Scott Mattie's Blog

In my last post, I told you about moving an existing AMI to another region by exploiting the copy snapshot feature. On 13 March 2013, Amazon announced a new feature called Copy AMI: Dear Amazon Web Services Customer, We are excited to announce the immediate availability of a new feature: Amazon Machine Image (AMI) Copy. AMI [...]

When I used to work at Amazon Web Services (AWS) one of the pain points was the ability to migrate your fault tolerant strategies to another region. Amazon had these great technologies to help you fail away from trouble areas. A great overview of these strategies is in a video, that I did last year, which [...]

As stated in an early article of mine, there is a great free book from Microsoft Press that talks in good depth about Windows Server 2012. Today, I wanted to share some of the information that I learned from that book. (Limits and new features) Here is a simple comparison of the different limits between Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate 1 [...]

In my last article, I spoke about a new cool feature of Windows Server 2012. The ability to go from a server GUI to Server CORE (or vice versa) without having to re-install the Operating System! You may ask yourself, “Why would I care about that?” To be blunt, Server CORE is very similar to the way most Linux [...]

I have been preparing to upgrade my Windows and SQL certifications for 2012. I was checking out an article on switching from Server GUI to Server core. This article was written for Windows Server 8 Beta and was called How to Turn the GUI Off and On in Windows Server 2012. It gave me the [...]

Good news came out earlier this month when Microsoft released Cumulative update package 2 (CU2) for SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1. It can be downloaded here and if you are new to CU packages, there are not like a regular Service pack or Windows update. These CU fixes are not as tested as regular [...]

Last week, I had someone reach out to me asking for help with a new SCVMM 2012 server. It was a new installation and for the most part it worked well for them during the past month. However, recently they started seeing the error below, which prevent them access to the Virtual Machine Manager: At [...]

This is an article that I have been meaning to write for months. It was very exciting for me when I was trying to solve this issue and I was even more pleased with performing this task when I found a few DBA’s had never attempted this operation. I want to share that knowledge with [...]

As stated on Monday, I have started a series on different database types for various data programs. (Microsoft SQL Server, MY SQL and Access) My goal here is to document the different data types and categories that reflect basic information about them. This is the Microsoft Access Data Types (for old school reasons) Data type [...]

I am going to start a series on different database types for various data programs. (Microsoft SQL Server, MY SQL and Access) My goal here is to document the different data types and categories that reflect basic information about them. For more detailed information, please see this article Data Types (Transact-SQL)  and also Paul S. Randal did [...]

As usual, the views and opinions expressed in this article are mine and do not necessary state or reflect those of Microsoft. This is part two of this series and you can look at part one here to get caught up. Today, we will talk about getting ready for a hiring loop, which is basically a three-step [...]

Have you ever wanted to work at Microsoft Corporation, but was a little taken back by the process? One question that I have received a lot is what is it like to interview with Microsoft or what the environment is like or the sheer amount of contractors, etc. Some people have expressed interest in these opportunities and [...]

Hard to imagine that a web site (this one) that I decided to put together is now 1-year-old. On December 6, 2011, I wrote my first article, which was called a Brief Introduction to Windows Azure and I was exposed to the world. After that first blog post, I continued to write many more articles with [...]

If you’ve been working with the Release Candidate (RC) version of SQL Server 2012 (formerly code-named “Denali“), you are likely aware that the final release is now available as an evaluation download here, or from MSDN with in the Standard, Business Intelligence, and Enterprise editions. If you want to perform a straight upgrade from the [...]

If you are like me, you might be testing new machines in a lab environment or making videos or blogs about new features. Virtualization has helped in numerous ways to facilitate this new learning. It helps to spin up new machines to test or validate these many different configurations. You also might be like me [...]

Hey everyone, sorry for the delay in writing new content, but a lot of stuff has been going on for me. For the meantime, I will just say that the change of everyday life and the challenges (or opportunities depending on your point of view) that it will present you as we do our best to get [...]

Backup and more importantly Restore operations are essential database maintenance tasks. I think Buck Woody said it best; we do not have a backup strategy as much as a restore strategy that defines our worth to an organization. You can watch his comment here Session1: Blitz! SQL Server Takeovers Having a good backup and restore plan in [...]

In an earlier article, I spoke about Ola Hallengren’s highly recommended database maintenance scripts. Today, I want to talk a little bit more about configuring his script in hopes that you don’t just download it and click execute without making some changes. Before I even think about executing Ola’s maintenance script, I configure SQL server to [...]

