Category: SQL Server Administration

Do you know how many different types of users there are in SQL Server?

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Databases, Security, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA

The answer to this question is not 2, happy and unhappy users. This time we’re discussing security, not the end user experience of your perfectly tuned databases.

I was recently having a discussion around SQL Server security, more specifically about the logins and user. The question I was asked after going through couple examples was, that how many different types of users there actually are. While this seems like a trivial thing to answer, I have to admit that even after thinking about this for a little while, and still got the answer off by 2. As it turns out there’s bit more complexity to this than might be obvious at the first glance.

Without checking from anywhere, can you name all the different types of users? Read onward to find out.

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How to give everyone in Azure access to your database, the easy way

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Azure, Databases, Security, SQL Server, SQL Server Administration

Sometimes I run into things in cloud that really just blow my mind away. Not that long ago I learned how you can give everyone in Azure, no matter what subscription or region they are in, an access to your database. And it was super easy too. It’s just one click to allow whole (Azure) world to start accessing your data.

Is this something I wanted to do, or would I recommend anyone to do it? No, not really. Also the documentation around this particular setting was less than great, so I decided to share what I learned.

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Low Impact Maintenance for Multi-Terabyte Data Estates

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in SQL Server, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA

Core responsibility of a DBA is to make sure that the databases they are responsible for are maintained properly. In a nutshell this usually means that you are taking backups of the data, checking the consistency of the databases and maintaining statistics and indexes. Performing these tasks gives the DBA the ability to provide the agreed SLAs for the system.

However the trade-off for doing all these tasks is that it requires some computing resources and it can sometimes impact the performance of the connecting applications, and through that the SLAs in a negative way.

In this post we’ll look at how to implement low impact database maintenance routines for environments that have large databases and are accessed 24/7 by the users.

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SQL Server Backups to Azure Part 4: Managed Backups

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Azure, SQL Server, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA

You’re now reading the 4th and final post in my SQL Server Backups to Azure series. In previous posts I’ve described how to setup an Azure Storage Account, Blob Storage container an how to take SQL Server backups there. This time we’ll take a look at one more option that puts our backups on autopilot, with destination to cloud!

The feature I am writing about is Managed Backups, option that has been available since SQL Server 2014 but one that I have not seen often used. One reason for that maybe being, that there’s an unfixed feature that makes enabling it bit difficult if you’re not aware of the workaround.

Despite this shortcoming, if you have SQL Servers (on-premise or Cloud) but no DBA to care for them, I’d recommend that you take a look at this option.

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SQL Server Backups to Azure Part 3: Custom Backups

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Azure, SQL Server, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA

You are now reading the 3rd part of the 4 part series on backing up databases to Azure. In Part 1 we looked at some of the benefits of using Azure for your backups and in Part 2 we setup the Storage Account with the Block Blob storage container.

In this post we’ll take a look at how to use the freshly created Blob storage with our customized backup routines.

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SQL Server Backups to Azure Part 2: Setting up the Storage Account

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Azure, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA

This is the second part of a 4 part blog post series about backing up SQL Server to Azure. If you’re wondering why you’d like to backup data to Azure in the first place, please read the Part 1 of this series that explains some of the benefits of using Azure for backups.

In this post we’ll look at how to setup your very own Storage Account and how to use some of the nice security features in it.

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SQL Server Backups to Azure, Part 1: Introduction

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Azure, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA
Gone to Cloud!

I’ve said it before and I say it again: Understanding how database backups and restores work is one of the more important topics for DBAs to understand. This time we’ll approach the topic from the cloud, and more precisely, from Azure perspective. Why cloud perspective you might as? For one simple reason. Even if you’re not (yet) running your SQL Server workloads in Azure, it doesn’t mean that you can’t make use of it for other purposes, such as backups. And while the idea of placing your data into Azure, or into any other cloud platform, might still seem scary to some, I want to help put your minds at ease. To do this, I’ll just point you to this fine piece of documentation describing the Azure infrastructure security. I think you’ll find it quite satisfying.

As there’s quite a few topics to cover with database backups to Azure, I have split the details into 4 separate posts. You’re now reading Part 1, the introduction.

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