DBTA:Reaching for Highly Scalable Systems with SQL Server 2008

SQL Server has supported VLDBs (very large databases) for some time now. Back in the SQL Server 2000 days, I recall hearing multi-terabyte databases were unusual but doable. Now, they are commonplace, while databases in the hundreds of terabytes inhabit the part of the map that says "there be dragons." While VLDBs are quite common on SQL Server today, highly scalable systems that can be flexibly extended in the same fashion as Oracle/RAC are less so. So, how do you design a highly available architecture for SQL Server if it's not like Oracle/RAC. [READ MORE] … [Read more...]

DBTA: Long-Term Changes Resulting from Policy-Based Management

It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that my company’s IT department was bracing for a major new line of work. Back in the mid 1990s, we were going full steam into client-server technology. At the same time, we were significantly expanding our workforce. The IT department that had spent years as an old-style mainframe shop, was suddenly inundated with requests for new workstations, network user IDs, new network domains, permission requests, and requests for application access privileges. Our lone mainframe permissions person quickly felt overwhelmed and a little baffled by all of these … [Read more...]