under the tree? (#Meme Monday from SqlRockstar)

Thomas Larock (aka @Sqlrockstar (Blog) )   has set a new question for this month’s #meme Monday.  You can read his original blog post here.  This month’s Question, “What gift do you want Microsoft to leave for you under the tree this year?” the simple answer is that I don’t want them to leave me a gift I want them to leave you a gift.

When I was a MVP many moons ago I was fortunate it enough to attend the MVP Summit in Seattle this is an annual gathering of all the MVP’s that get together and help MS improve their products and give feedback about the way they are doing things.  When I was there we were discussing SQL Server 2005 and what should be in each SKU/Product level (Standard, Workgroup, and Enterprise Editions).  We knew some of the new features that were coming out as Mvp’s and they wanted to get our take about where they should fall.  As MS read the different features it was unanimous most of the killer features we really wanted in the standard edition of the product since we knew lots of companies could benefit from that.  Not surprisingly when 2005 was released most of the features discussed ended up in enterprise edition.  What I would like to give everyone for Christmas is for the next release to balance this out a little better.  Every cycle Microsoft talks about the greatest features that are ready to come out during presentations and never mentions what edition they will be in until someone asks the question.  Go to most presentations from MS about new features and you tell me if they mention what versions they will be in until someone asks the question.

Now please don’t get me wrong, MS is a business and the job of the business is to make money.  I’m not saying they are not allowed to make money.  What I would like for everyone on Christmas from MS is for them to stop the smoke and mirror show and give it to us truthfully!  Tell us the HA features of 2012 will only be available in enterprise edition at the beginning of the presentation.  Why do I want this?   So I can go back to my desk and figure out ways to make my system work without these features since I only have Standard edition to use.  So I don’t have to spend an hour in a presentation with a technology I’m not going to be able to use.  Yes you will see me researching these new features and even presenting on them in the future but I will tell you the edition it applies to.  So you know whether this will be useful or not given your current situation.  Just a simple request to be clearer when you’re telling us that you made a new function that can give us Rainbows and Unicorns out of the DB.

I think it’s a simple Christmas wish.

Hope everyone finds this under their tree this year.

 

Policy Based Management Simple Tip!

I’m just starting out looking at Policy based management for SQL Server 2008.  I haven’t had a large SQL Server base to manage recently so I haven’t really had a chance to use it.  Where I’m at currently I’m the sole DBA and have about 300+ Databases that have had less than perfect maintenance and setup done to them so I figured I would test out PBM to get some things in order.

I noticed that many of the Databases were set to grow in 1mb increments.   That’s fine and dandy to make a fast Auto Grow time but my VLF files are off the charts on this server. I know the real solution is managing the space and growing when I want to in size/chunks when I want to.  For right now though with the 50 other tasks I have on my plate I wanted to knock this one out quickly.

Adding the policy was easy this post does a great job of showing you how to do this.    The problem I ran into was finding the proper Facet.   In this case you can find @growth in the Data File Facet.   The second mistake I made is I tried to say in the check condition I wanted to find everything that’s not equal to 512.  I figured that would give me a list of all my Databases out there.  But that’s not what PBM wants.  PBM wants you to tell it what the number should be and it will tell you who doesn’t match.  When I said not equal it wouldn’t let me apply that after I got my list.  Once I changed the rule to = 512 it found me all the databases I was looking for and allowed me to apply the change to set them to grow at 512 instead of 1.

Make sure when you are creating a PBM policy make your items equal to what you are looking for instead of not equal.

Thank you to @sacSqlDude and @johnsterrett on twitter for helping me out today and telling me what I needed to do!

SQL Family

Thomas Larock aka @SqlRockstar (Blog|Twitter) has put on a monthly meme with a different topic each month.  I’ve decided to participate in this topic as it’s an important aspect of my life.Thom asks “Write about what #sqlfamily means to you.”#SqlFamily started for me way back in 2003.  I was a DBA at a large health care organization and I heard about a SQL users group starting in my area I wanted to check it out since any help I could get in my current role as a DBA would be great.  I started to attend the meetings and found others that enjoyed SQL Server as well.  This then lead me to start presenting and shortly after attending my first PASS Summit.  At the summit I met even more people like me that not only enjoyed SQL Server but gave of their time freely to help others.For me the #SQLFamily has always been about people helping people.  The community is very giving to everyone.   There is no membership in this family, it’s never a question of have you been here before or are you a “regular”  it’s the place that welcomes you with open arms regardless of who you are or what you do.  If you have a problem we’ll help you try and solve it.  It’s that simple it’s that easy.  To me that’s #SQLFamily.

The family extends so much further than a discussion forum or a specific website.  It’s there when your son/family member is in the hospital and you need some positive reinforcement.  It’s there to wish you congratulations when a new baby is born or you celebrating sending your kids off to college.  It’s people taking care of each other and looking out for one another.

To answer Thom’s original question.  #sqlfamily means people helping people.  Something I think all families should strive to do more often.