Beware while creating Maintenance plans using SP2.

I created maintenance plans from my laptop which has got SP2 to the servers that doesnt have SP2 installed. I observed that the old backup files didnt get deleted, I was wondering if that is a bug too so I started to create the maintenance plans from the server itself. so guys beware of this fact. I dont even know if that is a bug or not. Need to verify the same in other servers.

The another glitch is when you create a maintenance plan using a machine with SP2 we cant edit it from a non sp2 client or server, this is the way SP2 has been designed to work so guys beware of this fact too.

Any thoughts or insights in this? Did some one else found out similar issues?

Critical Hot Fix on SP2

The earlier release on SP2 had a maintenance plan bug (if you have downloaded the SP2 before March 5th), which did an early delete of the backup files, then MS released a hot fix then later on seems like they have found out another bug, which prevents from the maintenance plans to execute the checkdb. They have released another hot fix (It is supposed to be of a critical hot fix type.). The details of this can be read from .
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I am thinking that MS is a bit hassle in all the releases of this SQL 2005 and that too with the SP2 release its not even couple of months they have released back to back hot fixes on this SP2. Now Im a bit scared to apply SP2 in my servers, since SP2 has no come back once we apply it.

log_reuse_wait_desc

Last week I got a production call on transaction log full. hmmm there was no chance for that database log to get filled. I was wondering and when I looked into the database it said the transaction log is waiting for the replication to complete. I was like whatttttttttttt, since I had a replication build earlier and dropped it as it didnt work out good.

Then after doing some research I found out like there is a bug with the SQL 2005 in which even if we remove the replication, it doesnt remove it clearly. This issue was discovered in CTM and we are currently in SP1, the issue exists till now. It is being discussed in this MSDN form . It was really too scary ouchhhhhhhh.

Bug in SQL 2005 SP2

SSUG.org has discovered a bug in the maintenance plan clean up schedule, which does the clean up a bit earlier than expected. Seems they have fixed the bug in the latest sp2 i.e the sp2 that is currently in the Microsoft site. If you have downloaded the sp2 prior to March 5th. Please download the latest fix pack or else Microsoft says that it might have some potential data loss.

You can download the latest fix pack here . The associated KB article is here

What Do I love in SP2

Microsoft has atlast released its SP2, it has been awaited for so long and it went through a long testing cycle. The CTP was relased some where during mid of October. Lets see what is there in SP2, Now a days the trend as become such that they started releasing enhancements in service packs rather fixes. As you all know SP1 got mirroring similarly SP2 has tons of new features. I just give some of the features that I love it in SP2.

1. Maintenance Plan - The best thing in this and I love it. Now the plans look like our old 2000 ones, we can have multiple schedulers and bye bye to the shit of creating each plan to each job. The only glitch here is in the wizard we have only one maintenance clean up task, so we need to edit it to add the clean up task of the transaction logs :((.

2. There is no need to install business intelligent studio to edit/create the maintenance task hurrahhhhhhh!!!

3. The next best think I love is the reports oh man they are wow... now you can open them in their own window and the best thing is you can add custom reports in side your management studio. Come on guys its time to rock and role and build custom reports :).

4. Mann this feature you all will love it oohh earlier if you are generating scripts, you need to run the boring wizard twice if at all you need to create a script to create object and then drop object. Guess what now it has been changed you can generate scripts for both at the same time. Itsnt good guys you rock.

5. The another thing i have noticed is earlier when you run the sp_helpfile sp on a sql 2000 database, the result will come along with tons of spaces, I noticed it till sp1 but recently after installing sp2 i noticed that the spaces have goneeeeeeee. I surely give a wowooo to SP2 team for this. Its saves me from the pain of removing the unwanted spaces.

Word of Caution : Once SP2 is applied there is no come back path. You need to remove the whole instance and then do a fresh installation to remove the SP2, which is the biggest nah from me. While SQL 2005 was released the MS assured that there it will be easy to remove the service packs but not this time :((. I wouldnt dare to install it in my production. Just install the tools guys and have fun with them and wait for the screams of ohhh this broke this to settle down and then we can install it in our production.

You can read abt the features of SP2 here . you can download the SP2 here . The guys who developed/manage SQL Server blog here just in case if you guys need to give a howl at them :).