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Archive for the ‘Administration’ Category
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
In last month’s column, “2012 Might Really Be the End of the World as We Know It,” I described a number of major developments in the IT industry that are likely to disrupt the life of database professionals everywhere. I categorize those four disruptors – virtualization, cloud computing, solid state drives (SSD), and advanced multi-core CPUs – into two broad groups. I’m going to continue an analysis of these disruptive technologies in inverse order. Today, let’s discuss SSDs.
[READ MORE ON DATABASE TRENDS & APPLICATIONS ]
Tags: Best Practices, Career, DBA, DBTA, Developer, FutureWatch, Goals, Virtualization
Posted in Administration, Challenges, Cool Technologies, Databases, IO, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Virtualization | No Comments »
Monday, August 8th, 2011
Back when my day-to-day duties included database administration work and enterprise architecture, I became rather obsessed with the idea of operational excellence. I read everything I could on the topic. I made a list of favorites, which became somewhat shabby over time, as I dog-eared important pages and scribbled notes in the margins. (Perhaps that list of favorites might, in and of itself, make a good blog post). Fast-forward a decade and I’m still mightily interested in operational excellence for IT organizations. It’s just that so much good material is available for free on the web.
Here’s a run-down of several useful documents and downloads to improve overall operation performance for those of you in a Microsoft-centric IT organization:
Microsoft Operations Framework
Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) version 4.0 guide is practical guidance for IT organizations. With the release of version 4.0, MOF now reflects a single, comprehensive IT service lifecycle—it helps IT professionals connect service management principles to everyday IT tasks and activities and ensures alignment between IT and the business.
Infrastructure Planning and Design
The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture. The guides in this series help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, with each guide addressing a unique infrastructure technology or scenario.
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.2 (for IT Professionals)
The Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer provides a streamlined method to identify missing security updates and common security misconfigurations. MBSA 2.2 is a minor upgrade correct minor issues and add optional catalog support.
Security Compliance Manager
The Microsoft Security Compliance Manager provides centralized security baseline management features, a baseline portfolio, customization capabilities, and security baseline export flexibility to accelerate your organization’s ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies.
Tags: Architecture, Best Practices, Compliance, DBA, Enterprise Architecture, Management, Operations, Performance, Security, SQL Server 2008 R2, Tools, Troubleshooting
Posted in Administration, Architecture, Compliance, Cool Technologies, Hardware, On-Line Resources, Security, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Strategies, TCD blog post, Tips & Tricks, Virtualization | No Comments »
Friday, August 5th, 2011
A little over a month ago, I wrote an article (Is There Such a Thing as Easy ETL) about expressor software and their desktop ETL application, expressor Studio. I wrote about how it seemed much easier than the native ETL tools in SQL Server when I was reading up on the tool, but that the “proof would be in the pudding” so to speak when I actually tried it out loading some free (and incredibly useful) data from the US federal data clearinghouse, Data.Gov.
If you’d rather not read my entire previous article – quick recap, expressor Studio uses “semantic types” to manage and abstract mappings between sources and targets. In essence, these types are used for describing data in terms that humans can understand—instead of describing data in terms that computers can understand. The idea of semantic abstraction is quite intriguing and it gave me an excuse to use data from data.gov to build a quick demo. You can download the complete data set I used from the following location: International Statistics. (Note: I have this dream that I’m going to someday download all of this free statistical data sets, build a bunch of amazing and high-value analytics, and make a mint. If, instead, YOU do all of those things, then please pay to send at least one of my seven kids to college in repayment for the inspiration. I’m not kidding. I have SEVEN kids. God help me).
The federal government, to their credit, has made great progress in making data available. However, there is a big difference between accessing data and understanding data. When I first looked at one of the data files I downloaded, I figured it was going to take me years to decrypt the field names. Luckily, I did notice an Excel file with field names and descriptions. Seriously, there are single letter field names in these files where the field name “G” has a description of “Age group indicator” (Oh Wow). See the figure below.
It’s stuff like this that reminds me why we have data quality and master data management tools. Ok, back to expressor Studio. I quickly mapped a couple of files into expressor Studio using their “Read File” operator. It was fairly simple and easy to use. My data included files with country area information, population, and gender information by year. Once I mapped these files I quickly wanted to shed the default cryptic, nay, nonsensical names. I could have just renamed the fields when I initially mapped them into the system but that would mean I would have to manage the names in three separate locations. Bah! It made more sense to create a common semantic type and reuse it across all three files.
