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Posts Tagged ‘Best Practices’
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
Steve Balmer very publicly pronounced that Microsoft was “all in” for cloud computing and Windows Azure. So that means Microsoft is using cloud for its internal IT as well as building products to utilize the cloud. If you want to learn how Microsoft IT is using Windows Azure to move existing applications to the cloud and creating new applications for the cloud, click here: IT Showcase on Windows Azure.
Let me know what you think. Accurate and informative? Or marketing fluff?
Thanks,
-Kevin
Follow me on Twitter!
Tags: Azure, Best Practices, SQL Azure, SQL Server 2012
Posted in Cloud, Cool Technologies, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
SQL Server comes with a wide array of tools for monitoring your environment. There are logs and traces that provide information when errors occur, but these are often used passively to react to events that have already occurred. There’s PerfMon, and Profiler, and loads of Dynamic Management Views to check. But where to look?
As database administrators (DBA), we need to monitor our environments proactively and create solutions as issues arise. In this white paper, we will look at a couple technologies – event notifications and extended events – that can help you achieve these goals. With these two features, we’ll look at the error log and deadlocks, and demonstrate how you can get relevant information delivered as it occurs. We’ll also look at ways that run-time errors can be captured and used to help reduce the amount of time required to investigate issues.
This white paper, written by SQL Server MVP Jason Strate (blog | twitter), is a free download but does require a registration.
And, as always, I enjoy your feedback. Thanks!
-Kev
Follow me on Twitter!
Tags: Best Practices, DBA, Internals, Monitoring, SQL Server 2008 R2
Posted in Administration, Challenges, Cool Technologies, Databases, On-Line Resources, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »
Monday, March 19th, 2012
This might be most most overcommitted four-week period of time ever in my life. I’m tired just thinking about it! Not only am I traveling internationally and speaking over the next few weeks, I’m also helping on two book projects, learning some new applications from Quest Software, and helping on a small Transact-SQL refactoring project.
Swag on hand? I’ve got a special printing of 500 video training DVDs for this trip:
SQL Server Training on DMVs
Performance Monitor and Wait Events
Plus, I’ll have a few posters, stickers, and other goodies. Come see me!
SQL Saturday 105; Dublin, Ireland; March 24
My maternal grandmother was first generation Irish-American and, somehow, going to Ireland feels a lot like going home to grandmom’s house. And all my Irish friends make it feel like I’m going home to see the extended family – cousins and ‘once-removed’ family types. And on top of that, we get to talk about SQL Server at SQL Saturday #105! I’ll be doing a session called “Top 10 Things Every Developer Should Know”. I’ll also be hanging out at the Quest Software booth much of the day and, just for fun, I plan on doing a completely unscripted lightning talk.
SQL Server User Group; Maidenhead, UK; March 27
From Dublin, I head over to the lovely town of Maidenhead, UK. I’ll be spending a couple days in the Quest Software office there in Maidenhead, whose SQL Server User Group is lead by fellow Questie Richard Douglas (blog | twitter). I’ll be presenting after Business Intelligence impresario Jen Stirrup (blog | twitter). Space is limited, but there are still some seats left.
I’ve already heard from other twitterati that some great Microsoft SQL Server MVPs will be attending, like Tobiasz Koprowski (Blog | Twitter). If you live in south, central England, then this is your chance! Register here: http://www.sqlserverfaq.com/events/386/Maidenhead-UG-meeting-SQLBits-Preview-Speakers-include-MVPs-Kevin-Kline-and-Jen-Stirrup.aspx.
SQLBits; London, UK; March 29 – 31
This is the official launch event for SQL Server 2012! This is your chance to get the best and biggest dose of SQL Server 2012 training for quite some time. The free training day event is sold out. However, some of the training day seminars have open seats, including my seminar Leadership Skills for the Database Professional. This seminar distills the years of formal training and hard-won experience I’ve accumulated throughout my career starting as a developer leading a small team, through the founding and early startup years of PASS, into my later years leading a large, multi-national development organization. You’ll learn all the skills that are crucial for you to make the leap (and it’s a big one) from full-time technologist to a leader and manager of people.
And we’ll be hosting our popular SQL trivia quize and IT Horror Stories sessions as well. So be sure to plan on grabbing your lunch and heading into our fun lunch-time sessions!
I hope to see you at one of these upcoming events! Cheers,
-Kevin
-Follow me on Twitter
Tags: Best Practices, Career, DBA, Developer, Leadership, Professional Development, Quest Software, SQL Server 2012, Training
Posted in Conferences, Databases, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication | No Comments »
Friday, March 16th, 2012
Here’s an evergreen question. It’s a question that never completely goes away. But lately, I’ve been getting it a few times per week. So I thought it’s time to readdress the question, which usually takes some form of the following:
I can’t really do effective development on my little dev laptop because our production SQL Server database is 15 gazillionbytes, way too big for my workstation. What’s a uber-nerd to do?
Well, maybe they didn’t use the word “uber-nerd”. But you get my drift, right? The production database is really, really big – unmanageably big for keeping a local copy. So that means the dev either has to create a metadata-only version of the database, which won’t produce realistic query plans, or somehow crush their laptop under 15 gazillionbytes of MDF and LDF files.
Actually, you have a better alternative – a clone database, sometimes called a shell database. Here’s how I described a cloned database a few years ago here in my Tool Time column for SQL Server Pro Magazine:
In effect, a cloned database includes all of the schema objects of the database (e.g., tables, views, stored procedures), as well as the statistics and histograms (the so-called “statistics blob”). This metadata is quite small by volume but can tell you what estimated query plans look like outside of a large production environment and how those estimated query plans might change when SQL Server is upgraded. Cloned databases are especially useful when the data is confidential, classified, or subject to privacy laws.
The article gives you all the detail you need to effectively and quickly create a small version of a big, ol’ production database that produces the same query execution plans as you’d get on the prod server.
If you’re struggling with doing development on a big SQL Server database, learn the ropes on cloned databases asap! You’ll be glad you did.
Enjoy!
-Kev
-Follow me on Twitter
Tags: Best Practices, DBA, Developer, Performance, Transact-SQL Programming
Posted in Challenges, Cool Technologies, Databases, On-Line Resources, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks, Tool Time, Transact-SQL Programming | 1 Comment »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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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