1. 10 Things All BI Administrators Should Know Robert L Davis Database Engineer www.sqlsoldier.com @SQLSoldier

2. Robert L Davis Microsoft Certified Master Data Platform MVP @SQLSoldier www.sqlsoldier.com Database Engineer BlueMountain Capital Management 16+ years working with SQL Server PASS Security Virtual Chapter http://security.sqlpass.org Volunteers needed

3. 10 Things All BI Admins Should Know 10 – SQL components don’t play well together  Database Engine, Analysis Services, and SSIS Packages are resource hogs  Other BI components can be a swell  Each one will try to use as many resources as it feels it can  They don’t care what the other needs  Recommendation: separate components to different servers

4. 9 – File placement still matters  Separate files to different drives for best performance  BackupDir  DataDir  LogDir  TempDir 10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

5. 8 – Backup the encryption keys  SSRS stores data encrypted in ReportServer database  Data source accounts and passwords  Report subscription recipients  Key can be recreated but encrypted data will be lost  Import to other SSRS instances to create a farm 10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

6. 7 – Warm the cache in SSAS  Run a pre-defined set of queries  Use the WITH CACHE statement to pre-load a commonly used slice of a cube WITH CACHE AS '([Sales Territory].[Sales Territory Region].Members)' SELECT {[Sales Territory].[Sales Territory Region].Members} ON COLUMNS, {[Measures].[Order Count]} ON ROWS FROM [Adventure Works]; 10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

7. 6 – Paging file matters in SSAS  More RAM > large paging file > out of memory errors  SSAS uses RAM if it can  If available RAM is low, SSAS will use the paging file  If out of RAM and paging file space, out of memory errors may occur 10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

8. 5 – Tune parallelism for high CPU servers  ThreadPool\Query\Maxthreads <= 2 X CPU count  Controls maximum concurrency  ThreadPool\Process\MaxThreads <= 10 X CPU count  Controls maximum parallel threads per process  Logical CPUs 10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

9. 4 – Use remote SSIS server with Availability Groups  Jobs that need to hit the active or read-only node of an AG  Configure to connect via the AG Listener  Does not require coding additional logic to figure out whether the node is active or not  T-SQL steps can be run as PowerShell steps that call invoke-sqlcmd 10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

10. 3 – Load balancing SSAS > Clustering  Hardware or Software load balancing  Allows you to process cubes one at a time programmatically without downtime  Scalable to many servers 10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

11. 2 – Don’t give SSRS or SSAS users database access  Use stored credentials of a non-user domain service account 10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

12. 1 – Back up your databases  SSAS databases should be backed up too  Use SSMS to create backup script in XMLA  Schedule via a SQL job Adventure Works DW 2012 E:\MSSQL\OLAP\BAK\Adventure Works DW 2008R2.abf true 10 Things All BI Admins Should Know

14. Thanks! Thank you for coming!  My blog: www.sqlsoldier.comwww.sqlsoldier.com  Twitter: twitter.com/SQLSoldiertwitter.com/SQLSoldier