There are two flavors of semantic types within expressor Studio to handle your mappings, atomic types or composite types. An atomic type is simply a single field name whereas a composite type is a combination of one more atomic types. Since the data files had many common fields, I decided to create a core set of atomic types that I could then roll up into composite types based on the files I was mapping. This kept the mappings simple and easy to understand and most importantly the whole exercise took about 5 minutes. Once the types were created I simply mapped the cryptic names from the files to the business friendly names in my semantic type. (I can’t even begin to imagine how long this would’ve taken to build using native tools, but certainly not 5 minutes).
Now I was ready to move my data. I took the data from three files and combined them into one master dataset. From there, my international statistics from Data.Gov were pumped right into my waiting SQL Server database. Note that I could’ve used Excel or just about any other database as my target instead of SQL Server.
Now, you might be saying to yourself “That looks easy because you read all the help files first.” Actually, no. In fact, some of my buddies like to lovingly tell me to “RTFM” from time to time. It’s not that it offends my masculinity to read a manual. I just usually like to have a go first and then, if needed, go back to the manual. In fact, all I really used was this 5-minute demo video that in noticed when I was downloading the tool.
If you’re tackling ETL and you want it fast and easy, then you might want to check out their website, www.expressor-software.com, to learn more about the expressor company and products.
Enjoy!
-Kev
P.S. Follow me on Twitter!
Tags: Data Cleansing, Data Quality, DBA, ETL, Master Data Management, SQL Server 2008 R2
Posted in Administration, Cool Technologies, Databases, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
Check out the new white paper “Key Methods for Managing Complex DB Environments” at Quest.com. Heterogeneous database management hassles used to be much less common than today. When I first started at Quest nearly ten years ago, I’d put forward that on 15-20% of my big customers regularly managed more than one major database platform. (That doesn’t mean they didn’t have more than one, rather secondary platforms were either unmanaged or considered entirely unimportant). Today, I’d put forward that 70-80% of my big customers support at least two major database platforms. Often, they support three or more.
This white paper addresses methods for successfully managing today’s complex heterogeneous database infrastructures. Topics discussed include: balancing key business metrics, understanding challenges to the DBA, and managing multiple database platforms (i.e. Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase) simultaneously.
Enjoy,
-Kev
P.S. Follow me on Twitter!
Tags: DB2, DBA, Oracle, SQL Server 2008 R2, Sybase
Posted in Administration, Challenges, Databases, SQL Server, Tips & Tricks, Trends | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011
EPIC FAIL! This was supposed to go out last week. But I didn’t schedule it properly, so I’d just like to point out that there are lots of other great webcasts to watch at the Pragmatic Works webcast URL below. Plus, my session will be available via streaming by the end of the week. And thanks the the 1600 folks who registered!
-=-=-=-
Come join me on Tuesday, August 2, 2011 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT for a free webcast covering the internals and architecture of Microsoft SQL Server. It’s not everyday that a dry topic like this is presented in a fun and easy to understand format, so get in while the gettin’ is good. :^)
Registration is free, thanks to the fine folks at Pragmatic Works.
REGISTER HERE
And don’t forget to check out all of Pragmatic Works’ other free webcasts. It’s great stuff and it’s FREE!
Enjoy,
-Kev
Follow me on Twitter
Tags: Best Practices, DBA, Developer, Internals, Monitoring, Performance, SQL Server 2008 R2
Posted in Administration, Databases, Presentations, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication | No Comments »
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
I read too much, and that, my friends, is an entirely separate topic for a blog post. But I thought I’d share with you a little more about what I’m reading because sometimes, if I’m lucky, it might be something you’d enjoy too.
So I’m going to start sharing what I’m reading at least once per week, partly so that I don’t firehose too many reading links directly into your brain (where I to do it say once per month) and partly to solidify in my own mind the information that I’m reviewing. So here are a few good links for the seven days leading up to July 22, 2001:
- Microsoft and Whitehouse partnership on BigData: BigData isn’t a particularly new concept. But I was intrigued to learn that the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, and 13 other teams were partnering on developing better BigData analytics for lots of government data from activities such as healthcare, economic development, education, transportation, and the power grid. Cools stuff! Plus, Microsoft has developed a new tool called Project Daytona to better harness the power of the cloud, in general, and Windows Azure, specifically.
- While we’re on the topic of Federal IT in the Cloud be sure to read this linked article from ComputerWorld. Say what you will about our government, but putting government IT in the cloud and increasing both its transparency and availability will make a huge difference in how the Federal government will be able to service the public. We’re talking as big a difference as corporations experienced between the “catalog on the web” experience of the 1990′s to the Web2.0 experience of today.