Recently a friend of mine asked me for help when he was not able to get a database out of restoring mode. When he tried to restore the database to the latest backup, he got this error message below: Msg 3104, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 RESTORE cannot operate on database ‘VirtualManagerDB’ because it [...]

Every so often I see an article talking about TSQL Database backups and they give an example like the one below: BACKUP DATABASE [AdventureWorks]  TO DISK = N’C:\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Backup\AdventureWorks.bak’ WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N’AdventureWorks-Full Database Backup’, NOSKIP, REWIND, UNLOAD, STATS = 10  GO Or I may run into a co-worker or friend who passes along a SQL backup job and I see the [...]

I been meaning to blog about this great feature for some time. It was released earlier this year, like way back in March of 2012. It is a report of your SQL server’s health in a very quick method and it is very simple, plus easy to install. Overview The SQL Server 2012 Performance Dashboard [...]

In an earlier article, I talked about Finding and then Creating the Start Menu for both Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. In those earlier articles, I talked about Microsoft wanting to rid themselves of the Start Menu and clearly pointed out this one from CNET news. Well, today I want to confirm that it appears that [...]

If you are like me, you get annoyed at having to do the same thing over and over… especially, if it is tedious and goes on for hours, I am sorry, but I get bored very easily in that situation. One thing I get to do a lot on a daily basis is log into many different [...]

As stated in an early article of mine, there is a great free book from Microsoft Press that talks in good depth about Windows Server 2012. Today, I wanted to share some of the information that I learned from the book. (Limits and new features) Here is a simple comparison of the different limits between Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 8 [...]

Provisioned IOPS are a new EBS volume type designed to deliver predictable, high performance for I/O intensive workloads, such as database applications, that rely on consistent and fast response times. One of the biggest complaints about Amazon Web Services has been disk performance. In order to get fast performance it has been necessary to use [...]

I got some great news for you and it is straight from a Microsoft’s blog Windows Server 2012 final release timing and that news is that they have provided release dates to Windows Server 2012. Release To Manufacturing (RTM): First week of August 2012 Release to General Public: 4 September 2012 These dates were also confirmed by another Microsoft [...]

With Virtualization gaining more traction in all phases of business, competitors are getting better with their products. Most Virtualization vendors offer some sort of free Virtualization software today, that is capable of handling a small to medium load. With that being said, the free hypervisor space is a very important segment for IT pros getting [...]

In my last post, I talked about finding the Start Menu in Windows Server 2012 (formerly code name Windows Server 8) since it was a very quick visual difference between previous versions of Windows. It takes some time adjusting to the new direction with the Metro UI, but it can be done. I highly recommend that you [...]

As I stated in my last post, I am going to do a series of the new features in Server 2012. Today, I am going to start with the most obvious change… the start menu that has died and is no longer present. Rumor mills have it that Microsoft is determined to leave it out, [...]

As I stated in an earlier post here, Windows 2012 Release candidate one was released on 31 May 2012. This product is focused on being designed with cloud computing in mind and a lot of features were built with that focus. This will not be an easy upgrade where you just slip in a disc and click [...]

This article will show you how to create a new primary partition using Disk Management and Diskpart (preferred) in Windows from an empty unallocated partition or volume. This is in line with Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server article. Partition Alignment in Windows Operating Systems The way partition alignment works depends on the version of [...]

If you are having been using the new ability to manage servers remotely using command line tools, then I am sure you have been using PowerShell. If you are new to command line tools, then this may seem strange to you, but trust me, Microsoft has been doing a great job making it easier to [...]

You know, it is pretty amazing that over 50% of the servers in the world today are running as virtual machines. This means that they run on top of hypervisors like VMware’s vSphere, Microsoft’s Hyper-V, and Citrix’s XenServer. However, the need to protect data on those virtual machines or to recover individual files hasn’t changed [...]

Hey Everyone, I hope you all had a safe and wonderful 4th of July. As you may or may not be aware, Microsoft has released SQL Server 2012 and on 31 May 2012 released Windows Server 2012 (RC1) Release Candidate One (which should mean Release To Manufacturing or RTM should be soon) I highly encourage all [...]

In an earlier, post I talked about doing backups and also making sure they are being done with data that has been verified as healthy. We want to avoid the scenario of garbage in leads to garbage out. As stated in that earlier article: Robert Davis (Blog | Twitter) provided me with some good advice: You should [...]

