Max Memory and MAXDOP configuration during install and more in Database Weekly (July 13, 2019)

 Database Weekly for July 13, 2019 Problems displaying this newsletter? [View online](. [Database Weekly]( The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News Hand-picked content to sharpen your professional edge Editorial  Do You Have the Gifts to Be a DBA? I recently had the pleasure of catching Paul McCartney in concert, and he was amazing. I have been a fan forever and have heard him tell the same stories he over and over with great delight. A familiar tale he tells is about when he wrote the song Yesterday. He woke up with the tune in his head, and put words to it: Scrambled Eggs, oh my baby how… Ok, so the words changed a little. But you can’t dispute he has an amazing gift for music, and he wasn’t trained as a musician and [doesn’t even read music](. I know DBAs and programmers that have such gifts with computers. They have the innate ability to write the code to solve problems in their sleep, in any language, and seemingly were born knowing how to solve technical problems. Some of these people are ten years old and can just bang out code that I am not even able to understand (and I have had something of a solid career in programming myself.) If you were born with such gifts, be thankful, and use them to help the rest of us. On the other side of the coin, is the aforementioned “rest of us,” ranging from slightly gifted to well, slightly south of clueless. I fit squarely in the last group when I first went to college. I was skill-less, other than being a super-fast burger flipper, but I desired a civil engineering degree. I wanted to build bridges like the [Linn Cove Viaduct]( at Grandfather Mountain in NC. Then I failed out of engineering classes. Then on to math, where I accumulated the minimum GPA to get a degree, which I realized probably wasn’t going to get me employed in the math factory. Finally, I found computer science which I was slightly better at than I was at math, but only maybe in the middle of my class, if that. My life changed when, back in the early 1990s, I became one of the first accidental DBAs. At the time, I was a LAN admin on Novell, and I was again clueless. I knew just a bit more than how to reboot the server to fix problems, but only just a bit more. This still pretty much describes my current networking skills with Wi-Fi. Then I received the gift that would change my life. Our IT group went to a conference named COMDEX and learned about this new product: SQL Server. The other member of the team started working on a mainframe replacement. A person I worked with quit, leaving a database programmer shaped hole in our company, and I did double duty for a while. I never looked back. When I first got started, I was terrible. We didn’t have user groups or small conferences, but I had a manager who forced me to do a good job at building parts of our database, teaching me normalization in a way that made sense well enough but wasn’t quite enough for me. It made me dig deeper and deeper into the materials that were available at the time. Probably the most significant gift I received when my next manager said the only way you will ever get to go to conferences at the nonprofit I worked at, was speaking at the conference. I was the only person on the team that took him up on it. I spoke at a Computer Associates conference on Erwin that year. After I left there (temporarily), I ended up at the second PASS conference, where I met a publisher and asked if anyone wrote a good book on database design. He said, “Why don’t you?” The gifts keep coming and only increase in the great conferences that I attend every year, the blogs I read, and even the great tweets from the community. You would be amazed at how so many people have contributed to getting me where I am today, some purposefully to help me, some just putting stuff out there, some pointing out when I have been wrong (often very wrong) over the years. Sometimes gifts hurt. If you aren’t a natural, the fact that you found this blog means you have some idea where to start. A lot of gifts aren’t addressed to you specifically. Most are just thrown out into the ether to share with everyone. Count the gifts you have received from the community, coworkers, family, parents, whoever got you where you are today. And these gifts are not for hoarding. Regift as often as you can. Share with a user group. Write a blog. Contribute to Twitter’s #sqlhelp, volunteer for a local non-computer organization, or whatever you can do. I can barely count the number of people that I have seen join the community and thrive (often leaving me in the dust!) It will be worth it for you, for the community and possibly me.  