Here at Blackbaud’s headquarters in Charleston, South Carolina, we’ve been closely monitoring Hurricane Sandy.  We have detailed contingency plans to ensure we’re able to provide support from off-site locations, including our offices in Virginia, Boston and Washington D.C., for down and critical issues during times of disasters. We include this information in our Customer Guide [...]

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” – Juliet (Romeo and Juliet) During the installation of SQL Server, the Database Administrator (DBA) will be prompted to make a choice regarding the name of the SQL Instance itself. While an instance name can be considered [...]

After purchasing a new server which is to become your dedicated SQL workhorse, your first task is to install the SQL instance(s) you need. It sounds simple enough, but this choice often is seen as one of the most confusing and pressing: confusing because there are so many versions and editions of SQL Server and [...]

Imagine with me, for a moment, that you’ve ordered a shiny new server and are in the process of unpacking it from its shipping container. As the scrape of Styrofoam and crinkle of plastic echoes off the walls of your server room, you free the server from its confinement and proceed to rack it. This [...]

When was the last time you backed up your Blackbaud database? When was the last time you tested the backup to make sure everything was working properly? There’s never a bad time to review your policies and procedures for database backups. Our recommended backup procedures include backing up your database regularly and keeping a copy [...]

What do car manufacturers and database administrators have in common? More than you might think… According to Wikipedia, crash test dummies are “full-scale anthropomorphic test devices (ATD) that simulate the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body, and are usually instrumented to record data about the dynamic behavior of the ATD in simulated [...]