My PASS Summit 2011 Recap – 1

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As mentioned last week that I would love to write my experience from this years PASS Summit, which is also my first visit to PASS Summit and to Seattle. I flew to Seattle along with my wife, on Sunday Oct 9th. Earlier in the month, I planned few things to do during my trip to Seattle. We made reservations (yes you cannot just walk-in) for a table at the revolving Restaurant on top of Space Needle, our intention was 2 fold, to dine and watch sunset. The view was fantastic, and the food was good. On one side was Puget Sound and on other side it was Seattle downtown provided a fantastic view all over..

These are 2 of the pics we have taken from top of Space Needle…

Puget Sound

Seattle Downtown

Then starting from Monday Oct 10th, I had 2 pre-conferences (Monday and Tuesday) and both of them were great sessions. Mondays session was with Maciej Pilecki on the topic “The secrets of the SQL Server OS”.

The next days session was with Adam Machanic on the topic “No More Guessing! An
Enlightened Approach to Performance Troubleshooting”. That was also a fun filled session with lots of stuff to digest..

During the refreshment breaks, I had the pleasure to meet Steve Jones, from SQLServerCentral.com. I had the pleasure of meeting many fellow DBAs all over globe during Breakfast/ Lunch and at the end of the day..

After the session when I went to buy my copy of SQL Server Deep Dives – 2 and met Pinal Dave, who is well known for his blog at http://blog.sqlauthority.com/

We spoke for 15-20 minutes and I really enjoyed talking to him. We also happened to meet couple of times later in that week at the convention center, but who would want to wait until the next time to grab a pic, so we found someone who could click a snap for us..

I did not stay for the First Timers Session that was scheduled later that evening, but I followed tweets from those who were attending..

That’s it in this blog. I will finish the rest in the next one..

–Bru Medishetty

How to find the last time SQL Server was started? Part ll

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This is a continuation of a previous blog and in case you have not read that blog, you can read that blog first here.. How to find the last time SQL Server was started? Part l

Windows event Logs

The next method to find the SQL Server start time is finding it through the Windows Event log viewer. Explaining the details of how to open a event log viewer (with pictures) is beyond the scope of this blog. So let me give tell you in short steps. Right-click your computer and choose manage. Under System Tools, expand Event Viewer, choose Windows Logs. Once you are in Windows Logs, choose Application. The main secion of the console displays the events from various applications installed on your server. A SQL Server startup information is displayed as a shown below. The main problem of finding the SQL Server startup information this way is difficult, since you have to go through th list of events.. Since I am aware of the startup time, I could go straight to that date and time in the application log.

sys.dm_os_sys_info Dynamic Management View

This is another way and the most easiest way to find the SQL Server start time and date. The information is readily available by querying the dynamic management view sys.dm_os_sys_info. The column name is sqlserver_start_time. This dmv has been there in SQL Server 2005, but the column sqlserver_start_time is added starting from SQL Server 2008.

Summarizing the 2 parts of the blogs, looking at the Tempdb create time is an option you can choose no matter what SQL Server version you are using. In case of SQL Server 2008 or above, querying the dmv mentioned above is the easiest way to go…

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–Bru Medishetty

PASS Summit 2011, unfinished..

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It’s been 2 weeks, PASS Summit 2011 came to an end and I have not yet posted my experience of the PASS Summit in my blog. I kind of kept it pending, (my bad) which I should not be doing. I got an email yesterday from PASS headquarters, asking to take part in a brief survey about my PASS experience. After completing that survey, I made my mind to write a blog about my visit to PASS Summit. I have made note of points that I would write in that blog and I am going to write that blog over this weekend.

So what am I doing in this blog? I am making myself a commitment, an open commitment so that I would not be able to give excuses for not writing. If I don’t write this blog, may be I would never write that actual blog..

–Bru Medishetty