In my opinion SQL Server 2005 is a great database system. Building on its predecessors, it manages and maintains databases well and allows customization and flexibility for a company. In order to get the most out of it, you have to fully understand how it works and more importantly, how to configure it.

By default, every database you create in SQL Server 2005 is set to Full Recovery Mode. What this means is that the database will always log every bit of information to the end of time about the database, in case you need to restore in the event of a disaster. This functionality is great to have, but comes at a very high cost, namely in the form of log file sizes. SQL Server records every change to the database into the transaction log. Every INSERT, UPDATE, column modification, TRIGGER event. Everything. And in doing so, the log can grow as large as it wants, potentially causing catastrophic events to the server. [More]

Coding for IE 8 is a daunting task. The new browser has increased its security and lowered its tolerance of lax, non standard coding. This is actually a good thing. But if your sites are not written quite right, things definitely don’t look too good to anyone who happens to be upgraded to the newest version. Microsoft knows that updating sites is a time consuming process and that some companies may never do it completely. To get around this issue, Microsoft supplies a number of options for making sure your site will display properly for all users.

The answer lies in the IE=EmulateIE7 custom header. This little piece of code is injected in the header of your site and tells IE8 to act like it’s older sibling, IE7. IE8 will apply IE7 standards, as well as render the document type to IE7. This process is automatic and the user will just view the site normally. [More]

A web farm is essential to a high traffic site. Redundancy, intelligent traffic flow, collaboration and monitoring are keys to maintaining uptime and availability. The correct infrastructure will mean a solid, consistent presence for a site with an industry standard 99.9999+% uptime .

At the core of any web farm is redundancy. Any single point of failure is a vulnerability. Here is sample topography of a basic implementation. [More]

With the installation of Windows Server 2008 comes with it the new Windows Server Backup utility. This application replaces the ntbackup.exe from years past and gives many new features and abilities to network administrators. However, with it also so comes some changes and shortcomings. Specifically, the ability to work with a network drive as the backup location.

Windows Server Update has the ability to backup an entire OS to a specified location. The system, through “Scheduled BackUps”, will perform full and incremental backups of that server. This is done by specifying a local hard drive to the machine. This drive will be completely formatted and then the backup will be placed on that drive. From that point on, incremental backups will be placed on that drive detailing a history of the files and maintaining its own disk size. [More]

The other day we applied some security updates to our production server and rebooted them. I went to check on a virtual server we have and low and behold it was missing. I couldn't ping it, browse to it, or even call it on the phone. It was, in fact, MIA. So I hoped onto to our production network to investigate.

The host server was running fine so I RDP'd to it to open the Virtual Server Administration Website. The virtual server was there, and running, but there were several odd error messages in the VS log. [More]