"Time, tide and formation wait for no man......"

Often times, system problems can be attributed to an incorrect system time.

Using "w32tm.exe" you can resync your system:

w32tm.exe /resync /nowait /rediscover


To query your time settings:

w32tm.exe /query /source

SQL Server Tip of the Day

DBAs often need to refresh database instances for developers.  In this case, you need to restore some database from a backup file.

Here are few simple commands to help with this task:

Determining what processes are using the database (Note the single quote around <database name>)

USE master

SELECT * FROM sys.sysprocesses WHERE dbid = DB_ID('<database name>')


Set database to SINGLE_USER (Note the double quotes around <database name>)

use master;

GO

ALTER DATABASE "<database name>" SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE;

Detach database (Note the single quotes around <database name>)

EXEC sp_detach_db 'AdventureWorks2012', 'true';

Delete database (Note the doube quotes around <database name>)

use master;

GO

DROP DATABASE "<database name>";

GO

Once the database is deleted, you can use the restore GUI to restore the database using the original name.

See database file space usage 

USE <database name>
GO 

SELECT DB_NAME() AS DbName, 
name AS FileName, 
size/128.0 AS CurrentSizeMB,  
size/128.0 - CAST(FILEPROPERTY(name, 'SpaceUsed') AS INT)/128.0 AS FreeSpaceMB 
FROM sys.database_files;

List recovery modes for all databases

SELECT name AS [Database Name],
recovery_model_desc AS [Recovery Model]
FROM sys.databases
GO

Change dbo for a database

EXEC sp_changedbowner '<databasename>'

Inactive ESXi NFS Mounts

After moving an ESXi host from one site to another, I realized we didn't unmount all the NFS mounts.  Upon restarting, the original datastores were still listed but greyed out.  Clicking on "Delete" resulted in an error message.










This is easily fixable:

1. SSH to your host
2. Use esxcfg-nas -d <datastore name>
3. Reboot host