As a DBA one of the jobs is making sure all the databases and database servers are working properly and you have a controlled environment.

Once in a while, you have a skeleton in the closet where suddenly a database server comes around and you’re scratching your head where it came from. Your manager (and maybe your colleagues) expect you to support it because you’re the DBA.

You don’t know the server, your colleague doesn’t (really) know the server. So now what. Are you going to take responsibility for everything on the database server of the database itself when you don’t know anything about it?

Problem

The business uses a database that is 350 GB database in size and has only one data file and one transaction log file. The previous DBA didn’t increase the amount of data files which lead to a large data file. Due to the size of the data file, I got into trouble with the performance, and restoring the database wasn’t a walk in the park either. So how can split a large data file into smaller data files?