The Ji Village News

季庄新闻–Haidong Ji’s Blog

Here are some things I’ve learned with many clients when setting up Sql Server 2005 systems.

1. Get 64-bit if you can. Throw in as many processors, memory, good disk system (properly tuned SAN, for example) as you can possibly get;

2. Apply the latest service packs for Windows. At this writing, it is SP2 for Windows;

3. Apply the registry changes mentioned in this kb article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;920739 You do not need to get the hot fix if you have Windows SP2, because it is already part of it. However, you do need to get the registry changes in;

4. Apply this hot fix mentioned in this kb article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/931308/en-us This hot fix is especially important, if your Sql Server 2005 is an edition other than Enterprise or Developer. This hot fix should help with the error message below:

A significant part of sql server process memory has been paged out. This may result in a performance degradation. Duration: 0 seconds. Working set (KB): 24484, committed (KB): 48036, memory utilization: 50%

I am not too sure if this hot fix is necessary if you have Sql Server 2005 Enterprise/Developer edition and have “Lock pages in memory” enabled.

5. Run gpedit.msc. Go to Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignments. And give Sql Server startup account “Perform volumn maintenance tasks” (for instant file inialization).

6. If you will be running Sql Server 2005 Enterprise/Developer Edition, give startup account “Lock pages in memory” also.

7. Install Sql Server 2005. Then apply Sql Server 2005 Service Pack 2, currently the latest Service Pack for Sql Server 2005;

8. Open up Internet Explorer. Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced Tab. Scroll all the way down to Security section, uncheck “Check for publisher’s certificate revocation”. This should help if your Management Studio is slow;

9. Enable AWE, even for 64-bit systems.

10. If your system has a lot of memory, I would leave around 2 to 3 gig of RAM to the OS.

Feedback welcome.

As mentioned here, I bought a HP dv6253cl (AMD Turion 64 dual core) laptop around April, 2007. Up to about a month ago, it worked all right, with the wireless indicator on with blue color. Then it stopped working. If memory serves, I think it stopped working after installing Windows Update. The wireless light is always orange nowadays.

So I chatted with HP through their online support. The person gave me some drivers to install, to no avail. A subsequent chat resulted in HP informing me that its laptop has some kind of motherboard defect. They opened a case for me and asked me to send the laptop back for repair. The repair takes around 10-14 days, they say. And most likely, they will reimage my box.

I was really pissed. I managed to get by with wired connection up to Christmas. And decided to take matter into my own hands and load Linux on it, for now. If I need a Windows machine, I can build a virtual one running on top of Linux. At least that was the plan.

I spent a lot of time during Christmas to fix this, still not done yet. Here is a laundry list of some of my activities:

1. I used VMWare Converter to create an image of my laptop, resulting in a file around 20 gig, in case I need it;

2. Wireless card can be challenging to set up on Linux. ndiswrapper and Windows driver are needed to make it work. Google research showed there was at least one person with HP dv6253cl (my model also) who has it working on kubuntu. So I decided to give it a whirl.

3. kubuntu failed to install, even after modifying some loading parameters. Maybe I got the wrong version.

4. Funny thing was, after the failed kubuntu install, I booted into Windows, and the wireless was back and working. A reboot dashed my hope that somehow it was fixed.

5. So I downloaded ubuntu Alternate CD (not Live CD. LiveCD wouldn’t load) for AMD 64-bit on this laptop while running Windows, and burned the ISO image to a CD using ISO Reader. Once again the weired thing happened: wireless came back. Rebooted, and wireless was dead again. Subsequent CD burning in Windows on this machine didn’t result in wireless working again.

6. unbuntu Alternate CD didn’t work either, just like kubuntu. Had I have more time to tinker with it, I probably could load them (kunbuntu and ubuntu Alternate CD) successfully. But it really should not be this hard!

7. So after reading some good comments on sabayon, a distro based on Gentoo, I gave it a shot. I was impressed. The UI was slick, it feels very smooth and speedy, probably due to 64-bit. The only thing was that the screen was too bright, and the default font in Konqueror and Firefox look uglier than Windows. I wish there was some Windows ClearType kind of display thing on sabayon.

8. But the wireless still won’t work:

haidong@localhost ~ $ dmesg | grep ndiswrapper
[ 844.848423] ndiswrapper version 1.47 loaded (smp=yes)
[ 844.937076] usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

Well, I will keep working on it. I think I will re-install sabayon, without doing the “emerge –sync”, “layman -s”, and “emerge mozilla-firefox” like the first go-around. One thing is for sure: my next laptop won’t be a HP. My buddy Scott Whigham had a more painful experience with HP.

I noticed there were a lot of bloated Symantec anti-virus junk installed on a workstation I work with. So I disabled most of them in Windows services.

The next day I came back, I couldn’t connect to the web with my Firefox anymore, but could connect via Internet Explorer. In addition, connecting to remote Sql Server database servers was not successful either.

The thing wasted me at least one hour, and disrupted me from getting into the flow of things much of the day. Finally I figured out that Symantec AntiVirus service needs to be started, and all was happy.

In other news, things are really busy for us. My better half will finish her Ph.D in Life Science (microbiology) in a few weeks, and is looking for a job. If you have any leads, I’d appreciate it if you could pass that along to me.

It looks like database backup compression in Sql Server 2008 will only be available in Enterprise Edition, at least that is what BOL says, in the latest Sql Server 2008 CTP (November, 2007).

So I gave it a little spin. I detached AdventureWorks, attached it on a Katmai instance and run two sets of backups, one with compression and one without. Compression looks pretty decent. Backup without compression is about 135253 KB, the compressed version is only 34871 KB.

Below are the details.

backup database adventureworks to disk = ‘c:\aw_NoCompression.bak’ with no_compression

Without backup compression
(local)\sql2008(sa):
Processed 16832 pages for database ‘adventureworks’, file ‘AdventureWorks_Data’ on file 1.
(local)\sql2008(sa):
Processed 3 pages for database ‘adventureworks’, file ‘AdventureWorks_Log’ on file 1.
(local)\sql2008(sa):
BACKUP DATABASE successfully processed 16835 pages in 13.815 seconds (9.982 MB/sec).

Backup file size is 135253 KB

backup database adventureworks to disk = ‘c:\aw_Compression.bak’ with compression With backup compression

(local)\sql2008(sa):
Processed 16832 pages for database ‘adventureworks’, file ‘AdventureWorks_Data’ on file 1.
(local)\sql2008(sa):
Processed 2 pages for database ‘adventureworks’, file ‘AdventureWorks_Log’ on file 1.
(local)\sql2008(sa):
BACKUP DATABASE successfully processed 16834 pages in 8.703 seconds (15.845 MB/sec).

Backup file size is 34871 KB

Update: funny how great minds think alike Tibor Karaszi had a similar entry today.