marc_s's questions

A buddy asked me this question - and I quite honestly don't know enough about Active Directory and how to operate/configure AD to answer this.

A customer of my buddy has an AD domain DomainA and that's what's they use to sign on to Active Directory now - users sign in with their user name in the form of DomainA\John Doe.

For whatever reasons (don't ask me for those reasons!), they know what to logon with a different domain name (which is not a subdomain of the first domain) - let's say OtherDomain. So the idea is: the Active Directory still runs on DomainA, but the users log in using OtherDomain\John Doe.

Any chance this is even possible? If so: how do you set this up / configure such a scenario?

Thanks for any hints!

This one's for you, Paul! :-)

I have a customer which has two databases for two of his office locations. Both are roughly the same size (around 10 GB), both are hosted at the same professional hoster's site - so give or take, they're the same.

Yet, database A completes its Check database integrity step in the maintenance plan in less than 30 minutes, while database B never even completes - the DBA killed the process after more than 3 hours of running.

These steps are being run "after hours" - so there shouldn't be any significant activity on the servers.

Any explanation? Any idea what to check for or where to look for a reason for this (and a way to solve it)? There are no error reported or anything.....

I have a number of "old" servers or server names with a typo in them that keep showing up in my dropdown list of server in the "Connect to Database" dialog of SQL Server Management Studio:

Where are those names stored?? Is there any way to clean up that list and remove some entries??

I'm tasked to import a database from PROGRESS to SQL Server. I'm about to establish a "Linked Server" using PROGRESS' ODBC driver.

I need to go grab all tables and all their contents - some quite large. Overall, the current PROGRESS database stands at about 135 GB of disk space needed.

Any idea / guesstimate how much the SQL Server database will be??

Also: what's the optimal recovery model for this bulk operation - bulk_logged or simple?? Any guess how much log file space I will be needing? I don't have any row counts for the PROGRESS database tables just yet, unfortunately - but the data is mostly text and numbers - no blobs or anything of that nature

I am using Robocopy for backing up my project directories to an external disk, and it works like a charm.

Except for one little issue: sometimes, I wish I could override the destination directory which I specify in my Robocopy Job file (myproject.rcj) to send the files somewhere else.

So if I have this in my myprojects.rcj:

:: Robocopy Job MYPROJECT.RCJ

:: Source Directory :
 /SD:d:\MyProject :: Source Directory.

:: Destination Directory :
 /DD:f:\MyDefaultDestination :: Destination Directory.

is there any way I can instruct Robocopy to use a different destination when executing it using a job?

So I execute Robocopy like this:

robocopy /job:myproject.rcj

and I wish I could override the default destination directory by using:

robocopy /job:myproject.rcj /DD:X:\OtherDestination

but that doesn't seem to work.....

ERROR : Invalid Parameter #2 : "/DD:X:\OtherDestination"

Any ideas??

I'm facing an odd issue with the IIS Manager on Windows 7 (x64).

At home, I have Win7 Professional, and when I check my IIS manager icon in the start menu, I see it links to

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\InetMgr.exe

When I launch this from the command line, it works like a charm.

At work, however, I have Windows 7 Enterprise (x64), and when I check my link in the start menu, the entry is exactly the same. If I click on it - it works like a charm.

Now if I'd like to launch it from the command line (cmd.exe or TakeCommand), however - the file just isn't there - a

DIR %windir%\system32\inetsrv\*.exe

shows a number of files, including a "inetmgr6.exe" - but no "inetmgr.exe" - and of course, I can't launch it either :-(

Strangely enough, when I look at the directory %windir%\system32\INetSrv in Windows Explorer or Windows Powershell, I SEE the INetMgr.exe file and I can launch it - no problem.

What the **** is going on here? How can I find the INetMgr.exe from my classic command line and launch it from there??