- If you’re the social media type, give this article a read discussing the Power of Hashtags in Social Media.
- The Register, of the UK, whose tagline is “Biting the hand that feeds IT” has a great article on a spat over database technologies between the IT sage Michael Stonebreaker and Google. It’s a great read if for no other reason than to prove that databases are worth fighting over.
- And if you think Microsoft is still towing the relational database barge without thinking about other technologies, you need to read up on Projects Dryad and Daytona.
- Finally, I’m still getting lots of questions about when and where to limit SQL Server’s Max Degrees of Parallelism. Be sure to read Microsoft’s Recommendations and Guidelines for ‘max degree of parallelism’ configuration option here.
And just because so many of us in IT are closet or former musicians, there’s Live Guitar Lessons with Steven Krenz, sponsored by my hometown boyz at Gibson Guitar.
Got a favorite article or tool tip? Let me know! Enjoy,
-Kev
Follow me on Twitter.
Posted in Administration, BigData, Challenges, Cloud, Cool Technologies, Databases, Gov2.0, IO, NoSQL, On-Line Resources, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post, Tips & Tricks, Tool Time, Trends, Virtualization, Web2.0 | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
Remote Desktop Services Component Architecture Poster
Grab your own poster! A visual guide to key Remote Desktop Services technologies in Windows Server 2008R2
Virtually Free
Get the latest update rollup package for the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 R2 and be sure to bookmark the Windows Virtualization Team Blog. Be sure to check out blog World Simplified is a Virtual World. And doncha evah neglect application virtualization, such as the goodness at the App-V Product Team Blog.
Let’s Optimize Some Desktops (Assuming You Have Gone Full Cloud Yet)
Check out The Official Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) Blog where you can get cool tools like the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DART), currently in its v7 beta release.
 We Can Always Perform a Little Better
Have you checked out the Ask the Performance Team blog yet. You should! Then there’s the Microsoft Enterprise Networking Team blog. And if you’re looking for help with the Windows Server Core, be sure to check out the Ask the Core Team blog. Excellent stuff!
As the Tool Time columnist at SQL Server Magazine, I’m always on the lookout for great free tools that get on-going support from their creators. One common experience is finding a nice debugging tool, only to discover that there’s no information on how to interpret the debugger result sets! (SQLIOSim anyone?) That’s why I love the Microsoft Advanced Windows Debugging and Troubleshooting blog. Another must-have on your Favorites list.
Enjoy!
-Kev
Follow me on Twitter
Tags: Best Practices, cloud computing, DBA, Debugging, Developer, Performance, SQL Server 2008 R2, Tools, Troubleshooting, Virtualization, Windows
Posted in Administration, Cloud, Cool Technologies, Databases, On-Line Resources, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post, Tips & Tricks, Tool Time | No Comments »
Friday, July 8th, 2011
I have to confess that I’m incredibly excited about BigData. I haven’t been this excited about new innovations in IT since relational databases first appeared on the scene early in my career. But what is BigData?
Back in those days, I can still feel the echos of adrenaline when I was hired to work on a NASA project that would involve over 100Mb of data. ONE HUNDRED MEGABYTES! Good grief, that was fantastically huge to us on the team. (That database was over 130Mb when I finally moved on to another project). And remember – PC software was installed using 640Kb floppy disks at the time. In fact, my Oracle v5 instance required shuffling through about a dozen floppy disks to get the thing installed on a 286 IBM PC.
BigData today takes on an entirely meaning as database sizes scale into the petabytes. But the emphasis is still the same today as it was back in the 1980′s – turning data into actionable information. However, with BigData, we can achieve amazing new insight from this data and mine for tidbits that would never have seen the light of day with smaller data sets.
The two major themes to remember about big data are 1) the more data you have on a given domain, the more power you have, 2) the better the analysis you can perform on the data, the more power you have. In fact, theme 2 might be the most important thing to consider because lots of data is meaningless unless you can extract knowledge from it. And that’s where better analytical techniques come into play.
Here are some articles about Big Data that you might enjoy:
Let me know what you think. Best regards,
-Kev
Tags: Best Practices, Big Data, Career, cloud computing, DBA, FutureWatch, SQL Server 2008 R2
Posted in Administration, BigData, Challenges, Databases, NoSQL, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
Spotlight on SQL Server
That’s right! An all new version 8.0 of Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise is now GA and updated trials are live on the website. Some cool stuff therein:
• Support for SQL Server 2011 (Denali) – Spotlight can now be used to monitor SQL Server 2011 databases (Denali CTP1 and CTP2 releases).
