SQL SERVER – Install Error: Standalone SQL Server on WFC Cluster Cannot Have Files on Shared Disk Locations

During one of my consultancy related to Always On availability group deployment, I faced an interesting issue. They wanted to install two standalone SQL Server instances on both nodes of the Windows Server 2008 R2 cluster for a specific reason. Interestingly, they informed that this used to work fine with SQL server 2008 R2 but in SQL server 2014 is failing with an error.
I checked the summary file and found the message about install error.

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SQL SERVER – Installation Wizard Hang Forever – Please Wait on Feature Selection Page

Here is one of the situations which I encountered with SQL Server 2014 on Windows Server 2012 R2. I wanted to add “Analysis Services” features to an existing installation. I came up with the feature selection screen on SQL setup and pressed next it hangs with “Please Wait”. I click on it and went for lunch, when I came back, it was still in the same state. Let us learn how to fix the issue related to Installation Wizard Hang Forever.

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SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Get the First Name From Full Name Without CHARINDEX

Recently I have been engaged with a customer where they were having a performance issue. They have engaged me via my offering Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check. While doing that, they asked me to write a better way to write a query. While I have given some suggestions and asked them to check, this looks like a nice puzzle to ask. So here we go to see the puzzle – Get the First Name From Full Name Without CHARINDEX.

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SQL SERVER – Improve Index Rebuild Performance by Enabling Sort In TempDB

During recent Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check, the customer put forward a compelling request. They wanted to improve their index rebuild performance as their index rebuilding process is taking forever to complete. When they asked me this, I exactly knew what we needed to do for this customer. We ended up fixing the issue of index rebuild by enabling sort in TempDB. 

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