How to shut down SQL Server

The question how to shutdown SQL Server came up at work last week, I figured it would be a nice topic for the newer DBAs and SQL Server programmers

Note: I assume SQL Server is not part of a clustered environment here, if your SQL Server instance is part of a cluster, then use the failover cluster manager instead!


There are a bunch of way to shut down SQL Server, here is how you can do it

Configuration Manager

To shut down SQL Server for the SQL Server Configuration Manager, navigate to your instance, right click and select Stop

SSMS Object Explorer

The process from SSMS is very similar to Configuration Manager, right click on the instance and select Stop

Shutdown command

From SSMS open a new query window and type shutdown or shutdown with nowait

Unless the WITHNOWAIT option is used, SHUTDOWN shuts down SQL Server by:

• Disabling logins (except for members of the sysadmin and serveradmin fixed server roles).
• Waiting for currently running Transact-SQL statements or stored procedures to finish. To display a list of all active processes and locks, run sp_who and sp_lock, respectively.
• Inserting a checkpoint in every database.

That seems kinda dangerous can someone pass that command to a proc by masking it?

declare @d varchar(30)= reverse('tiawon htiw nwodtuhs')
exec(@d)

The SHUTDOWN statement cannot be executed within a transaction or by a stored procedure. Msg 0, Level 11, State 0, Line 3 A severe error occurred on the current command. The results, if any, should be discarded.

That is good to know  :-)


Command prompt

Open a command prompt as administrator and type net stop MSSQLSERVER

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.14393]
(c) 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>net stop MSSQLSERVER
The SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service is stopping.
The SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service was stopped successfully.


C:\WINDOWS\system32>net start MSSQLSERVER
The SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service is starting.
The SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service was started successfully.


C:\WINDOWS\system32>

To start SQL Server again, change net stop to net start


Below are a couple of more ways but you should really not be using those!!

Task Manager

Yes, you can kill SQL Server from task manager

Taskkill

You can use the plain old DOS command taskkill as well

Shutdown your server
That is one way of course but you might get a bunch of people yelling at you

Unplug the power to your server after making sure you have no UPS battery backup plugged in
Great way to test recovery... .. sarcasm people.....

Shutdown the data center
You laugh but this actually happened to me once, someone did some work and shut down the whole development part of the data canter. We had SQL Server 2000 running on NT 4, it was not restarted in 6 years (meaning wasn't patched either) It was an isolated box, internal ip, couldn't be reached from outside the dev network


There you have all the ways that you can use to shut down SQL Server

Security in SQL Server on Linux Microsoft Engineering Town Hall

On April 20, 2017 10:00-11:00 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7) Microsoft will host a Security in SQL Server on Linux Microsoft Engineering Town Hall


Here is what will be covered

Learn about recent developments and get answers to your questions at twice-monthly virtual town halls, where Microsoft connects you with the team behind SQL Server on Linux. Each session will begin with a new topic, but all questions about SQL on Linux are welcome. At this event, you’ll:

• Engage with—and ask questions of—the SQL Server on Linux engineering team.
• Learn about how SQL Server in Linux supports the same enterprise-grade security capabilities that customers rely on with SQL Server on Windows. Get an overview of how to secure SQL Server on Linux, with demos of popular scenarios.

You can register here: https://info.microsoft.com/sql-server-on-linux-town-hall-security-register.html

The strange case of the missing indexes....

This past week I needed to run some queries on production to verify there were indexes added on a table. There were several scripts that needed to be run and the last one was the addition of the indexes.  The query given to me was something like the following

SELECT *
FROM LinkedServerName.DatabaseName.sys.indexes
WHERE object_id =(OBJECT_ID('TableName'))

So I ran the query..nothing. Aha maybe they are still running the scripts before that, setting up replication, snapshotting the table etc etc. I will check again in a bit I thought.

Then I checked 2 more times nothing. So I then contacted them and asked if they ran everything..yes they said and no errors.  Mmm, okay..what could be wrong. The only way I can access this server is through a linked server call. I decided to look at the query again.... bingo.. I see what the problem is.....

Let's take a look. First create the following database with 2 tables and 2 indexes on the Test table

CREATE DATABASE Test1
GO


USE Test1
GO

CREATE TABLE Foo(ID int)
GO

CREATE TABLE Test(ID int, ID2 int, ID3 int)
GO

CREATE INDEX ix_Test on Test(ID)
CREATE INDEX ix_Test2 on Test(ID2)

Now if you run the following query against the sys.indexes object catalog view

SELECT  FROM sys.indexes
WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID('Test')

You will get back the following information

object_id	name	index_id	type	type_desc
901578250	NULL	0	0	HEAP
901578250	ix_Test	2	2	NONCLUSTERED
901578250	ix_Test2	3	2	NONCLUSTERED

As you can see we have information about our two indexes and the table itself, since there is no clustered index on this table, we get a row back that shows that the table is a heap

Now let us connect to another database on the same server, in this case we will use the tempdb database

Create a table with the same name

USE tempdb
GO

CREATE TABLE Test(foo int)
GO

Now run the same query again but point to the Test1 database

SELECT * FROM Test1.sys.indexes
WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID('Test')

And you get nothing back.  What does the OBJECT_ID() function return?

SELECT OBJECT_ID('Test')

For me it returns the number 965578478. The problem is that that object_id is the id for that object in the tempdb database, not for the one in the Test1 database

So what can you do?  There are two ways to do this

One way is to join sys.indexes with the sys.tables object catalog view

Here is what the query looks like

SELECT i.* 
FROM Test1.sys.indexes i
JOIN Test1.sys.tables t ON i.object_id = t.object_id
WHERE t.name = 'Test'

Running the query like that displays the correct information

object_id	name	index_id	type	type_desc
901578250	NULL	0	0	HEAP
901578250	ix_Test	2	2	NONCLUSTERED
901578250	ix_Test2	3	2	NONCLUSTERED

If you want to use this against a linked server, use 4 part notation, just prefix Test1.sys with the linked server name, I used LinkedServerName as an example

SELECT i.* 
FROM LinkedServerName.Test1.sys.indexes i
JOIN LinkedServerName.Test1.sys.tables t ON i.object_id = t.object_id
WHERE t.name = 'Test'

That query with the join between sys.indexes and sys.tables can be used for a linked server as well as a different database on the same instance, if you just have to go to another database like we have done before, you can simplify it like this

SELECT  * FROM Test1.sys.indexes
WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID('Test1.dbo.Test')

Basically, you pass in the database name, schema name and object name to the OBJECT_ID() function

That's all for today..