7 April 2010 0 Comments

Fire Drills: Practice Restoring a Database

Restoring a database is an essential part of any DBA’s job running Teamcenter. If you cannot restore a database, you will almost certainly lose your job. Thus, the topic of restoring a database seems well worth digging into more deeply.

16 March 2010 0 Comments

Failing to restore SQL Server database backup with internal consistency error

Here is one of the corruption issue that i came across on the database which was dettached after entering into suspect mode making it difficult to re-use the mdf and ldf file.

7 January 2010 0 Comments

Windows machine account passwords and VM snapshots

Windows machine account passwords and VM snapshots The problem Almost every virtualization platform like Hyper-V provides ways to capture the complete state of a VM as a snapshot.

7 August 2009 0 Comments

Solving Shared Notebook Sync Issue With OneNote 2010

Since about 3 years we used Groove to share calendar, notes and files within family – until I discovered a feature in OneNote called “Shared Notebooks”. The Shared Notebooks are just like any other OneNote notebooks with a difference that they get synced with other people! If someone added new note or modified a note you get it next time and vice a versa

21 July 2009 0 Comments

The “but no changes were made on the server?!” Fallacy

We hear this in the field constantly… a server begins experiencing difficulty or somehow acts “different”… and the first thing we hear is usually something along the lines of “no changes were made!” Truth be told, there is only one time when no changes are being made on your server… when it’s turned off.

6 July 2009 0 Comments

Apple’s Tilt to SD Cards Looking Smarter Than Ever

Last month I commented that Apple’s substitution of Secure Digital Card (SD) slots for ExpressCard slots in the 15″ MacBook Pro made considerably good sense. It would be nice to have both, but the ExpressCard support wasn’t being heavily used, according to Apple, while SD was growing more popular. The 13″ MacBook Pro also gets an SD slot where the preceding unibody MacBook was slotless, so it’s pure value-added there.

27 June 2009 0 Comments

How do I determine which files can be safely deleted in TFS Version Control?

I recently received a query, which in essence can be summarised as: “ How can I create a list of deleted files and folders in Team Foundation Server (TFS) hat are safe to be deleted permanently ”. The question is an interesting one and probably highlights some additional functionality which we hope to see in future releases

25 June 2009 0 Comments

Use PowerShell to Backup All User Databases

This script will back up all user databases – you need to change the BWOODY1SQL2K8 part to your serverinstance name, and of course, you should only run this on a test system until you completely understand it. Unfortunately, the SQL Server PowerShell Provider doesn’t make this very easy – and there may be a better way to do this once I research it more. Also – this script was adapted from one given to me earlier, and unfortunately I don’t recall the source

23 June 2009 0 Comments

When students lose memory sticks

You must have seen them – plaintive, desperate or just plain panic. It hasn’t taken long for the USB memory stick to turn into something that everybody has (and yet, I can still remember that sense of satisfaction when I was given my first freebie memory stick with 16MB of memory!). Now it’s not uncommon to see students with 2GB memory sticks plugged into whatever computer they are using

19 June 2009 0 Comments

STSADM (Part 2)

This is the second of three STSADM posts we have planned.  This post covers commands that were new between RTM and SP2. Topics/Commands covered in this post: Renamesite Mergecontentdbs Setsiteuseraccountdirectorypath peoplepicker-searchadcustomfilter Trimauditlog Renamesite Syntax: stsadm -o renamesite    -oldurl <oldUrl>    -newurl <newUrl> Usage: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263038.aspx http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939535 Origin: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939592 (Pre-SP1) EX: stsadm -o renamesite -oldurl http://www.hhsitecol.com -newurl http://new.hhsitcol.org In this screenshot, notice our host-named site collection is www.hhsitecol.com After we run the command, the address will be updated.  The second screenshot (below) shows a refresh of the site collection list after the command was run. As you can see the site collection has been renamed to new.hhsitecol.org

12 June 2009 0 Comments

TFS 2005 to 2008 Upgrade Best Practices… and some for VSTSWA 2008 as well

The following post come from Vimal Thiagaraj (VIM), a member of our TFS setup and install team. Vim provides us today with a best practices document for upgrading from TFS 2005 to TFS 2008 SP1, and for upgradinginstalling VSTSWA (TFS web access) 2008 SP1 as well