Every SQL Server installation ships with max server memory set to its default value of 2,147,483,647 MB — effectively unlimited — which allows the Buffer Pool to consume all available RAM and starve the operating system of the memory it needs for network stack, disk I/O, and other critical processes. This script reads …

A heap table — a table with no clustered index — stores rows in no particular order, forces full table scans for most non-indexed queries, and accumulates forwarded records every time an UPDATE causes a row to outgrow its page. This script queries sys.tables, sys.indexes, sys.partitions, sys.allocation_units, and …

A copy-only backup is a special SQL Server backup that is independent of the normal backup sequence. It does not reset the differential base or interrupt the transaction log backup chain, making it the correct choice when you need an ad-hoc backup for a development or test environment restore without affecting …

Finding databases that have not been backed up recently is one of the most important checks a DBA can run. A database that grows unnoticed without a backup is a data loss event waiting to happen. This script queries msdb.dbo.backupset against sys.databases to surface any online user database with no full backup in the …

Backup compression reduces the on-disk size of SQL Server backup files and can significantly shorten backup duration by reducing the amount of data written to disk. This post shows how to enable compression at the server level, verify the setting is active, and confirm compression ratios from backup history using the …

Running DBCC CHECKDB on every database is one of the most important tasks for a SQL Server DBA. But in busy environments it is easy to lose track of which databases have been checked recently and which have not. This script loops through all user databases, reads the last known good DBCC CHECKDB date from each one, and …

Orphaned database users are a common problem after database restores, server migrations, or login deletions. A database user becomes orphaned when its SID does not match any server-level login SID. This script queries sys.database_principals and sys.server_principals to find every orphaned user in a database, and shows …

MAXDOP (max degree of parallelism) controls how many CPU threads SQL Server can use for a single parallel query. The default value of 0 allows SQL Server to use all available processors, which can cause large parallel queries to monopolise the server. This script reads the CPU topology from system DMVs and calculates …

Query Backup Duration and File Size from SQL Server History This script queries SQL Server's msdb backup history to report the backup type, start and finish time, duration in minutes, and file size in both megabytes and gigabytes for every backup across all user databases on the server. Purpose and Overview Knowing …

Find Active Long-Running Queries in SQL Server This script queries sys.dm_exec_requests and sys.dm_exec_sql_text to show all currently executing queries on the SQL Server instance, sorted by how long they have been running, along with CPU time, I/O activity, blocking status, and wait type information. Purpose and …