Tag Archives: File

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Starting now, is the wrong date for insert…

This is part 2 of my log-shipping journey, if you missed part 1, you can find it here.

I collected all of the file names I need, but you will notice I left the dates off. When my files are moved from one domain to another, their created dates are being changed. I needed the real dates for the correct restore order and to match the backups to the logs. If I were a Dark Knight Powershell master, I am sure I would have figured out how to do it. Every time I started to get close, I would would have a production issue or another distraction that needed my time. In the end I landed in my happy place, so we are fixing the dates in the database!

How do I get the right date for a file when the created date is being changed after it has moved? I was super lucky that the date is being stored in the filename too! (Huge thank you to Ola for his awesome database maintenance solution.)

An example of my filename is this:

Batcentral$Alfred_Batman_LOG_20210610_224501.trn

This is how I dissect the filename to get the date and time from it:

  UPDATE [DBAStuff].[dbo].[LogshippingFile]
  SET CreatedDate = CAST(Substring(FileName, (LEN(FileName)-18),8)  +' '+ (Substring(FileName, (LEN(FileName)-9),2)+ ':' + Substring(FileName, (LEN(FileName)-7),2) + ':' + Substring(FileName, (LEN(FileName)-5),2)) AS DATETIME)
  WHERE CreatedDate IS NULL

My filenames are different lengths which means the the dates won’t always be in the same place, instead I go to the end of the string and count backwards because my dates are always consistent. Then I add all the parts back together to get my datetime and update it into my table.

Are we done yet? Nope, there is more.

The song for this post is Toad the Wet Sprockets’ Starting Now

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Help me, help me, my logs are over-sized!

I have a lot of servers and only home-grown monitoring.  I needed a solution that would tell me if a log file started to grow outside of its normal size.  I listened carefully at PASS Summit on how I should “right-size” my log files and came back with a plan to tackle all of them. Fast-forward a few months and I am still having trouble even after sizing them to what I thought they should be. One of the problems is that my backup solution is “touchy” with log backups and awesome at getting the full ones. I built a report to watch for missing transaction log backups, which isn’t perfect yet.  I needed a more immediate solution and after getting another Disk Space Email Alert, I knew what I had to do.  Here it is, my Large Log File Alert.

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[usp_LargeLogFileAlert]
 @LogThreshold int = 1024
AS
--This procedure sends out an alert message when a logfile has exceeded a set threshold.
--It can be scheduled to run daily so you can act quickly to resolve.

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM tempdb..sysobjects
WHERE id = object_id(N'[tempdb]..[#LargeLogFileAlert]'))
DROP TABLE #LargeLogFileAlert
CREATE TABLE #LargeLogFileAlert (
 DatabaseName VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
 LogMB INTEGER NOT NULL)

DECLARE @SizeMB INT
DECLARE @DatabaseName VARCHAR(50)
DECLARE @AlertMessage VARCHAR(500)
DECLARE @MailSubject VARCHAR(100)

/* Populate #LargeLogFileAlert with data */
INSERT INTO #LargeLogFileAlert
SELECT RTRIM(instance_name) AS DatabaseName, cntr_value/1024 AS SizeMB
FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters
WHERE counter_name = 'Log File(s) Used Size (KB)'
AND instance_name != '_Total' AND cntr_value/1024 > @LogThreshold --Threshold in MB

DECLARE LogAlert CURSOR FAST_FORWARD FOR
SELECT DatabaseName, LogMB FROM #LargeLogFileAlert 

OPEN LogAlert
FETCH NEXT FROM LogAlert INTO @DatabaseName, @SizeMB

WHILE (@@FETCH_STATUS = 0)
BEGIN
SET @MailSubject = 'Log for ' + @DatabaseName + ' has exceeded threshold on ' + @@SERVERNAME
SET @AlertMessage = @DatabaseName + ' is ' + cast(@SizeMB AS VARCHAR) + ' MB. Please verify transaction log backups are working.'
-- Send out email
EXEC msdb..sp_send_dbmail @recipients = 'you@email.com',--Change to your email
@subject = @MailSubject,
@body = @AlertMessage
FETCH NEXT FROM LogAlert INTO @DatabaseName, @SizeMB
END
CLOSE LogAlert
DEALLOCATE LogAlert
DROP TABLE #LargeLogFileAlert

GO

The threshold is adjustable by server. I picked the one I did because my servers have a lot of small databases.

Next I tossed it into a SQL Agent Job and have it run once a day on each server. It is light so I am not worried about it causing performance issues. It will email me for each database that has a log file larger than the limit I set. It won’t email at all if there aren’t any. Once I get my logs sized properly, I can turn them off. I used my CMS to deploy the stored procedure and SQL Agent job to all my servers and Yay, I know more about my environment.

This is my first attempt at joining the blog party which is number 62 – hosted this time by Robert Pearl (@pearlknows), hopefully I did it right.