• Project Lucy integration – Use Project Lucy to analyze the performance of your database and compare your experience with everyone else who uses the service.
• VMware memory diagnostics – Analyze virtual memory using charts similar to that used to analyze virtual CPU.
We also put out a press release at TechEd in May announcing Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise 8.0 – you can check that out in the Newsroom on Quest.com: Quest Software Adds Collective Intelligence-Based Analysis to Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise.
LiteSpeed for SQL Server
Version 6.5 is hot off the presses HERE. Some very cool new features include:
- Adaptive Compression to continually optimize backup compression for best performance
- Backup Templates to easily manage and deploy backup jobs to multiple instances
- More powerful remote deployment facility to simplify server deployment and configuration
- Fast Compression to deduplicate data at the server and further reduce backup times and data volume
LiteSpeed keeps getting faster and faster!
Toad for SQL Server
Version 5.5 is GA with lots of new features and benefits include:
- Greater consistency with Toad for Oracle
- New session browser
- Added filtering to schema compare and synch
- Same installer as Toad for Oracle
- Bundle installers
- Enterprise option in the license key to display “unlimited” seats
- Database Administration Enhancements
- Index defragmentation
- Manage database storage
- Discover SQL Server Instances
- Virtual Indexes for User Defined Alternatives (SQL Optimizer)
- Database Development Enhancements
- Improved critical Code Completion functionality and overall performance
New bundle executables are now available for download:
And as I’ve offered in the past, let me know if you want the KEK hookup for a long-term license of Toad for SQL Server. [wink wink nudge nudge]
Storage Maximizer for SharePoint
Check out this cool tool which greatly enhances your storage options when using Microsoft SharePoint: http://communities.quest.com/community/sharepointforall/management/storage_maximizer_for_sharepoint. Some details:
- Supports EBS – Storage Maximizer works with SharePoint External BLOB Storage (EBS) to leave a GUID behind in the content database that references the location of the external content. The end users will see the same link and can still open the item as if it were stored in the SQL content database. Support for RBS will follow 3 months after the 1.0 release.
- Rules Engine – Storage Maximizer allows a SharePoint administrator to set rules that automatically remove content to selected external repositories based on content criteria, including size, type, date and number of versions. Administrators can quickly deploy rules to reduce content database size without having to perform complicated rule calculations.
- Flexible Storage – Offload content to various content repositories within a single install. Utilize various levels of storage that range from direct attached storage, network storage to cloud-based storage. Storage Maximizer works with the following cloud storage providers, Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure.
- Content Externalizing Scope – Set the scope for externalizing documents form a Site Collection to a document library.
- Reporting Dashboard – View the amount of externalized content in an easy to read graphical chart and view details of how much content is externalized to the various repositories, the status of those repositories and the events happening with content externalization.
- Integrated Management – Storage Maximizer integrates with Central Administration and looks indistinguishable from other SharePoint features. It installs no agents or services, but Storage Maximizer is a fully integrated solution that leverages existing APIs and Services.
- Encryption and Compression – Secure your external data with Storage Maximizer encryption and compression to ensure only those going through SharePoint with the proper access can view and change the data.
- Enabled Search – Storage Maximizer maintains SharePoint search capabilities to ensure you find the data you need.
- Document Re-entry – Bring your externalized content back into SharePoint easily with Storage Maximizer. Never lose your external content, when you disable the link between SharePoint and the external content, Storage Maximizer will bring that content back into the SharePoint content database.
Plenty of webinars too!
Tags: Backup & Recovery, Quest Software, SQL Server 2008 R2, Toad, Tools
Posted in Administration, Challenges, Databases, SQL Server | No Comments »
Monday, June 27th, 2011
First off – the Pain of the Week webcast series has been renamed. It’s now known as The Expert’s Perspective. Please join us for future webcasts and, if you’re interested in speaking, drop me a note to see if we can get you on the roster!
The bigger your databases get, the longer backups take. That doesn’t really seem like a huge problem — until disaster strikes and you need to restore your databases as fast as possible.
Join my buddy Brent Ozar (blog | twitter), a Microsoft Certified Master of SQL Server and good friend, as he reveals ways to make these critically important maintenance tasks run faster.
You’ll discover:
- Why Instant File Initialization is so important for restores
- How to use DMVs to check restore progress
- How to find the bottleneck while you’re backing up or restoring data
Watch the recorded presentation at http://www.quest.com/events/ListDetails.aspx?ContentID=13358!
Enjoy!
-Kev
Tags: Backup & Recovery, Best Practices, DBA, Performance, Video
Posted in Administration, Databases, Performance, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »
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