Louis Davidson (@drsql) [Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums](  [Redgate SQL Prompt]( The Weekly News All the headlines and interesting SQL Server information that we've collected over the past week, and sometimes even a few repeats if we think they fit. Vendors/3rd Party Products [What are the biggest challenges in monitoring SQL Server, and what should you expect from a third-party tool?]( Redgate has just published the 2019 State of SQL s... [Do you really know what’s happening with your servers?]( As estates continue to grow and evolve, SQL Server professionals must continually adapt. But do you really know what’s happening with your servers? Jamie Wallis highlights the 4 key elements that are currently impacting the working life of an IT leader. Find out what they are here. AI/Machine Learning/Cognitive Services [What’s More Predictive Than Predictive Analytics?]( Click to learn more about author Karthik Ramasamy... Administration [SQL Server Diagnostic Information Queries for July 2019]( This month, I have just done minor updates to most... [Better SQL Server memory defaults in 2019]( In 2016 I created the Max Server Memory Matrix as... [Memory Defaults in SQL Server 2019]( Randolph West looks at a new settings tab in the S... [Notifications when Admins Connect to a SQL Server]( Jon Shaulis builds a logon trigger to notify when ... [Tracking Remaining Drive Space in SQL Server]( David Fowler has a new stored procedure for you: W... [MAXDOP Configuration on Installation]( Randolph West notes a change with SQL Server 2019:... [SQL SERVER – Huge Space Used by Table sysxmitqueue in MSDB. How to Clear it Quickly?]( Recently I was helping a customer who hired me for... [OUT OF SUPPORT: SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2]( Welcome to this post, on SQL Server 2008 and 2008 ... [The Ironic DBA Files—Episode 5: The Maintenance Plan Strikes Back]( Welcome back to The Ironic DBA Files, a series whe... [Redgate SQL Compare]( Azure CosmosDB [Overview of Azure Cosmos DB]( Cosmos DB is Microsoft’s highly scalable, NoSQL database platform running in Azure. It supports four API models, including Key-Value pair and Documents. Pushpa Sekhara provides an overview of Cosmos DB, including some best practices to improve performance. Azure SQL Database [Azure SQL Elastic Jobs]( The purpose of an Elastic Job is to execute a T-SQ... Backup and Recovery [The story of the failed backup]( This story started a few years ago, in a very non ... Big Data [Guaranteeing Data Integrity in the Age of Big Data]( Click to learn more about author Neil Barton. Volu... Career Growth and Certifications [Improving Tech with Compassionate Code]( There is quite a bit of suffering within tech and caused by tech, from poorly commented code to shaming someone who asks a question on a forum. In this article, Samuel Nitsche explains why compassionate coding is a better way to go. Computing in the Cloud (Azure, Google, AWS) [Linux Usage Surpasses Windows Server in Azure Cloud]( If you are a Windows shop, Windows Server is still... [Microsoft’s Azure LightHouse Aims to Delivery Simplicity]( Microsoft is introducing a new Azure feature that ... [Cloud Adoption Underway? Get Your Data Quality in Check First]( Click to learn more about author Harald Smith. The... [What You Need to Know About the Edge]( We hear 'edge' a lot, from browsers to data center... Data Privacy, Compliance, and GDPR [Data privacy next steps: Compliant Database DevOps]( Over the last year we’ve seen a shift in customer concerns around personal data, as well as new legislation. Now is the time to implement a robust process to safeguard your data and your business, without hindering your DevOps journey. Read this blog post to find out the next steps for data privacy. Data Science [Credulous Data Science: Part Two – Surveys]( About ten years ago, a software vendor with whom m... DevOps and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) [Introduction to DevOps: The Evolving World of Application Delivery]( Today, more organisations are adopting DevOps over older, traditional practices. In this article, Robert Sheldon explains DevOps and compares it to Waterfall and Agile methodologies. DocumentDB/Key-Value/Graph/other NoSQL Databases [Why Experts See Graph Databases Headed for Mainstream Use]( PRODUCT TREND ANALYSIS: Thanks to improvements, su... ETL/SSIS/Azure Data Factory/Biml [“It’s 10 July 2019 and We Still Have SSIS 2008 in Production…”]( I am writing this post 10 Jul 2019. Yesterday, sup... [Azure Data Factory, Azure-SSIS, and Pipeline