February, 2012

While delivering IT Virtualization Boot Camps and taking the participants through the process of creating a failover cluster, Mitch Garvis and I found that a couple of times some of the individuals ran across issues when creating a Windows Failover Cluster from both nodes at the same time – you only need to create the cluster from one node and it does all the work for you on both!   The end result...

Securing SQL Server is one of the top priorities of any SQL Server DBA. It is extremely important for DBA’s and system admins to make sure that SQL Server is TIGHTLY SECURED and is not exposed to users that don’t need access to SQL Server. Only valid and required users MUST be granted “required” permissions.   Apart from configuring the right security/permissions for SQL Server users/logins, it...

Many of you (thousands, impressively!) read the three articles that Mitch Garvis wrote in April about Microsoft’s Software iSCSI Target 3.3. If you didn’t, you can read them all now by clicking below: All for SAN and SAN for All Creating a SAN using Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 Creating HA VMs for Hyper-V with Failover Clustering using FREE Microsoft iSCSI Target 3.3 In the months since, and...

While delivering IT Virtualization Boot Camps across the country, Mitch Garvis and I often get asked about how to administer Windows Server 2008 R2 computers running Hyper-V or other services remotely.  This is especially true if you want to administer computers running Hyper-V Server or Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core install.  Mitch put together information on how to do this, so here...

Yesterday in Vancouver Mitch Garvis and I wrapped up the second set of IT Virtualization Boot Camps . Like the ones we delivered in Mississauga, the overwhelming feedback we received has been positive with everyone attending liking the format and the skills being gained around Hyper-V , failover clustering , and Microsoft’s virtualization platform . The next set of IT Virtualization Boot Camps...

Getting hands on with Private Cloud technologies and one of its key technical elements – virtualization – is turning out to be pretty popular with many of you out there.  When I first announced the IT Virtualization Boot Camps we kicked off in Toronto on January 20 and 21 those events sold out within days .  Immediately we heard from many of you asking for IT Virtualization Boot Camps in...

The following article is written by Mitch Garvis ( @MGarvis ) and also appears on The World According to Mitch . Microsoft created Windows Small Business Server as a one-box solution for companies that did not need more. It has always been a hobbled product, based on Windows Server Standard, but limited in things like domain trusts, FSMO roles , and more. Of course even if it were based on Windows...

You are a trusted database developer for your company. You developed a Stored Procedure that will perform some important functions on the database. You tested the Stored Procedure and everything looks great. The Stored Procedure runs the way you expected and within the anticipated timeframe. Everything looks great and now you are ready to deploy the code to the production environment. The production...

A new whitepaper was released in January comparing private cloud solutions from Microsoft and VMware, taking a look at the functionality, benefits and economics of each solution. This series of blog posts breaks down the components of the whitepaper into consumable chunks and I’ve added my own commentary. Starting with the basics, what is a private cloud? From the whitepaper: Private...

Remember those days when the database would go in to suspect mode and you had to perform various steps to recover the database by putting the database in the emergency mode and then extracting the data out of that emergency database?   These are the high level steps you had to perform in previous (<SQL2K5) versions of SQL Server 1.        Enable modifications to...

As I listen to Mitch Garvis today it occurs to me that there are some things we need to make clear to those who have participated in Mississauga, Vancouver and Ottawa, or will be participating in IT Virtualization Boot Camps in Montreal , Calgary , Edmonton (registration link coming soon), and Saskatoon .  When we developed the IT Virtualization Boot Camps we had several discussions around what...

Hello folks, This is my compilation of some of the online resource available to you in March 2012 . This list featuring both live and on-demand content including webcasts, videos, virtual labs, and podcasts by product and topic. this is not the WHOLE list of the available content. but these are the ones i thought were relevant to customers and IT pros. Microsoft webcasts are 30-90 minutes in length...

The title of this post is “Because there’s always more to learn.” Where’s that from? You know it… That’s right – TechDays. But wait… time to talk about TechDays 2012 already? Not quite. But it is time to talk about TechDays Online ! Whether you were able to attend Tech·Days 2011 (or even 2010!) or not you’ll find it all on Tech·Days...

Ever felt the need for knowing who is logging on to your SQL Server and at what time? Ever felt like restricting some of the specific users for certain time-period or firing a trace to track down user activity? Ever felt like limiting the number of concurrent connections from specific users?   Well, you can do all that now with SQL Server.   SQL Server introduced a new feature called Logon...

My colleague, Paul Laberge , posted this article on the Canadian Developer Connection Blog and I had to share it.  We here on the IT Professional side love our MVPs as well.  Many of them allow us to provide you with the great content on this blog as well as through our various online and in-person events.  We can’t do what we do without our MVPs and others in the community who are always...

Today is a really important date in the evolution of Windows. Today we released the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 , and Windows Server “8” beta . I’m sure that many of you are as excited as I am to download both of these (almost done as I write this post), but a thought struck me as soon I watch the download progress bar. Now What? Sure, like most of you, I’m going to find a machine to install each...

There are times when SQL Server may be so busy processing requests that it can no longer allocate memory or processor resources to even allow an SA to connect. This has been an issue with older versions of SQL Server.   SQL Server solves this problem by introducing a feature called "Dedicated Administrator Connection” (DAC).   DAC uses a specific TCP endpoint in a SQL Server instance...