


SELECT Command, COUNT(StartTime) AS Rebuilt
FROM master.[dbo].[CommandLog]
GROUP BY Command



This post’s song is Particles by Nothing But Thieves

It’s different for Availability Groups when service packs get broke…

Last week I did a few things wrong.  The good news is I learned from it and now can prevent myself from repeating it.

So I have this AG, it is kind of important, hence the AG part but after 5pm I have two hours that it can be down, or so I thought.  We recently added new functionality that requires it to be up all the time.  I have been applying SQL 2014 SP2 to all of my 2014 servers all of which have been in AGs and it has been super easy, less than 10 minutes of work and only a reboot of downtime. (I am a little old fashioned and always reboot after a service pack.) My mind said, “Sweet, you can get this done and no one will notice and if you do both at the same time and delay the reboot on one of them, there will be no down time.”  That was my first mistake.  My second one was starting a few minutes early. I was excited to have it done because it was my last round of service packs. My final mistake was not realizing that SSISDDB is considered a system database and should NEVER be in an availability group. It may be super awesome because you can keep your SSIS catalog completely in sync. You could maybe do it if you plan to remove it before doing service packs or any kind of upgrades to the server, bur as far as setting it and forgetting it, you are in trouble if you do it.

Here are a few of the fun errors that we saw.

“Script level upgrade for database ‘master’ failed because upgrade step ‘SSIS_hotfix_install.sql’ encountered error 942, state 4, severity 25. This is a serious error condition which might interfere with regular operation and the database will be taken offline. If the error happened during upgrade of the ‘master’ database, it will prevent the entire SQL Server instance from starting. Examine the previous errorlog entries for errors, take the appropriate corrective actions and re-start the database so that the script upgrade steps run to completion.”


Huge thank you to all the people that have blogged about Trace Flag 902.  It allowed us to start up SQL Server and find the errors and pull SSISDB out of the AG and get the service packs to finish running and everything was happy and great.  Here is the list of steps from the Microsoft KB article:

Enable trace flag 902 on the instance of SQL Server. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Open SQL Server Configuration Manager.
  2. In SQL Server Configuration Manager, click SQL Server Services.
  3. Double-click the SQL Serverservice.
  4. In the SQL Server Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
  5. On click the Advanced tab, locate the Startup Parameters item.
  6. Add ;-T902 to the end of the existing string value, and then click OK.

Lessons Learned:

  1. Don’t start earlier than you say you are going to start.
  2. Don’t do both sides of an AG at the same time.  Do the Passive one first and make sure everything is up and working and the AG is healthy before you do the primary node. Verify the fail-over works to the passive node so that you have no down time.
  3. Don’t get too comfortable with Service Packs and Cumulative Updates. They are still a big change even though they are pretty stable.
  4. Don’t have any system databases in the AG while applying patches and know that SSISDB is a part of the system databases.
  5. An awesome team that can back you up and help you trouble shoot can make all the difference.  It is amazing to have a boss that believes in you and is encouraging to help you keep going even when you want to give up and go cry in the closet.

Also for those of you following along at home and what to know what song goes with this post: It’s Different for Girls

Happy Service Packing!

Takes as Long as it Takes SQL, Break on Me, I have a DAC…

The DAC, what is it? It is the Dedicated Administrator Console. Basically it is a way to connect to your SQL Server when all the other connections are tied up. But it takes a little bit of pre-planning so that you can use it when things go bad with your SQL Server.  Let’s enable it so you can test using it and know that it is there in the future.

EXEC sp_configure 'remote admin connections', 1;

I was always afraid to use the DAC because I thought I had to use the command line and I am terrible with cmd. But did you know, you can connect to it through Management Studio? Now I can feel right at home when I trouble shoot a sick server.  To connect to a server using the DAC put “admin:” in front of the name of the server like this:


I use my elevated windows login for this point, but you can use what ever sys admin account that you have.

There are a few words of caution. You can only have one connection to your DAC on each server at a time. So don’t try to connect Object explorer to it. I have SQLPrompt and noticed that my server would send an alert on Severity Error 20 because SQL Prompt was trying to connect at the same time and was failing. Just be aware that you might get an error, but if everything is correct you can look down at the connection at the bottom of the query window and see you are connected.  If someone else is using the DAC, you won’t be able to use the connection, so it is a good idea to always close it when you are done.

Kendra Little b|t has a fantastic post for Brent Ozar Unlimited about the DAC and most importantly to me, how to tell who is connected.  This is the code that she wrote to help identify who is connected:

WHEN ses.session_id= @@SPID THEN 'It''s me! '
+ coalesce(ses.login_name,'???') as WhosGotTheDAC,
from sys.endpoints as en
join sys.dm_exec_sessions ses on
where en.name='Dedicated Admin Connection'

Now when SQL Server Breaks on you, there is a tool that prevents us from shattering like glass.

If Crazy = Genius, I’m rebuilding one partition at a time!

We have had an index job that has been failing for a while.  This is one of those things you really don’t want to clean up because no one is complaining, but you know you should.  I had heard that I could rebuild one partition at a time, but where to start?  Today, I worked my way through it, so here it is so that you can do it too.

First you need to find the biggest indexes, there is a good chance those are the ones that live on partitions. I am removing Primary Keys.

SELECT i.[name] AS IndexName
,SUM(ps.[used_page_count]) * 8 AS IndexSizeKB
FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats AS ps
INNER JOIN sys.indexes AS i ON ps.[object_id] = i.[object_id]
AND ps.[index_id] = i.[index_id]
GROUP BY i.[name]

The top ones are most likely the ones you want to focus on.  Next, we need to track down the partition function.

SELECT * FROM sys.partition_functions

Next we are going to figure out which partition we want to rebuild.

SELECT sprv.value AS [Value], sprv.boundary_id AS [ID]
FROM sys.partition_functions AS spf
INNER JOIN sys.partition_range_values sprv ON sprv.function_id = spf.function_id
WHERE (spf.name = N'NameOfFunctionFromPartitionFunctions')

Pick the number of the partition you want to rebuild.

Next use your index name from earlier.  You will also need the table name and the partition number.

ON [dbo].[TableName]

This will rebuild just the partition that you requested.

She keeps her management studio error to minimal, Southern Style…

It is painful when you have been working on a tough query and you start to get an out of memory error.
“An error occurred while executing batch. Error message is: Exception of type ‘System.OutOfMemoryException’ was thrown”

What in the world? But it was working before! Why is this happening? Is it happening for everyone? Do I need to reboot the SQL Server?

This is a SQL Server Management Studio Error. Usually it means that you have filled up the local memory cache on your machine. Save all your queries and close Management Studio. Once you open it again you “should” be fine, but famous last words right? If that doesn’t work, just reboot. Nice clean memory and you can get back to playing with your super tough query.


T-SQL Tuesday

TSQL Tuesday #63 – How do you manage security?








