Two tools that I really like are PowerGUI, a tool to take all the hard work out of PowerShell scripting, available in both free and paid versions from Quest Software. You can also get PowerGUI extensions for Visual Studio for free from CodePlex. Another tool I really like is PowerWF. PowerWF is a really cool visual workflow builder that creates PowerShell scripts for you. Turns out that it integrates with PowerGUI! This video shows 2 different ways that PowerWF Workflows can be run from within Quest Software's PowerGUI tool. Watch the Video - Download PowerWF Enjoy! -Kev … [Read more...]
Integrating Workload Replays into Database Change Management
I would like to make you aware of a recently written paper by Bert Scalzo. The paper focuses on how DBAs can rely on the Toad and Benchmark Factory to perform database workload replays, ensuring that changes to the databases do not degrade the user experience. White Paper: Integrating Workload Replays into Database Change Management I encourage you to read the paper and make workload replay a part of your database change management practices. As I’ve been saying for years, if you don’t have quantitative evidence of what normal is for your database, how can you know what is … [Read more...]
Have You Heard About Project Lucy?
Quest Software's latest community initiative, Windows Azure-based Project Lucy, has debuted! Project Lucy is part infrastructure analytics, part social media experiment, and part performance data warehouse. The best things about Project Lucy include: It’s Free - just like our SQLServerPedia website, Project Lucy is free to anyone who wants to upload a trace file It’s 1oo% web-based - you don’t have to download or maintain anything and updates roll out seamlessly, all the time It really helps - just generate a SQL Trace on a SQL Server 2000, 2005 or 2008 instance, upload it on … [Read more...]