This week Drew Furgiuele joins Brent and Richie to discuss patching, job interview suggestions, using PowerShell to solve various SQL Server issues, roles and responsibilities of a SQL or a database architect, enabling query store on production servers, SARGability, moving SSRS from the main production server, tempdb issues, Availability Groups troubleshooting, Drew's upcoming Powershell class, and more.

This week Edwin M Sarmiento joins Brent, Tara, Erik, and Richie to discuss high availability disaster recovery, migrating from on-prem server to Amazon's RDS, AlwaysON Availability Groups, auto-growth issues, rebuilding vs dropping/re-creating indexes, log shipping, using Service Broker with AlwaysOn, updating stats issues, VLF counts, measuring transaction log usage, upgrading AlwaysOn versions, and much more.

This week, Pinal Dave joins Brent, Tara, and Richie to discuss replication latency, partitioning tables, transactional replication, troubleshooting 3-rd party application performance, SQL ConstantCare® update, SQL Server errors, copying data over from a database with read-only access, reducing blocking timeouts, backups to the cloud, and more replication questions!

This week, Erik and Richie discuss what to do first at a new job that never had a DBA before, basic vs advance DBA skills, tempdb files, downgrading SQL server versions, a database architecture issue, tools for monitoring SQL Server instances, other areas to focus on as a DBA besides HADR and query tuning, SQL Constant Care®, and database backups.

This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss replication, SQL Source Control with Git, installing service packs in cumulative updates in SQL Server, query tuning, write errors, log backups, Azure managed instances, 3-rd party backup software, and DBA porn.

This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss VLF issues, SSAS tabular performance support, certification tests, query documentation tools, what to do when the executive team doesn't value your contribution as a DBA, and more.

This week, Brent, Erik, Tara, and Richie discuss database restores, opening a case with Microsoft, buying a pre-built server vs building your own, auto-shrinking all databases with a single command, SQL Server dev environment options, the best way to learn Git, excessive memory grants, and more.

This week, Erik, Tara, and Richie discuss cloning databases without 3-rd party software, tips for upgrading from 2005 to 2017, archiving databases, partitioning databases, version control, SQL Server settings, SSRS, moving database from stand-alone server to an AG cluster, limiting memory use at the query level, and mirroring.

This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss the lack of backward compatibility for SQL Server backups, deploying SQL Server on VMs with shared SAN storage,query tuning, replication, full-text indexes, backup and restore, saying "no" to your superiors as a DBA, clearing your transaction log, and much more.

This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss a simple way to fill tempdb, tools for retrieving data from transaction logs, tools for diagraming server architecture, their favorite counters for checking if SQL server on VMWare has sufficient memory, SSRS subscription issues, change requests, thread pool issues, best practices for SELECT * into, failover SQL Server vs failover SAN, backups, and more!

This week, Tara, Erik, and Richie discuss 3rd-party tools for object-level restore, patching, stringing multiple CTEs, Meltdown and Spectre, instance stacking, organizing DBA teams, DBCC checks, moving local databases to Amazon RDS, CTEs vs temp tables, and backups and restores.

This week Brent, and Richie discuss validating backups using the backup set table, how to figure out if you're a Mid-Level or Senior DBA, rollbacks, compatibility modes while upgrading SQL Server versions, MAXDOP settings, and Brent's car purchasing tip.

This week Brent and Richie discuss the latest big Intel CPU security flaw, distributed transactions, rebuilding indexes, SQL Server health check, GDPR regulations, Availability Groups issues, improving server performance, patching for instances that share DBs from multiple applications, using heaps, and more...

This week Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss truncating & repopulating, failed logins, their choice for high availability, PowerBI, read committed isolation, parameter sniffing, database mirroring, extended events and failing queries and re-indexing large tables.

This week Tara, Erik, and Richie discuss virtualization, replication & mirroring, switching SQL service logins to an AD account, temporal tables, tempdb issues, migrating from SQL 2015, and Richie's outdoor adventures in "Breath of the Wild."

This week Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss filestream waits, what to use instead of filestream, Availability Groups & clusters, implicit data conversion, using snapshot backups, MERGE statement bugs, deadlocks, the future of on-prem servers, Erik's new sp_Blitz lock, and if the SQL Server knowledge base "Virtual Assistant" can answer DBA interview questions.

This week Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss whether you need to know T-SQL to be a Senior DBA, if you should use SQL Server 2017 for production, monitoring tools, C# vs Powershell, IO_COMPLETION waits, DBA jobs, and SQL Operations Studio.

This week, Brent and Richie discuss the new Power BI Dashboard, designing a new backup structure, creating SSRS reports, the difference between row and page compression, using EMC Avamar SQL agent for backing up databases, SQL Server and other books to check out, Veeam Backup for SQL Server, and how to best manage monitor over 20 SQL servers.

This week Brent, Erik, Richie, and Tara discuss Docker, writing to different servers in different locations, SAN Replication, reducing the size of a database, patching Availability Groups, getting rid of failover cluster instances, long-term backup storage options, VLF numbers, and more.

This week, Richie and Tara discuss Richie's current projects, Availability Groups, offloading reads and backups, applying service packs, whether production should ship agent jobs to production recovery server, security checks and scans in SQL Server, CPU performance issues upgrading to SQL Server 2016 and 2017, database backups and restores, whether there's currently a DBA shortage, and Richie's favorite board game.

This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss database corruption, multi-instance clusters, career advice, whether you should transition from contract work to full time, VMware VMotion, reducing failover time with AGs, query tuning, and more.

This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss the new Extended Events Profiler, using SQL audit vs a trigger to log what people do, log shipping, migrating from on-prem to cloud, best practice for a database owner, SQL Server performance improvement, the difference between simple, bulk-logged, and full recovery models and when to use them, tools for transferring databases from one server to another, VSS Snapshot backups, encryption and more.

This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss what they think about having no more service packs for SQL Server 2017 and newer versions, shrinking log files, how many servers can one DBA manage, log backups, mirroring vs Availability Groups vs log shipping, and their next company retreat location.

This week, Richie and Erik discuss altering database columns, separating log files, encryption, NOLOCK issues, developing new skills and experience, troubleshooting deadlocks, Oracle, calling C# method from a stored procedure and what kind of headset Erik uses.

This week, Brent, Tara, Richie, and Erik discuss a most excepted solution for SA and securing an instance, how many VLFs should a database have, merge replication issues, query tuning tips, database restores, and Larry Ellison's self-driving database.