Change SQL Server Collation in a clustered environment

start /wait D:\Servers\setup.exe /qn VS=[VIRTUALSERVER] INSTANCENAME=[MSSQLSERVER] REINSTALL=SQL_Engine REBUILDDATABASE=1 ADMINPASSWORD=[CURRENT USERPASS] SAPWD=[sapassword] SQLCOLLATION=[NewCollation] SQLACCOUNT=[domain acct] SQLPASSWORD=[domainpass] AGTACCOUNT=[domainacct] AGTPASSWORD=[domainpss]

Make sure that ADMINPASSWORD is the current user's password and this user should have admin rights on all involved nodes.

Disable the loopback check

This is used to fix a logon issue with NTLM and IIS, the error message:

Logon Failure:
Reason: An error occurred during logon
User Name: [User Name]
Domain: [Domain]
Logon Type: 3
Logon Process: Èù®
Authentication Package: NTLM
Workstation Name: [Workstation Name]
Status code: 0xC000006D
Substatus code: 0x0
Caller User Name: -
Caller Domain: -
Caller Logon ID: -
Caller Process ID: -
Transited Services: -
Source Network Address: 127.0.0.1
Source Port: 1298


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

the following steps will fix the issue:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
3. Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
7. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

sourced from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

Foreign Key vs. Trigger Referential Integrity in SQL Server

I personally thought foreign key action is better than triggers, well the following article back up my idea:

http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1508

Adding cluster disk to sql

went through the practice again and realized that I actually forgot something I did before :-)

Also one mistake is, the LUN was presented to me already partitioned and thus when I tried to do the SAN disk alignment it gave me error message which I happened to find one technet article taking about different issue with same symptom and led to a waste of time.(error msg: DiskPart was unable to create the specified partition)

Anway, I finally figured this out and delete the old partition and then things went smoothly.

Finally, the performance project is finally nearlly there, the newly purchased test server is put online and a significant performance increase was observed. (previoulsy revenue recognition process took 50+ minutes now only 1+ minutes!).

Web Server Farm

Sometimes different iis configuration inside the web server farm can cause serious issue.
the following command can be quiet helpful:
iiscnfg /copy /ts websrv08 /tu domain\george.wen /tp xxxx