SQL Server DBA Toolkit

Install and configure DBA Dash to monitor SQL server environments, create a dedicated admin service account, and connect to SQL instances for centralized data collection.

Set up the DBA Dash repository database on a SQL Server instance to collect data from multiple servers and enable Power BI dashboards.

Explore DB Dash's proactive dashboard for SQL Server, which alerts on backups, slow queries, and integrity checks, and customize thresholds, retention, auto refresh, and nickname display for servers.

Analyze SQL Server performance across multiple servers using the DBADash dashboard, uncovering cpu usage, io, latency, waits, blocking, slow queries, and query store insights.

Learn how the configuration item in DBADash provides a comprehensive view of all SQL Server instances, their configurations, hardware, and trace flags, with export and alert options.

Explore the storage and HA/DR item in DBADash, monitor offline SQL instances, integrity checks, backups, log shipping, always on availability groups, and disk space thresholds across databases.

Learn how DBA Dash analyzes all SQL Server instances, monitors jobs and table growth, and reviews execution history, steps, and services to improve instance oversight and security.

Analyze a specific SQL Server instance with DBA Dash by drilling from a dashboard to instance-level metrics, monitoring CPU, disk usage, queries, backups, and job history to identify issues quickly.

Discover how Grafana empowers DBAs to monitor SQL Server and other databases with easy installation, templates, and customizable dashboards.

Explore Grafana for monitoring and alerting across multiple SQL Server instances, compare free and enterprise licenses, and learn to configure data sources, ports, and dashboards.

Create a Grafana login in both SQL Server instances and grant selective view and select permissions to enable dashboards. Avoid sysadmin and consider domain user options to protect data.

Install Grafana on Windows, download the 12.0 Windows installer, complete installation, start the Grafana service, and log in with admin/admin to explore dashboards, users, and data sources.

Create a Grafana data source for SQL Server on port 1433, configure master database permissions to limit sysadmin access, and import ready-made dashboards to monitor server metrics.

Create dashboards from scratch by writing SQL queries, adding visualizations, selecting data sources, arranging and saving customized panels for comprehensive monitoring.

Test SQL queries with the free SQL query stress tool to simulate concurrent users, measure CPU usage and logical reads, and compare table lock versus non-lock scenarios.

Learn how to run SQLQueryStress load tests, compare query performance across 500 interactions, monitor reads and CPU usage, and identify deadlocks; compare stored procedures versus client-side queries with parameters.

Explore a free statistics parser tool to quickly analyze SQL Server performance by examining logical reads, CPU time, and execution plans in management studio.

This opening session introduces the holy grail of sql server scripts for dbas, including sp_blitzen, sp_whoisactive, and Ola Hallengren's maintenance scripts for statistics, defragmentation, backups, with downloadable links.

this lecture highlights performance as a core dba concern and presents proactive and reactive techniques using free procedures from ada mechanic, brent ozar, ola hallengren, and spblitz.

Identify running SQL Server processes with sp_who and sp_who2. Explore Adam Machanic's sp_whoisactive for detailed, real-time performance insights and precise blocking information.

Create a history table and run sp_whoisactive_part2 to capture running activity by time. Enable statistics io and statistics time, then interpret waits, CPU time, and reads to diagnose issues.

Analyze sp_whoisactive and wait types to diagnose SQL Server performance, identify locks, IO, memory, and disk delays, and use Brent Ozar's sp_blitz with the first responder kit for health checks.

Demonstrate Brent Ozar's sp_blitzcache to analyze cached execution plans, identify high-cost operators, and explore cautions about implicit conversions, missing indexes, and cache management.

Explore Ola Hallengren's free SQL Server maintenance scripts for backups, dbcc checkdb integrity checks, and index and statistics maintenance to streamline database administration.

Discover how dbatools empowers SQL Server DBAs with more than 500 PowerShell scripts for migrating databases, updating SQL Server versions, backups, and daily tasks from SQL Server Management Studio.

Explore the dbatools open source platform and PowerShell scripts that streamline migrating databases, logins, jobs, endpoints, and server configurations for SQL Server environments.

Install the essential betas tool with PowerShell as admin, trust the repository, update modules, verify versions, and run dbatools scripts to test SQL Server connections and back up databases.

Learn how cumulative updates (CUs) secure SQL Server, how to test them in QA before production, and safely apply or uninstall patches with backups, in an always-on environment.

Update all sql server instances using a dbatools script, selecting by computer name or instance name, while performing backups, test environment validation, and post-update restart.

Explore essential scripts, including free options and self-developed tools, used to diagnose performance issues and apply them in daily SQL Server DBA workflows.

Analyze and optimize SQL Server indexes across all databases, identify unused and duplicate indexes, highlight the largest tables, and reveal the top CPU and logical-reads heavy queries to improve performance.

Identify the heaviest queries and stored procedures by analyzing CPU time, logical reads, and IO latency using query store to pinpoint disk latency and main waits affecting SQL Server performance.

Use a script to monitor ongoing backups and restores, mitigating performance issues, showing the exact percentage completion and distinguishing full, logical, differential, and log backups.

Create a lightweight monitoring workflow with sp_whoisactive to capture running queries and blocking, storing results in an audit database via a scheduled job for periodic analysis.

Connect learners to a vibrant SQL community and shared job opportunities, while covering SQL language topics like Power BI, SQL Server, and MySQL.