The study by ESG Labs, demonstrates performance, scalability, and low overhead of Hyper-V can be used to reduce costs and improve the manageability, flexibility, and availability of SQL Server workloads. Through their testing, ESG Lab confirmed that the performance and scalability of Windows Server...

With the launch of the Virtual Machine preview on Windows Azure along with Media Services and Websites I have been busy just setting up a few environments. It has been really easy to spin up new VMs very quickly – literally in few clicks once you have registered for the preview for Virtual Machine. What...

Thank you to those who attended my SQL Saturday presentation last Saturday at Epping Boys High School. It was a very well organised event by Grant Paisley pictured below, enjoying the many boxes of pizza made available during the lunch break for attendees. There are still more SQL Saturday events to...

HP and Microsoft engineering teams have worked together to create a reference architecture to Accelerate Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) database workloads with a fully-flash based HP/Microsoft architecture and achieve significant performance increases, simplified database manageability, and industry...

To help you evaluate your SQL Server database(s) readiness to move onto our public offering – SQL Azure, we have made available a new experimental online service - SQL Azure Compatibility Assessment   on SQL Azure Labs. This services checks compatibility of your schema. To use this service you need...

Just finishing off the final touches to my two presentations and hope to catch you either in my sessions or at the exhibition floor where we will be showcasing the new HP Business Decision (BDA) , exciting BI visualisation with Project Crescent and the new AlwaysOn capability to easily enable availability...

A Principal Data Engineer at Microsoft (Saleem Hakani) had authored the below SQL Server Tips & Trick and I thought it would be one that would be found handy by many. Keep this one handy you never know when you may need it (Hopefully not too many times). You are working as a trusted DBA responsible...

At Teched North America we just announced our official SQL Server Private Cloud story, and I really like how this encapsulated in the below poster (which by the way can be downloaded from the site). The SQL Server Private Cloud story is about consolidating databases, and providing and easy to deploy...

  Recently, on codeplex the Application Lifecycle Management Rangers from Microsoft have made available guidance on database development practices when using Visual Studio 2010 database projects. This practical guidance is focused on the following topics: Solution and Project Management Source Code...

  When it comes to financial transactions of customers and their money, it is absolutely imperative that none of these transactions is ever lost due to an IT system failure (or any other type of failure). This white paper shows you how to create a Microsoft SQL Server infrastructure that enables...

The CTP 1 for SQL Server Denali is now available to download at the below link: Link to Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=6a04f16f-f6be-4f92-9c92-f7e5677d91f9 Things that excite me about this upcoming release is: AlwaysOn – make high availability lot easier going forward...

Following whitepapers have been released/updated and discuss SQL Server’s great low TCO and Enterprise capabilities. It is a must read for anyone looking for a database platform that can provide the best value.   Do Not Pay Too Much For Your Database Licenses : update from previous white paper entitled...

The SQL CAT Team have just released another SQL Server High Availability case study. This time it is based on a Australian customer – Queensland Rail’s implementation of a geo-clustered SQL Server using Hitachi SANs with Truecopy. This infrastructure is used to run their SAP databases which was migrated...

Let me say that again just in case you missed it, SQL Server is the most secure RDBMS. This is just not me saying, it is based on figures tracked by NIST, and the full details have been written up by a independent analyst. The full report can be accessed at: http://itic-corp.com/blog/2010/09/sql-server...

Time to time I get questions asked about training and learning more about SQL Server management, maintenance, best practices. As with every Microsoft product I say they are best learnt with hands on technique, that is to say get yourself a copy of the software (of course legally/eval versions) and install...

Microsoft announced today the release of the first version of SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for MySQL! Along with this release, Microsoft refreshed the existing SSMA family of products for Oracle, Sybase and Access with the latest v4.2 release. SQL Server Migration Assistant for MySQL is the...

Recently I had query around documentation that discusses the benefits of running SQL Server in a virtualised environment on modern hardware with SLAT or second level address translation. The below graph shows that (see the solid red line) the relative throughput for hardware with SLAT & Windows Server...

Do you run SAP as your ERP systems? Do you also have SQL Server or SharePoint in your environment? Do you want to give your users easier ways to access the data in your SAP systems – let them be able to self-serve reports. Well if the answers to any of the above questions is “Yes”, then you should...

Keep your system up to date with the most recent cumulative update package for SQL Server 2008 RTM. This package contains all of the SQL Server 2008 hotfixes that have been released since the initial release of SQL Server 2008 RTM. o Understanding Incremental Servicing Model for SQL Server o...

Just in case you missed it!!! Microsoft Support announced an update to the SQL Server virtualisation support policy.   Guest Failover Clustering is supported for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 in a virtual machine for Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, and SVVP...

Finally I found a cool demo of Augmented Reality that is near and dear to me – as it promotes Microsoft SQL Server 2008. I found out about it while searching for Augmented reality demos on Windows Live. The following blog entry - http://blog.mccann.be/2009/04/06/augmented-reality-campaign-for-microsoft...

Following are the links specifically relating to best practices for setting up disk I/O for SQL Server workloads. Predeployment I/O Best Practices - http://sqlcat.com/whitepapers/archive/2007/11/21/predeployment-i-o-best-practices.aspx Complete I/O Best practices whitepaper - http://www.microsoft.com...

If you do not have a network parser such as netmon and want to verify if the connection from the client to the SQL server is encrypted, the following query can be utilised: SELECT encrypt_option FROM sys.dm_exec_connections WHERE session_id = @@SPID -- Note: remove the WHERE clause to see all connections...

As you know SQL Server uses caches to speed up access to data and also query plans.   There are two caches one for Data and the other of Query Plans. When you are doing performance testing, with static data and you want to get accurate results of your test, it is recommended that you clean the two...