Allen Kinsel - SQL DBA

SQL Server, PASS, and other data mishaps

SQL/Windows Clustering Stupidity

By Allen Kinsel, 6 months and 23 days ago

Win98 300x225When is high availibility not? 

When its any version of SQL running on a clustered Windows 2003 Server or sql 2005 running on clustered Windows 2008 Server.  Seems that while you can dynamically add a disk and use it in SQL when your running a standalone server, if your running in a «highly availiable» cluster configuration you have to take SQL offline to add the disk as a dependency in order to be able to use it within SQL.  Here's the proof right from SQL books online.

Im sure there was a good reason to require this at the time but clearly this wasnt thought out in the grand scheme of taking 0 downtime.  Anytime a single server has a more highly availiable architecture than your system that is designed for high availibility -->youre doing it wrong, Sorry someone had to say it

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SQL Active Directory User ID SID Mismapings

By Allen Kinsel, 6 months and 24 days ago

Sometimes login mapping issues exist where you least expect them

This is not the traditional SQL login SID mismap issue that is frequently encountered and discussed here. This mismap was a new one on me so I thought id document it.

When trying to add a new Windows login for SQL Server 2005 or 2008 (probably earlier versions but not tested) you may wind up with this error message

Msg 15025, Level 16, State 2, Line 1

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How did I get here?

By Allen Kinsel, 7 months and 13 days ago

There's a meme going around that I thought I'd take my turn at answering.

Better late than never I suppose, Work always seems to have a way of getting in the way of posts like this!

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How do you do Disaster Recovery

By Allen Kinsel, 7 months and 14 days ago

Going through the process of a large scale multi-location disaster recovery made me stop and think about all the different incarnations that can be used to recover database servers. 

Living with a datacenter in Hurricane alley, We've been doing disaster preparedness(recovery) on a small scale for many years but this year we've been working towards recovering all of our assets to an offsite colocation.  That part of the decision is easy, the actual method used to do these recoveries is definitely up in the air and I fully expect our processes to change for the better, every time we redo our disaster testing (many times a year going forward).

In exploring the recovery process we quickly realized that our «hardware failure» recovery documents weren't going to work effectively in a datacenter failure situation.  So, it was time to design a new set of criteria for success.  I thought Id share our thought process and how we plan on tackling this always fun experience.  Its worth mentioning in a side note that no SQL replication is wanted/allowed for in our case.

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Using Aliases with SQL Server

By Allen Kinsel, 7 months and 20 days ago

Even an old dog can learn new tricks

Where Can I get a dog like this?
I had an Aha! moment recently.  For my entire career as a DBA I have generally considered aliases for connections a workaround for bad behaving applications.  Whenever someone said «alias» my mind immediately heads to SQL Server client configuration aliases which I try to avoid if at all possible (since they are configured on each client)  It never snapped to me until recently that DNS aliases may be a good solution to a few problems  we're currently experiencing.

For disaster recovery reasons, as well as for manageability reasons we have decided to start using DNS aliases for every application connection to database servers.  This should allow us to have the luxury of moving databases from server to server without having to reconfigure multiple applications which would normally be a whole process in itself since the code was already migrated to production which is locked.

Using DNS aliases should also allow us to swap highly important applications over individually to a remote datacenter, which could have less computing power, without having to switch every application and thus kill the performance of that standby server.


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  • Allowing effective developer access to SQL Server:
    • Karen Lopez: Another approach I use: Be generous in granting privileges in the DEV database (but still lock down the server environment), but don't let Devs promote any DDL to the next environment. Only the DBAs can deliver/apply DDL to the next (usually QA) environment. So if the devs modify their tables/columns without the architect...
  • PASS Summit Community Choice Session results revealed:
    • Andy Warren: Allen, nice job on this. Great to see the community get a chance to participate in building the program and share in the excitement of the upcoming Summit. Andy
  • Community Choice Sessions at the PASS Summit 2010:
    • Allen Kinsel: Thanks, We hope that this will be a good test of community selections, and hope to expand it a bit in the future
    • robert cook: glad you decided to keep blogging and gracias to you and your amigos for giving an opportunity to the sql community for direct involvement with session choices
  • Sql Server and SSPI handshake failed error hell:
    • Robert L Davis: I agree about the reboot. That's why I check SPN's before DC/Kerberos errors. An SPN can be fixed without rebooting, but if the issue is DC connection and no one can log in to the SQL Server, you're down anyway so a reboot shouldn't be out of the question. The problem with having a...
    • Allen Kinsel: I guess should have worded that a little differently, in my experience in a lot of environments kerberos isnt used since its not configured, so it always falls back to NTLM, with only NTLM and no Kerberos in the result list, its usually safe to say that SPN's arent the issue. I...

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