How many times have we had to perform an inventory of either our equipment or software assets and then get asked to import that information into a database of some sort? Recently a friend at work asked me for some assistance on creating such a database to inventory server hardware. Lucky for me they had most of the data fields input taken [...]

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player … This file contents from this video can be download here. This zip [...]

Well, the answer to this question begins with every experienced DBA’s favorite answer… It depends… A great place to start is with this MSDN article on Database Mirroring and Log Shipping (SQL Server). It is kind of like a questionnaire to determine what would be best and it explains this topic in fairly simple terms. Before I begin, I do [...]

Last week, I was building out a 5 Node Windows 2008R2 cluster for use as a Hyper-V server.One of my nodes was giving me trouble. I was able to successfully install, configure and add it to the cluster, but when I started placing Virtual Machines it would lose access to the Cluster Shared Volumes. (CSV) After that loss to [...]

In my last article, I talked about COPY_Only backups and I very briefly mentioned Recovery Models for SQL Server. I will one do do a more detailed post when I find some time, but I did want to share this little tip with you about the impact the Model database can have on your databases. This [...]

One of the great books, I have read this year and have really enjoyed has been Rod Colledge’s (Blog | Twitter) SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action. I have really enjoyed this book and for being technical it was really well laid out, plus easy to follow. My copy has been thoroughly worn and marked up with notes. [...]

In an earlier article, I wrote about a few new tools for SQL Admins that were released by Microsoft. As I have done in the past I will correct myself to ensure that I am passing along helpful information. This article is another example and I would like to explain my thoughts. When I wrote that [...]

It’s time dissect the two main types of flash chips in order to understand why not all SSDs are created equal. What is after all the physical difference between SLC and MLC? SLC stands for Single Level Cell and just like the name suggests can store one bit per NAND gate hence SLC cell has [...]

Within the past 2 months, there has been a couple of key tools introduced for SQL Server. Recently on 20 April 2012, Microsoft released the Reporting Services Migration Tool and on 18 May 2012, they released Max. Server Memory calculator. The Reporting Services Migration Tool (Beta) was mentioned here. I do want to point out that the source [...]

In my earlier post, I talked about SSD drives and how they can use an algorithm called Static Data rotation to help prevent premature wear on the drive. Today, I am going to briefly cover the write operations of SSD/Flash Memory. One of the limitations of flash memory (Which preceded SSD technology) is that while it can be read [...]

For many years, RAM and Disk was and still is today, the main culprit for bottlenecks in performance. With the lower cost of Memory, the shift has fallen more on disks to be the slow point in systems. Large Enterprise companies would have numerous external storage devices to get around this issue. (SAN, DAS, NAS, [...]

In yesterday’s post, I talk about using PowerShell to configure many NIC’s with NETSH. Today, I am going to cover doing it with PowerShell and make it simple where it will prompt for the information in a GUI. So first off, you will need to ensure that you have Executaion Policy changed to allow for [...]

I had a task recently that required me to spin up a new environment for testing. I had about 20 new virtual machines that I needed to deploy and they all had static entries. As you may or may not know, the SCVMM console does not allow you to copy and paste like you can [...]

This is a well-known and often mentioned best practice that I have recently found out that is not implemented much. I was even surprised to see that most installer packages to even include Microsoft’s SQL Server install do not set this feature up. Instant Initialization has been around since Windows XP and SQL Server has taken advantage of [...]

Recently, I followed the steps in this TechNet article (Install Reporting Services SharePoint Mode as a Single Server Farm) to create a Reporting Services 2012 Service Application. However, when I try to create the SSRS service application, I get the following error: “The timer job completed, but failed on one or more machines in the farm.” [...]

I was upgrading a server recently from SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition to the latest version with 2012. I got a surprise after the upgrade… I lost 12 CPU. I had a 32 Processor system ( HP DL580 4×8 server) as seen below: After the upgrade, I wanted to verify the CPU configuration and noticed [...]

Have you been in a position where you had to retire an external storage device like a SAN or DAS but you had your Quorum drive resource on it? Well, this post will walk you through the steps needed to swap out your drive. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much easier it is to [...]

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player … Tools needed: BackupBuddy: http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/backupbuddy// Microsoft Web Platform Installer 3.0: http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx HeidiSQL: http://www.heidisql.com/download.php

I wanted to say that I am sorry it took so long to get back up after being down for so long the past few days. It turns out that my old host was inadvertently shut off (actually deleted) around 10 AM PST on Thursday and I was given no notice until I saw my web site was [...]

