If you’re like me, you’ve used Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V more than a time or two, but you’ve always felt a little dirty afterwards. Yeah, you can use the command-line COPY or XCOPY utilities. But they’re decidedly 20th Century, much like some of the laundry still loitering under my office couch.
So I spent a little time over the holidays cleaning up my file system by scripting a backup routine using the very cool and very free ROBOCOPY utility. Now, I’ve got a regularly scheduled job that, after the first run which captured all my files, only backs up new or changed files (and directories) while keeping all of their NTFS attributes. Boo-Yah!
Read all about it on my Tool Time Blog at SQLMag. I’ll also show you how to use some other free and powerful alternatives in future entries.
Check out my new Tool Time column in this month’s SQL Server Magazine. It features some great new PowerShell scripts and information from Chad Miller (blog) who I had the pleasure to meet in person back in October of this year while speaking at the SQL Server of central Florida and at SQL Saturday #21.
In addition, I’d like to point out a free utility called PowerGUI. If you’re like me, the last thing you have time for is learning a new code like PowerShell. So I copped out and got the next best alternative to real code, the fancy and pretty drag-n-drop interface of PowerGUI. (Full disclosure: PowerGUI is made by Quest Software, my employer, but by an unrelated business unit.) Notice that the hyperlink is to a .ORG website. That’s because PowerGUI is not only free, it’s also community-supported. There are tons of free scripts for all sorts of Windows-related technologies like Exchange, Active Directory, and of course SQL Server. Give a look and let me know what you think of it.
I just posted a new entry on my SQLMag Tool Time blog that you might enjoy. Thanks to my friend and fellow MVP John Paul Cook for bringing Disk2Vhd to my attention on his blog. The free tool is enables migration of a physical machine (PM) to a virtual machine (VM), while the PM is running. You can download it from Microsoft here. John also has lots of other great information about VM migration here. Note that John’s content relates to Hyper-V. So if you’re looking for VMWare tools, keep looking. Of course, if you find similar free tools for VMWare, let us know by posting here!
Thanks,
-Kev
Twitter @kekline
More content at http://KevinEKline.com/
Please join me for SQL Saturday #21 coming up on Saturday, October 17th. There are over 50 sessions on tap with great speakers from the area and across the nation. Some of the notable speakers include:
Not only do we have SQL Saturday coming up, but Andy & company put together five world class seminars the week leading up to it! Use code “KKLINE” to get a 20% discount if you register for two or more seminars!
Seminars will be held at the Embassy Suites in Altamonte Springs, FL. Each seminar is $149 and includes a full lunch. Seating is limited, register today!
Attendees of my seminar will get a free copy of my book, Database Benchmarking: A Practical Approach for Oracle and SQL Server, plus other free goodies from my employer, Quest Software. As an added note of explanation, Buck’s excellent seminar centers around detecting and troubleshooting performance problems, while my seminar focuses on writing high-performance and highly scalable SQL and Transact-SQL code. Why not sign up for both of them to get comprehensive education on the entire process of writing great code, deploying it, and monitoring it for continued excellent performance?
Finally, I’ll be speaking at user groups in the area leading up to SQL Saturday. If you can join me at my seminar or at SQL Saturday, maybe one of these other events better fits your schedule:
Tuesday, Oct 13, Tampa SQL Server User Group (http://www.tampasql.com)
Wednesday, Oct 14, Orlando SQL Server User Group (http://www.opass.org)
Friday, Oct 15, Jacksonville SQL Server User Group (http://jacksonville.sqlpass.org)
I just posted a new entry on my SQLMag Tool Time blog that you might like to check out.
I’m a big fan of Bill Graziano’s ClearTrace tool, but perhaps you’ll like the new tool from DBSophic, called TraceAnalyzer, even better? Compare the two and let me know here.
