Group Managed Service Accounts and SQL Server: What You Actually Need to Know
Service account management is one of the quietest ways a SQL Server estate goes wrong. Passwords get set once during
May 1, 2026
Author: Randy Knight
SQL Server AG Won’t Become Primary After Force Quorum? Here’s Why and How to Fix It
If you’ve encountered a situation where none of your SQL Server Always On Availability Group (AG) replicas become PRIMARY after a cluster failure — you’re not alone. We recently had a customer with this exact scenario (AG won’t become primary after force quorum), and it is both uncommon and difficult to troubleshoot so I thought it would be worth posting about.
June 5, 2025
Ticking Timebombs: Object Ownership and System Databases Gone Wrong
Our Health Check is a great starting point with our clients. It tells us a lot about their instances, such
May 18, 2021
T-SQL Anti-Patterns: SQL User Defined Functions (UDFs) that turn your set operation into a cursor
One of the things we see as consultants are consistent patterns of behavior by T-SQL developers that cause big performance
March 3, 2021
Skill Up or Give Up: Azure Data Studio or Bust
One of the things I have found over the years is that it is easy to get into a rut
February 22, 2021
Five Tips: Configure Windows for Better SQL Server Performance
I founded SQL Solutions Group 10 years ago (October 2010). In that time, we’ve done more than 100 Health Checks
November 16, 2020
What happened to SQL Server Data Tools in SQL Server 2014?
I’ve seen this question a few times and it is something that can be very confusing: You’ve installed SQL 2014
May 9, 2020
Security Configuration for Linked Servers
A few years ago I published an article about how to use linked servers to avoid performance issues. I wanted
March 4, 2020
Why Can’t I Close Existing Connections on Restore?
The Problem: Can’t Close Existing Connections Typically when restoring a backup using the SSMS GUI, you choose the device, then
February 10, 2020