UPDATE: ok, some updates. On my work laptop, the INetMgr.exe file appears to really be located in a directory called c:\windows\syswow64\inetsrv (I'm recalling from memory, so don't quote me on the directory name - something like that). I can see this if I search for it in e.g. Powershell or Windows 7 Explorer.

However, from a "classic" command line like cmd.exe, it appears to be in c:\windows\system32\inetsrv ..... hmmm.... trouble is - even though I now know where the file really is, I cannot access that directory from my classic command line - not even if I'm running cmd.exe as admin with elevated privileges....... so I know where the file is, but that still doesn't solve my problem :-(

I would like to find a T-SQL script-based way to copy my "PROD" database (which is read-only and consists of several filegroups) to a read/writable "EDIT" database, which I can use and edit data in.

I know about the Copy Database Wizard, and am using it right now - however, I'd prefer to automate this so that a single script could restore the PROD database from a backup and copy it to the EDIT database as well.

It seems there's no "COPY DATABASE" command in T-SQL, nor can I find any other way to achieve this - short of restoring the backup twice. Really? Is there no better way to do this??

What I'd like to do is this:

1. start the restore from disk, into "MyPROD_Database"
2. after I'm done, I'd like to copy that DB I just restored to "MyEDIT_Database"
3. as a last step, I'd like to set the filegroups of my PROD database to read-only

Preferably all in one T-SQL script which I can run from SSMS and/or sqlcmd.

System is SQL Server 2005 (from where the backup come) and SQL Server 2008 (where I restore to).

The gauntlet is out there - who'll pick it up? :-)

Marc

I'm a developer at heart - but every now and then, a customer doesn't have a decent DBA to deal with these issues, so I'm called in to decide....

What are your strategies / best practices when it comes to dealing with a reasonably sized SQL Server database (anything larger than Northwind or AdventureWorks; roughly 2-4GB of data plus indexes etc.) - do you use multiple files / filegroups?

If so: how many? And why?

What are your criteria to decide when to move away from the "one filegroup for everything" approach:

* database size?
* database complexity?
* availability / reliability requirements?
* what else?

If you use multiple file groups, how many do you use? One for data, one for index, one for log? Several (how many) for data? What are your reasons for your choice - why do you use that exact number of filegroups :-)

Thanks for any hints, pointers, thoughts!

Cheers, Marc

Just out of curiosity - what version of the .NET framework does your company have installed on its production Windows web and SQL Servers ?

How big a struggle will it be to get a new .NET version on those servers, e.g. .NET 4.0 when it comes out end of 2009 ??

As a software developer, I find myself often struggling with IT departments trying to convince them to install .NET, but a lot of departments and sysadmins seem to be awfully hesitant....

Marc

Does anyone have any experience whether those really handy HSDPA/EDGE/GSM modems available in Europe from makers such as Huawei or iCon are compatible with Vista 64-bit? These products are sold in conjunction with the "mobile internet" or "internet everywhere" packages here, to be used with a notebook or netbook.

None of the Swiss telecom providers seems to be able to provide a conclusive answer whether their stuff works with Vista 64, and all insist on a 24-month contract - no trial period, nothing :-(

Any one using a Huawei e160 or iCON 451 from Orange or Vodafone or some other company on a Vista64 system? (e.g. see Orange's offering in Switzerland)

Marc

UPDATE:
The Huawei e172 works fine on Vista 64-bit and Windows 7 RC (64-bit) - thanks for all the responses!

A friend of mine asked me today (trying to calm down an agitated customer of his) how you could find out in SQL Server 2005 which database uses how much memory (in the server's RAM that is) at any given time.

Is that possible at all? If so - how? Can you do this with built-in SQL Server tools, or do you need extra third-party options?

His customer was all flustered because his dedicated SQL Server machine suddenly uses all but 200KB of its 4 GB of RAM. I don't think this is a problem, really - but since this guy claims it happened more or less over night, he wants to know what caused this increase in memory usage.....

Marc