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to quickly shutdown a lot of servers in a hurry? Well, I got some good news for you, as long as you have an inventory list of all you servers then you can do it pretty quickly! This is a neat little trick, that allows [...]

This is one of the many new features that I really enjoy with Microsoft SQL Server. Backup compression was introduced with SQL Server 2008 and in my opinion, it is a must tool for most SQL Database administrators. It is especially true when you experience disk space problems. In addition to saving space, it also [...]

In my last post, I talked about an issue where we had a rogue SharePoint 2010 server that had an issue with the file size of the Database. As noted in that post, I stated that I would do another article as follow-up to reflect the other 2 challenges that I ran into as well. 1. Microsoft SQL [...]

Today, I am going to go over 3 things that I encountered this week with SQL Server Express for a friend. At his job, they found a rogue SharePoint server that a developer had placed into production. Sadly, the only way my friend found about it was when the developer had run into an issue. [...]

In my last post, I talked about recovering from a failed Storage Migration (QSM) in SCVMM. After you attach the old VHD file, you may find that you are not able to add the NIC settings back, like the IP address because there is a hidden NIC that is in the system but does not [...]

Happy Easter everyone! Earlier this week, I was moving VM’s from one shared storage device to another. I had an old HP StorageWorks SAN device that was failing on me and was out of warranty, so I needed to migrate my VM storage to a new EMC device. I ran into some issues and it kind of [...]

Have you tried to copy a profile in Windows 7? Well if you have then you have seen this issue before where the copy command is grayed out as seen below: I originally had a desktop not connected to my internal domain and as you can tell from my posts, I do a lot of tests on [...]

Today, I was researching information on DBCC and database backups. I was trying to ensure that I have good data in my backup, as you know… garbage in leads to garbage out. Basically, your data is only good as the data you pull from Talking with Robert Davis (Blog | Twitter) he provided me with [...]

Ever wondered what has changed under the hood between versions of Microsoft SQL Server? Well, then this post is for you! What’s new in SQL 2008 Programmability Enhancements (Database Engine) What got deprecated in SQL 2008 Deprecated Database Engine Features in SQL Server 2008 What was discontinued in SQL 2008 Discontinued Database Engine Functionality in [...]

This is to correct some information that I had put out there in this article. From reading books online, it appears that my information was intended only for SQL Server 2005 databases. Talking with Robert Davis (Blog | Twitter) at work, I was advised that my earlier article was in correct and sure enough when I [...]

In one of my earlier post I talked about fixing Clock drift for a virtual machine that is not joined to a domain. It is located here. The issue that I was running into was that my clock for some reason would get set back about a day and that would mess up my time [...]

If you have never been to a SQL Saturday event, I highly suggest that you do! You can find an upcoming event here and following this event on twitter #sqlsat114  As stated earlier in one of my posts this SQL community is really one of the bright spots in the IT field. I was so happy [...]

As you will remember, I had an issue trying to *remove* SQL Server 2008r2 as noted here. What I failed to tell you was what my REAL issue was… I could not successfully install SQL Server 2008r2 and I kept getting this error: So I used my tip again to remove the new installation that [...]

I had an issue tonight where I was unable to remove Microsoft SQL Server 2008r2. The setup was just hanging at this step SqlEngineConfigAction_remove_validation_Cpu64. I first tried to remove it by Add/Remove Programs and then tried it by the command line: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\SQLServer2008R2>setup.exe /ACTION=uninstall /FEATURES=SQL,AS,BOL,SSMS/INSTANCENAME=MSSQLSERVER Neither action would work and it was [...]

This is really an outdated bit of information, please see the better method to resolve clock drift in this post by me. I have been slammed lately with moving from one place to another and taking on a new job, so I was not actively monitoring my web server that hosts this site. I checked [...]

Sorry all, that I missed this earlier and I meant to post this on Thursday, but I got tied up with work. This news listed below from Amazon’s web site is really good news. Last month, I was hosting this site on EC2 and since I wanted to run Windows 2008 R2 (which is 64 [...]

Today marks my last day as an Amazonian with Amazon Web Services. I have enjoyed my time here and will miss the friendships that have formed since I joined them. I will still continue to blog about AWS and encourage others to use their features and services. As I have one foot out the door, [...]

If you have never been to a SQL Saturday event, I highly suggest that you do! You can find an upcoming event here: http://sqlsaturday.com/ and https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23sqlsat108 As stated earlier in one of my posts (http://www.smattie.com/my-small-attempt-to-give-back-to-the-it-community/) this community is really one of the bright spots in the IT field. I was so happy to meet and talk with a [...]