Parameters Recording]( Enjoy the recording of the free Azure Data Factory... [Import Biml Metadata from Excel Advanced]( This is the final post of a series, Short Cuts to ... Excel [Powershell one liner to export data directly from SQL Server to Excel]( Most of the times I use the CSV files whenever I n... HA/DR/Always On/Clustering [Error: ‘misaligned log IOs which required falling back to synchronous IO’ And Slow AG Synchronisation]( I recently hit this rather interesting issue when ... Microsoft News [Oracle and Microsoft’s Cross-Cloud Partnership]( A couple weeks back, Oracle and Microsoft announce... [Microsoft Backpedals, Returns Partners IUR Benefits]( Microsoft is rolling back changes to its partner p... Performance Tuning SQL Server [Clustered Index Seek]( Introduction The Clustered Index Seek operator use... [Deep Dive on Index Seeks]( Hugo Kornelis gives us a great deal of information... [The Difference Between Statistics Time And Plan Operator Times]( Goal Posts When you’re measuring query changes t... [Using Implicit Transactions? You *Really* Need RCSI.]( Implicit transactions are a hell of a bad idea in ... [SQL SERVER – What is Wait Type Parallel Backup Queue?]( Only official documentation which I could find was... PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI [Why Power BI Slicers Sometimes Show Values That Do Not Exist]( The problem of blank values being shown in a Power... [Adding Line Breaks on DAX Measures]( Gilbert Quevauvilliers shows how you can add line ... [Drillthrough from Power BI to SSRS]( Paul Turley shows how you can drill through from a... [Debugging DAX Variables]( Imke Feldmann has a lengthy Power Query script to ... [Creating a Slicer Plus Histogram in Power BI]( Matt Allington shows how you can create a combinat... [Deep dive into DAX evaluation context]( Ever struggled with a formula in DAX that does not... [IsNumeric in Power Query]( Matthew Roche (with an assist from Imke Feldmann) ... [Power BI Interview Questions – Volume 03 – DAX]( Welcome to our continuing series that Erin Ostrows... PowerShell [Powershell script to find SQL Server instances on remote servers]( This is actually part 2 of a process I am creating... [Powershell script to get list of databases on a server]( At one of my clients I received an email from one ... [Create New Azure VM with PowerShell]( Every so often I set out to create new resources i... [Using Show-Command in Powershell]( Kenneth Fisher walks through the Show-Command cmdl... Professional Development [Why I Take Pictures at Conferences]( Why do I take pictures of screens at conferences? ... R Language [Microsoft’s R Roadmap]( David Smith has a review of Microsoft’s R roadma... [Integration in R]( Integration is the process of evaluating integrals. It is one of the two central ideas of calculus and is the inverse of the other central idea of calculus, differentiation... [tidylo: Calculating Log Odds in R]( Julia Silge announces a new package, tidylo: The p... [SQL Server 2019: Features for the Rest of Us]( I was talking recently with a friend about feature... SQL Server Security and Auditing [Understanding SQL Server Always Encrypted]( Security is one of the most important requirements... [sp_execute_external_script and SQL Injection]( In order to take advantage of R and Python (and Ja... [Security Update for SQL Server]( K. Brian Kelley notes a slew of patches for July: ... SQL Server on Linux [dbatools: sql on linux]( dbatools and linux As a long-time Linux user and o... [Event Files on Linux]( For the most part, things work the way you might e... T-SQL [Nested window functions in SQL]( Itzik Ben-Gan describes nested window functions an... Testing Software [The Phantom Menace in Unit Testing]( Testing is a challenging yet crucial part of software development, but how do you know that a test is telling you what you need to know? In this article, Michael Sorens explores the concept of phantom tests that return correct results but don’t actually prove anything. Virtualization and Containers/Kubernetes [Learning More about Kubernetes (K8s)]( I know a bit about this, but I’m always looking ... [Converting SQL Server docker compose files for Kubernetes with Kompose]( Docker compose is a great tool for easily deployin... [Containers make easy upgrades]( I’ve been working with containers and writing a ...  [RSS Feed]( This email has been sent to {EMAIL}. To be removed from this list, please click [here](. If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the webmaster@sqlservercentral.com. This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com. 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