Free SQL Server Health Check with dbatools
April 2, 2026
After a longer break than expected, I am back to the dbatools for SQL Server DBAs blog series, and this one is a monster! In fact, this project is so big that I think it will be better to release it incrementally. This will allow you clone the repository, test and modify it in your … Read more
Updates for all sp_Check tools – March 2026
March 31, 2026
As promised last month, we are planning for (at least) monthly updates of our FREE sp_Check stored procedures, so here are the March updates. This month we did change the “ReadMore” URL links in the results of all tools to not use redirects. This might have been causing issues for folks who just wanted some … Read more
SQL Server Case of the Week: Databases in a “Recovery Pending” state don’t always require surgery
March 27, 2026
You get an alert that there are one or more databases in a “Recovery Pending” state. This means the database started but could not complete the recovery pending process for some unknown reason. It is stuck in this state and unusable until recovery can be completed. The Investigation After receiving the alert, I verified that … Read more
Data Literacy is a Strategic Opportunity
March 26, 2026
Every year, organizations spend money on data platforms, business intelligence tooling, and analytics subscriptions. The decision to start these projects get executive sponsorship. The implementation gets a project manager. The launch gets a company-wide email with a lot of enthusiasm and a screenshot of the new dashboard. Then, six months later, the same leadership team … Read more
Before You Hire a Head of AI
March 20, 2026
I’ve told this story before, but it keeps applying to new things, so here we go again. A few years ago, we built a duplex. In-laws moving into the downstairs units, my office going upstairs. About a month out from moving in, I called the cable company to get service set up. Figured a couple … Read more
SQL Server Case of the Week: SSRS Data-Driven Subscriptions Missing After Migration to SQL Server 2022
March 20, 2026
You migrate SSRS from SQL Server 2016 to SQL Server 2022. The reports are there. The data sources look right. The encryption key is loaded. Everything checks out until you open the web portal, and your data-driven subscriptions are gone. You can see them in the ReportServer.dbo.Subscriptions table, but the portal won’t show them. And … Read more
SSRS Data-Driven Subscriptions Missing After Migration to SQL Server 2022 -Troubleshooting Guide
March 18, 2026
If you’ve migrated SSRS to a new server and your data-driven subscriptions have disappeared, or new subscriptions are failing with a generic timeout error, this post walks through three separate issues we hit on a single migration and how we resolved each one. Data-Driven Subscriptions Disappeared After SSRS Migration to SQL 2022 Standard After migrating … Read more
SQL Server Best Practices: A Practitioner’s Guide
March 17, 2026
Changelog: March 2026 – Initial publication This is a living document. Next up: SQL Server Best Practices are not Universal Aside from maybe autoshrink, not all SQL Server “best practices” are always applicable to all. But some are. And we find them misconfigured on almost every new server we touch. After 15 years of managing … Read more
VMware SQL Server Best Practices
March 16, 2026
Broadcom just published updated technical guidance for SQL Servers running on VMware, and it’s bundled with the VCF documentation, which includes vSphere. (You can get that 90-page PDF here.) VCF is the Broadcom bundled platform that includes vSphere, vSAN, and NSX. Below are some of the best practices we work with our clients’ sysadmins to … Read more
AG Failure After Patching Secondary Node
March 13, 2026
Quick Summary After patching the secondary node of a two-node SQL Server Availability Group, the secondary databases stopped showing as part of the AG entirely, without errors, even though normally an issue would be indicated by the databases reporting an unhealthy state. Was there a patching error? A configuration problem? Something worse? We pulled up … Read more
