Following the installation of the November 2014 OS updates and the updated DPM agent (to update rollup 4) onto a number of servers, I saw failures when attempting to perform a backup of SQL Server 2012 databases hosted on Windows Server 2012. These manifested as ‘replica is inconsistent’ in the DPM console: On the …

Following the recent release of Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview and SQL Server 2014 CTP1, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if I could get SharePoint 2013 running on the combination of these two previews. Most of the issues I encountered were around the product installers for SharePoint and the …

During a recent WSUS upgrade from an old server to a new virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 R2, I saw an issue with the server not downloading updates correctly. The server appeared to synchronise correctly, but then no updates were downloaded. We originally saw an issue like this when we started using …

On an instance of CRM 2011 that was being patched to Update Rollup 6 prior to patching to Update Rollup 8, the following error occurred: System.Exception: Action Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Common.Update.DBUpdateAction failed. ---> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to …

When creating the PerformancePoint Service Application, there is no way to control the name of the database that is created, not even when using PowerShell to create the Service Application. The database that gets created is in the form _GUID which for some reason a good many DBAs are not too keen on! The database can …

I recently ran into this issue while trying to move a series of sub-sites to site collections on a SharePoint farm. In order to achieve part of the process, I’d scripted the deletion of the sub-site tree using the stsadm –o deleteweb command once I’d exported it as there were quite a number of sub-sites and I wanted to …

If you need to remove an instance of SQL Reporting Services from a scale out deployment, but for some reason cannot contact the instance you wish to remove (e.g. the computer has failed or been rebuilt without removing it from the scale out deployment first) you can do this manually from one of the other computers in …

One of the SharePoint farms we’ve built recently runs on Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. As usual, the installation is a least privileged account setup, with individual accounts running the various services and app pools. The farm is also patched to the latest level. We’ve experienced one or two issues with …

I've recently written an ASP.NET web application to programmatically execute SQL Server 2000 DTS packages and jobs and report on the outcome. I should really have the link below bookmarked given the amount of times I've used it. Feature Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2005, February 2007

I'm presenting tonight on SQL Server 2008, along with Rik who is presenting on Windows Server 2008 and Richard who is presenting on Visual Studio 2008. VBUG Newcastle: VS2008, SQL Server 2008 and Win 2008 Launch Event Hope to see you there.