Office Hours: All About Miles

Post your SQL Server and Azure questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the ones you’re curious to see me cover. Here’s today’s questions:

00:00 Start
00:03 Miles: Hi Brent, I am aware of “sp_statement” completed and sp_batch_completed events in trace and extended events. But, what is the use of rpc_completed event? How this event will be helpful while collecting traces and when should we capture this event? please explain.
01:37 Mike: Azure SQL Managed Instance has uptime SLA of 99.99%. If we are okay with maximum of 4.5 minutes of downtime per month (0.01%) – that means we do not need to add any secondary replicas for HA at all, and single instance is sufficient?
05:16 Miles: Hi Brent, we have a dev team always say, its the SQL problem. Eg:DB locks is the root cause of app API slowness, why SQL Server got restarted,we can’t afford it. How to handle such teams? How we can do a much better job?
07:16 Pradeep M.: When log shipping gets behind by 24+ hours do you try to determine why it got behind or focus on improving network bandwidth so that it doesn’t get behind in the future?
08:16 Miles: Hi Brent, what is process involved in base-lining a query performance. I really want to know how to do it and why it is important to do it. Please explain with an example.
08:51 JimLic: I have seen performance issues when using more than 3 CTEs stacked on top of each other. Is there some documentation that says “don’t use more than 3 CTEs in a single query”. Does “It depends” apply here? What have you seen with CTEs?
10:45 Miles: Hi Brent, Any piece of advice for new DBA’s with 5+ years of experience to increase their credibility and visibility?
13:25 Rapid Dragon: What’s your opinion of SQL stretch DB? Do and of your clients use it / like it?
13:57 Miles: Hi Brent, How to find a right mentor? How to approach them? Difference between teacher & mentor? If one agrees to be a mentor what things mentee should be prepared for?If mentor charges more, find another? Have you faced situations where mentor affordability was an issue? Thanks!
18:15 Miles: Hi Brent, based on your work experience, what are the top 5 essential qualities a good DBA should have?
20:16 who knows: I have a lot of old c# apps that are forcing SQL transactions to go ReadCommitted, is this preventing my SQL server from using row versioning? I have RCSI enabled in my databases.
21:26 Hjordis: What is your opinion of SQL Trace Flag 834 – “Use large-page allocations for the buffer pool, columnstore, and in-memory tables”?
23:03 zlobnyfar: Hello Brent! If the money is not a problem – what is the best HA and DR solutions you can recommend. A few small conditions: SQL Server 2017 or 2019 ENT Edition, NO downtime and NO Data loss. Thank you for comprehensive answer!
24:11 Julie Berthelsen: What are the pros / cons of implementing first responder kit in TSQL vs PowerShell? Microsoft SQL support tools tend to prefer PowerShell for some reason.
25:30 Ciaran O: Microsoft recently mentioned potential shortage of GPUs as a risk factor to it’s business. Should Microsoft do like Apple and start making it’s own chips?
28:08 Drax: How do you know if your Azure SQL VM is too overprovisioned (i.e. paying for unused resources)?
29:04 Tony Feuz: Would you recommend turning on TDE? We are facing some changes for SOC2 and we are wondering if we should go this far. Our backups are currently encrypted and I did read your blog post – but the post does not seem to specify if you are for or against it…. Thanks!