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player …

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player …

How can I forcibly transfer (seize) some or all of the FSMO Roles from one DC to another? Keep in mind bad things can happen at times Windows 2000/2003 Active Directory domains utilize a Single Operation Master method called FSMO (Flexible Single Master Operation), as described in Understanding FSMO Roles in Windows Active Directory. The [...]

How can I transfer some or all of the FSMO Roles from one DC to another using the command line? Great question! NOTE: For doing this task in the GUI, please see this blog: Transferring FSMO Roles in Windows Server 2008 (Has some great screen-shots) Windows 2008 Active Directory domains utilize a Single Operation Master method called FSMO [...]

FSMO stands for Flexible Single Master Operations, and these roles (also known as operations master roles) help you prevent conflicts in your Active Directory. In an Active Directory environment, some of your domain controllers (DCs) must be assigned certain special roles for your network to function properly. These special roles are called flexible single master [...]

This information is NOT recommended and I strongly suggest you follow this article instead. HOW TO: Move SQL Server transaction log files to a different location via TSQL and SSMS Problem Moving the log file of a production SQL Server database to separate physical drive is a Microsoft SQL Server best practice to optimize the [...]

Perhaps, the best thing about SQL Server and Microsoft products as a whole is that most of the tasks can be executed in more than one way. At times, it is might be useful to know about the various methods of performing a single task. Today, we will observe four different methods to find out [...]

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player … Goals: To successfully detach and attach root drive to EC2 Windows 2008 [...]

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player … Goals: To successfully detach and attach root drive to EC2 Windows 2003 [...]

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player …

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player … Amazon KMS Server Information as of 26 JAN 2012 VPC (all regions, [...]

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player …

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player … Tools needed: tracetcp: http://tracetcp.sourceforge.net/ wincap: http://www.winpcap.org/install/default.htm tcping: http://www.elifulkerson.com/projects/tcping.php Commands: ipconfig /all >C:\tools\tshoot.txt [...]

The information provided in this video is meant as a tutorial. It is not the final word on security or setup for your particular case. In Simpler terms: USE at your own risk. That said, I hope it helps. Loading the player …

Happy New Year to everyone and I hope you had a great holiday! I have update this information in the form of a video, which can be found here. Today, I am going to talk about an issue where you might be connecting to a server remotely and all of a sudden you are no [...]

Ever get tired of Windows wanting to activate all the time and not know what to do?? Well, then I hope this information will help you resolve that issue. Most of the time, this issue is caused by a couple of things. You may have placed a firewall or altered a network routing table that [...]

Have you ever had a server that had a name change, but you also had a SQL server database on it and now all of your SQL jobs fail? Let’s say that your server used to be named IP-0A7653F2 and had SQL Server installed with some SQL jobs configured on it, but now it is called [...]

Symptom: When you attach a system (boot) volume in Windows 7/2008 R2 to any other Windows 2008 R2 as another drive you will run into an issue where attach it back without modifying any files on the volume; it becomes non-bootable. It looks alright and it can be attached back to its original server, but [...]

This is my tribute to Tom Phillips, director of EC2 Windows, whose life in many eyes was taken before his time. He was born in Michigan on February 21, 1959 and passed away on December 3, 2011 at the age of 52. He was a very generous man and I am blessed to have known him. I [...]

Install WordPress – it takes 5 mins Prerequisites The supported operating systems for the Web PI 3.0 are Windows 7, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista, Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and later versions, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and later versions. [...]

Let’s say you want to get a list of all the tables in your database, along with their row counts and data space used. This would be really nice to know if you could not get it from SQL Server Management Studio. (SSMS) Well, today you are in luck, because I am going to show [...]

First off, this is an excellent post on the new changes with sysprep with Windows 7/Windows 2008r2: http://briandesmond.com/blog/how-to-sysprep-in-windows-server-2008-r2-and-windows-7/ I could not write it better myself, so if you need help with sysprep and all the new changes, please review Brain Desmond’s blog on it. Instead, I want to highlight a key point, when you are [...]

First blog Hey everyone, last week I was talking with a good friend of mine Antoine Victor from ProDataMan. I told him that I was looking at Microsoft’s efforts with cloud computing, which is called Windows Azure, so he asked me to write-up a short blog on this technology. I hate to start off a [...]