I love it when I learn something within a half hour of getting to work. I had an unrelated alert on a vendor supplied database server. As I was investigating that problem I came across two things. One was funny, one I actually learned something. First the funny: they had named the sysadmin account ‘God’. Wasn’t that from the terrifically awesome, how can I live without seeing that one, movie ‘Hackers?’ But now onto what I learned. I looked at the SQL Server Log and I had hundreds of entries that said “Starting up database ‘DbName’” These were appearing several time a second. I’m thinking. This has got to be a waste of precious CPU. I know the server site at 10% utilized even when the two people we bought it for are using it, but that’s beside the point. Its CPU darn it. Well, I have to admit that message meant nothing to me. So I asked my favorite co-worker, Mr. Google, what was up. He told me the server is set to Auto Close. I looked at the options and he, of course, was right. Auto shrink was enabled also. So, I fixed those two issues and now the database server is chugging along at 9.98% utilized. It’s only 7:44 am and I believe my work is done here. Time to twitter for the next few hours till quitting time. Crap, it only works that way in movies. Another database needs my care.
Tags: Database, Performance, SQL Server Log