SQL SERVER � Fix: Logical Name Mismatch Between Catalog Views sys.

master_files and
sys.database_files
July 8, 2019
Pinal Dave
SQL
No Comments
Recently I was trying to demonstrate how to move the files in Always On setup to
one of my existing clients during Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check
and learned something interesting. In this blog, I am going to share my learning
about the mismatch between catalog views sys.master_files and sys.database_files.

SQL SERVER - Fix: Logical Name Mismatch Between Catalog Views sys.master_files and
sys.database_files logicalname-800x234

Before we start let�s look at the documentation for both:

master_files: Contains a row per file of a database as stored in the master

database. This is a single, system-wide view.
database_files: Contains a row per file of a database as stored in the database
itself. This is a per-database view.
This means that the information is stored at separate places (master vs. database
itself) and there could be situations when both are not in Sync state, which means
the location may not be the same.

My client had a database in Always On availability group and they wanted to change
the logical name of LDF file. I was able to reproduce it in my lab servers.

Solarwinds
Step 1
Create Database on Primary and take a backup so that it can be added to the
availability group.

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USE master
GO
CREATE DATABASE [SQLAuthority]
ON PRIMARY
(NAME = N'SQLAuthority', FILENAME = N'F:\DATA\SQLAuthority.mdf' )
LOG ON
(NAME = N'SQLAuthority_xxx', FILENAME = N'F:\DATA\SQLAuthority_log.ldf')
GO
BACKUP DATABASE SQLAuthority TO DISK = 'SQLAuthority.bak' WITH FORMAT
GO
Step 2
Create Availability group and add database created in step 1

Step 3
ALTER database on primary and change the logical file name for the transaction log
file.
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USE [SQLAuthority]
GO
ALTER DATABASE [SQLAuthority] MODIFY FILE
(NAME=N'SQLAuthority_xxx', NEWNAME=N'SQLAuthority_log')
GO
Step 4
Now check logical name between primary and secondary.

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:connect PRIMARY
USE master
GO
SELECT 'Primary',file_id ,name ,physical_name
FROM sys.master_files
WHERE database_id = DB_ID('SQLAuthority')
GO
USE SQLAuthority
GO
SELECT 'Primary' ,file_id ,name ,physical_name
FROM sys.database_files
GO
:connect SECONDARY
USE master
GO
SELECT 'Secondary' ,file_id ,name ,physical_name
FROM sys.master_files
WHERE database_id = DB_ID('SQLAuthority')
GO
USE SQLAuthority
SELECT 'Secondary' ,file_id ,name ,physical_name
FROM sys.database_files
Here is the output:
SQL SERVER - Fix: Logical Name Mismatch Between Catalog Views sys.master_files and
sys.database_files LogicalName_master_files-01

As you can see in highlighted that sys.master_files on secondary still have an old
logical name but database_files had the correct name. I think this is because of
the fact that ALTER command which we ran on primary has been replayed into the
database due to Always On data movement.

WORKAROUND/SOLUTION
To fix this mismatch of data between two catalog views, database restart is needed.
Since we can�t take the database offline and online due to the availability group,
we can do any of two things:

Restart secondary replica OR

Perform failover, make secondary as primary and again failover to get same roles as
earlier.
When I looked further into ERRORLOG, it looks like �Starting up database� in
ERRORLOG fixes the mismatch, which is the startup of the database. I have not tried
mirroring, but I believe it would happen there as well.