No, you can’t check why it’s running slowly, but I can give you some hints: 1) In SQL 2005, the management of nonclustered indexes changed from the Storage Engine (my team) to the Query Processor. This has many side-effects, one of which is the speed with which heap data pages can be moved by shrink. … Read more
I update firmware in two key instances. When staging up a server. When I just get the server, I’ll check the the HP web-site for the date of their latest “Firmware Update CD”. If it’s new enough, I’ll run it against the server before bringing it up to production. When I repurpose a server. Typically, … Read more
Here’s a previous question and answers: Do you continue to use your end-of-life server/network equipment? And another one: How often does your company replace all its servers? At 5 years, for what sounds like mission-critical functions, I’d start looking at replacement even if they’re working fine. But since they are working fine, I’d plan out … Read more
Here are some “pages” out of my personal “operations manual”: All user data is saved on servers, period. It might be replicated to client computers via functionality like “Offline Files” (for laptop computers, particularly) and Outlook’s “Cached Exchange Mode”, but there is no primary storage of data on client computers, ever. No recurring backups of … Read more
Disclaimer: When working with A/C, eletrical, fire suppression, always use licensed professionals and follow local laws/codes. Know your limits. Also, I have found this book (albeit old) to be a wealth of knowledge for sysadmins: Sun Blueprints – Enterprise Data Center Design and Methodology – Rob Snevely The book can be downloaded in its entirety … Read more
I have experienced this exact same issue with similar Pentium 4 computers from HP. Within about 9 months we reapplied thermal compound to nearly all 80 or so of these PC’s. They were all about 4 years old at the time. After the 5th pc or so, our purchasing department leaned on the hp sales … Read more
This isn’t a question with a hard and fast answer, in fact none of us can tell you when to run your maintenance, just give you a few pointers to finding the answer for yourself. First of all, when you say “maintenance” what do you mean? Are you saying the site will be offline at … Read more
I in fact never defragment the data on my servers. I haven’t seen enough of a performance gain in file serving to make it worth the performance hit of the time it takes to defrag. In fact most servers won’t ever really finish defragmenting unless you take them offline for a few days. If you’re … Read more
Apparently my solution was almost right, I can do what I need with: doveadm expunge -u testuser@sv.dev mailbox INBOX SENTBEFORE 1-Jan-2011 doveadm expunge -u testuser@sv.dev mailbox INBOX.Sent SENTBEFORE 1-Jan-2011 doveadm expunge -u testuser@sv.dev mailbox INBOX.Trash SENTBEFORE 1-Jan-2011 doveadm purge -u testuser@sv.dev Note: You can replace -u testuser@sv.dev with -A to target all users on the … Read more
Rebuilding a database index should not cause any data loss. It will however probably cause a substantial performance degradation as the indexes being rebuilt will normally not be available for use until the rebuild finishes. For that reason it should be done during off-hours when the affected systems are idle. Paranoia is a Good Thing … Read more