aSkywalker's questions

Is it reasonable to expect decent performance from a SQL server connected via fiber private WAN - 5000 km's away. The carrier is telling us that this network is the 'best' possible, and will introduce less than 50ms latency guaranteed.

Our database is currently connected via gigabit ethernet to our other machines within the same datacenter. Getting a 5000km 'LAN Extension' between the two DC's is appealing to us. But when we connect via the Internet and VPN, we find the performance very slow doing large volumes of small transactions. We don't have any WAN experience, so not sure what most companies do in these cases. Can we simulate 5000kms of 'latency'?

I have a Windows Server Web 2008 SP2. I am trying to connect to a webdav server (https) and copy some files from this server.

Mapping the network drive, or copying a file via Powershell, works fine from Windows 7 computers, but from the server it fails. Is there something that I need to install/enable to get Windows Server Web 2008 to allow me to connect to a webdav folder?

I have a SQL Server database that backs up the transaction logs every 10 minutes, with an overnight full backup.

Using SQL 2008 Management studio we seem to have to select each transaction log one by one. Is there any way to point it at a directory?

I am considering running a differential backup several times a day, which may offset some of this, but going one by one through dozens/hundreds of files seems to be pretty time consuming. Writing code to try to script it seems far too off topic from our core competencies.

If SQL Server Management Studio does not have a faster way, perhaps there is a third party tool available?

I have a Windows Server 2008 server. Windows Update shows 'important' updates that include 4 MS Office updates - but I don't even have MS Office installed on this server.

There is also a Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack update. I noticed that VS seems to have gotten a shell install alongside MS SQL Server - so I suppose that would account for this one.

Does everyone see this Office patch - or have pieces of Office somehow gotten onto this production server?

I have a spare Dell Poweredge 2800 server that had a couple of drives crash and has been inactive. I decided to bring it to life as an Asterisk server - experimenting with Asterisk and Linux. We have very little Linux experience.

Installation went smooth with a basic CentOS disk and PBX-In-A-Flash. Asterisk is running great as a little PBX.

But the system is running really loud - which makes me think the drivers that got installed are not ideal - at least for monitoring fans, power etc.

I don't think running Asterisk in our environment will tax the drives, CPU and memory of this system - but I was thinking - what key parts of a server are worth chasing drivers for?

My name is aSkywalker and I am an involuntary DBA.

I have done some research, and would like to back up transaction logs every 10 minutes.

I have written some powershell scripts to compress, encrypt and shuffle the files around. I have created a maintenance plan to backup the Transaction log, then run the powershell script. (thanks to some great help from serverfault and stackoverflow!)

Now, I can see how to schedule it daily at a specific time. I can create subplans and schedule away. But I don't see a simple way to say 'every 10 minutes', and I don't want to start manually creating 144 subplans. Or do I have to?

Trying to copy all changed files from a directory (recursively) to a new location, keeping the directory structure intact.

I put the changed files into an array: $datechanged = ($datechanged).addyears(-3) $changedfiles = ls -recurse | where-object{$_.lastwritetime -gt $datechanged}

Now I would like to copy these files (and directories?) to a new location, but am not sure how to proceed.

I have been trying the syntax of foreach, but I am not having much luck. I am doing this as a learning exercise, but with an actual goal in mind of archiving these changed files - so putting the files directly into a 7-zip file would be great for speed, but I would like to better understand how to deal with these arrays of objects and pipeline them.

Thanks!

I have an SQL Server 2008 database, run on a 64-bit Windows Server 2008. I created a pretty simple PowerShell script that automates a bunch of tasks. I would like this script to run as part of our maintenance plan. How do I schedule it to run?

It needs to run as administrator - I know this is not ideal, but I am hoping I can have it execute as administrator. I currently open PowerShell as administrator and execute the script manually every morning.

In case it matters, the script:

• Zips the backup file (7-Zip) and moves it to our backup location
• Juggles some files - keeping the latest backup in a particular network location, and moving what was the most recent backup into the number two spot
• Deletes the .bak files

I want the script to run without counting on me to run it.

I am trying to restore a SQL Server 2008 backup and am getting the following error:

RESTORE cannot process database because it is in use by this session.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlError: RESTORE cannot process database 'database_name' because it is in use by this session. It is recommended that the master database be used when performing this operation. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo)

Any idea what is wrong?

I have a dedicated windows 2003 server that is hosted in a data center. I would like to map the drive to my pc - and looking for the best way to do that. I could create a VPN, but that seems like overkill? I have created the same login/pw.

Is there a simpler way than creating a VPN?

I have a live SQL 2005 database, and am in the very unfortunate position of being the involuntary DBA.

The database has an MDF file that is 1.4 GB, and an LDF with 2.2 GB. The Autogrowth is set to growth unrestricted by 10%. I have lots of disk space - so thought it would be better to set the initial size to be considerably bigger. It is growing quickly - doubling in size in about the last 6 months.

Can I just pick a a high number (since I have plenty of space), and simply change the Initial Size (perhaps to 4,000 or something) - and then set it as a weekly check to make sure we are not within some percent of this number?

Thanks.

I see many tools that have been discussed for 'proper' bandwidth monitoring and testing - but I am wondering what people use 'in a pinch'? Particularly on systems that they may not easily have admin privileges on?

I am mainly looking for Internet tests. Speedtest.net works in most cases, but it relies on flash - not something that is always available, particularly when rdc'ing into servers.

Anyone have reliable equivalents that will run very lightly? I know they won't give reliable data like ipcop, ntop, ipaudit, bandwidthD when properly configured, but sometimes we just want to make sure things are connected...