[Video] Office Hours 2016/12/28 (With Transcriptions)

This week, Brent and Richie discuss Azure VM, min server memory, backup solutions, autogrowth in tempdb data files, parameter sniffing, sp_whoisactive, the worst feature in SQL server, why you should never use SQL server for sending or receiving emails, and how many Cubs shirts Richie owns.

Here’s the video on YouTube:

You can register to attendnextweek’s Office Hours , or subscribe to our podcast to listen on the go.

If you prefer to listen to the audio:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Enjoy the Podcast?

Don’t miss an episode, subscribe via iTunes , Stitcher or RSS .

Leave us a review in iTunes

Office Hours Webcast 2016-12-28 Should I back up system databases on an Azure VM?

Brent Ozar: Let’s see what we got here for questions. “Should I still be backing up system databases in an Azure VM?” What a great question. I don’t even know if you can. Oh no, I’m thinking Azure SQL DB, of course, in Azure VMs. I have this philosophy that you backup data, not servers. There’s a saying in the cloud, “Treat your servers like cattle, not like pets.” Or as like Richie and I like, to just not have any servers at all. We don’t even like to have cattle. Not that we’re vegetarians, we just don’t like servers up in the cloud. That’s not true. I’m generalizing just to joke here because I know I’m immediately going to get in trouble for saying that. My thing is if something hosed on your system databases, I don’t want to take the time to try to recover that, I just want to failover somewhere else. Maybe that somewhere else means I’m doing log shipping. Maybe it means I’m doing database mirroring. But generally, I don’t want to put anything irreplaceable in the system databases just in case if I lose those VMs.

Is there any advantage to setting min server memory?

Brent Ozar: Next up, Robert says, “Is there any advantage to setting min server memory?” Most people set max server memory and then min server memory there’s kind of some fuzzy questions around. “I’ve been a DBA a long time…” Me too, Robert. “We always leave it at zero with no issues. I realize SQL Server will ramp up to this amount but do I get like a performance boost?” I’m in the same camp that you are, Robert. I just leave it at zero. I’ve never seen a problem that I’ve solved by setting min server memory. The problem with min server memory is SQL Server doesn’t use all of it immediately. SQL Server gradually inches up its memory based on demands. So if you think you’re going to lock down that RAM and nobody else can use it, that’s not how min server memory works. I’ve seen people say, “I want to make sure SQL Server always at least has this much.” Well, I’m the kind of guy that if SQL Server is coming under memory pressure from something, it’s like an app or something that’s starting on the SQL Server and burning memory. I want to find out whenever SQL Server isn’t using the max, that’s usually my bigger concern. Then just immediately alert me on that so I can go track down what app is using that extra memory. But if the app wants to use extra memory, I’d rather have SQL Server up than have windows crash due to an out of memory exception. So I’m kind of okay with leaving it at zero. If anybody has a problem where setting min server memory has actually fixed the problem―not like made the problem look like it’s not there―but fixed the problem, I’d love to hear about it too, that’d be interesting. I’m always like there’s probably some exception to the rule, I just haven’t hit it yet.

Richie Rump: There’s got to be a reason why it’s there, right?

Brent Ozar: See, that’s one of those things I don’t agree with. I hear people say that all the time for Microsoft. Man, there’s features in that product that should never be there. They’re just a bad idea. Priority boost was the one where it made sense a long, long time ago in weird situations. It should be out of the product now. Auto close and auto shrink, I get it in some ISV situations. But there’s a lot of features that just shouldn’t exist.

Richie Rump: In other words, there’s a reason why it’s there, it just may not be a relevant, current reason why it’s there.

Brent Ozar: Yeah. Just like Julie Citro says, you can still buy candy cigarettes and cigars in some places. That’s true. It’s kind of morphed now. Now it’s an adult joke thing. Now it’s like you get these candy cigarettes and you laugh about them because of what a bad childhood we all had.

Do you like NetBackup for SQL Server?

Brent Ozar: Fellow human says, “Long shot: Do you have any opinions on…?” Boy, do we have opinions. We could go for days on our opinions. “Do you have any opinions on backup solutions, good or bad, from your clients? Specifically, NetBackup for SQL Server.” Man, I’ve heard horror stories about everything.

Richie Rump: First thing I thought―long shot―I’m like, hey, that’s a great X-Men character―Longshot. I really dug Longshot. Longshot was pretty cool.

Brent Ozar: That’s such a good name immediately for a character. What was Longshot’s special power?

Richie Rump: Gosh, I forget. Some energy thingy or other. He was just kind of this cool character, always fought against Mojo. I remember when I was collecting as a kid he was around, but he’s not around anymore. Then I thought long shot and I’m like don’t throw away your shot, because Hamilton is still in my head. So, sorry dude. There’s something else I need to get, maybe a drill, a special Hamilton drill to get it all out.

Brent Ozar: I listen to Adam Savage’s podcast and he was on Hamilton for like six months straight, listening to it on endless repeat. So you got a ways to go.

Richie Rump: Yeah.

Brent Ozar: I would say in terms of backup solutions, I’ve seen so many bad horror stories, even with native backups. It all comes down to the people and process. Do you have regular routines for checking your backups? The horror stories I hear around NetBackup usually involve DBAs saying, “It’s out of my control and I don’t know when it’s going to run the backups.” Like that someone else is managing that for me now. That’s a problem. If you can’t predict when they’re going to happen, you don’t know when they’re going to recover to and you don’t when your server is going to be under performance loads. So generally speaking, I like stuff like NetBackup, TSM, when it takes the backups away from the DBAs to let them focus on something that they love doing and when the people who are taking over the backups have plenty of time on their hands and they can carefully craft backup scenarios. Now otherwise, I kind of just like backing up to a share. Just backup to a file share, let the DBAs manage those backup schedules, and then backup the stuff off the file share.

Should