My favorite DBA resources and tools

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In this blog, I’ll list and briefly review some of the resources and tools that I genuinely find valuable — the ones I often return to, whether for learning or hands-on use. I’m especially thankful to be part of a DBA community filled with talented people who generously share their knowledge and experience.

I’ll continue adding more great content to this list as I come across resources/tools that have helped me throughout my career journey.

🔧Performance Tuning Blogs and Videos

  • Brent Ozar Unlimited – How to Think Like the Engine
    Watch on YouTube
    A must-watch series that breaks down how SQL Server processes queries internally by showing how data is stored on disk as 8KB pages. It’s a foundational class for anyone getting into query performance tuning. I always enjoy watching Brent Ozar’s videos—he’s humorous, knowledgeable, and a great communicator. His lessons are packed with interesting examples. Always ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ from me!
  • Erik and Kendra Rate SQL Performance Tuning Techniques
    Watch on YouTube
    Entertaining and educational, with real-world advice on tuning strategies. This video gives a quick overview of common performance tuning techniques, along with practical examples and common pitfalls or misconceptions to avoid.
  • Cardinality Estimator In Depth by Joe Sack
    Microsoft Docs
    A deep dive into how the cardinality estimator works and why it matters.
  • Microsoft White Paper: Performance Tuning with Waits and Queues
    Download DOC
    A classic resource for understanding performance tuning through waits.
  • SQLSkills White Paper: SQL Server Performance Tuning Using Wait Statistics
    Download DOC
    Another excellent wait stats guide from industry experts.
  • More fantastic content from:
    Kendra Little, Brent Ozar, and Paul White — their blogs and videos are consistently insightful.

💾 Database Corruption

  • Database Corruption Course by Paul Randal
    Pluralsight Course
    A free online course to understanding and handling database corruption.
  • “What to Do When DBCC CHECKDB Reports Corruption” by Brent Ozar
    Read the Blog Post
    Straightforward advice on what to do (and not do!) when database corruption strikes.

📈 Keeping Up-to-Date

  • Brent Ozar Unlimited – Office Hours
    YouTube Channel
    Weekly sessions answering top-rated real-world SQL questions. I check his YouTube channel every week to stay up to date with new problems—there’s always something new for me to learn.
  • Redgate State of the Database Landscape
    Read the 2025 Report
    Redgate releases a new report every year covering the past year’s new industry trends, careers, database technologies, challenges, and development.
  • SQLConstantCare Population Report
    Link— keep an eye out for updates!
    Every quarter, Brent Ozar Unlimited publishes adoption rate data showing how quickly people are moving to newer versions of SQL Server. Maybe it’s time for you to upgrade, too!

🧰 Free tools I Keep Coming Back To

  • sp_Blitz – Health checks and configuration tips for your SQL Server. I also use it extensively to query the top(10) queries with high logical reads, CPU time, memory grants, etc. If your monitoring tool isn’t quite cutting it, this is a great complement you might want to try.
  • SQLConstantCare – Proactive health check recommendations. I use the free version, and every week it sends an email to my company’s DBA team with suggestions on what to fix or a nice reminder of how well I’m doing as a DBA. I love free tools that are this great—👍
  • DBATools – A powerful PowerShell toolkit for everyday DBA tasks. I’ve used it to perform SQL Server instance migrations to a new server.
  • WorkloadTools – Useful for capturing and replaying production workloads. I’ve used it to test migrating SQL Server instances to a new server or upgrading to a new version.
  • Ola Hallengren’s Maintenance Scripts My go-to for backups, integrity checks, and index maintenance. They’re FREE and some of the BEST free tools you can get if your business can't afford third-party paid tools. Please, always prioritize backup and integrity checks—they’re far more important than anything else😌.
  • Query Store: I’ve used this tool extensively for performance tuning. It’s lightweight and stores a wealth of historical data on your queries’ performance over time, including all the key performance metrics. You can query the Query Store DMV and use the built-in reports with charts. Query Store and sp_BlitzCache are my go-to tools whenever I need to perform-tune queries. 
  • sp_whoisactive: Have you ever been in a situation where people are asking, “Hey DBA! Why is the application slow?” or “Hey DBA! Something is broken?” In such cases, we need a tool that can quickly show what’s happening on the SQL Server right now. sp_WhoIsActive is such a powerful tool created by Adam Machanic. It provides real-time insight into the current activity on your SQL Server instance, including running queries, wait types, blocking chains, CPU usage, I/O, tempdb usage, query text, query plan, and more.

Data Migration

  • SQLBits -SQL Server 2022 migrations with dbatools
    Watch On Youtube
    The speaker did a great job walking through the migration process with a clear and effective code demo.

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