[11/12: Updated URL of Atlanta website]

This week during the day one keynote at the 2010 PASS Summit in Seattle, Microsoft Senior Vice President Ted Kummert announced the public availability of Microsoft Codename Atlanta, a new configuration assessment cloud service that helps customers to reduce downtime and improve the performance of Microsoft SQL server deployments.  [You can watch a recording of the keynote here].

Today, database administrators (DBAs) can spend a great deal of time and effort dealing with problems related to misconfiguration of Microsoft SQL Server.  Microsoft Codename “Atlanta” is a configuration-assessment cloud service that will help customers minimize downtime risk and improve the performance of Microsoft SQL server deployments. This secure cloud service will help DBAs to:

• Proactively avoid problems with Microsoft SQL Server through ongoing monitoring and alerting of configuration from the cloud

• Reduce downtime and improve performance of Microsoft SQL Server through proactive scanning for known configuration issues and comparison with best practices

• Resolve issues faster by providing Microsoft, or your own support staff, the ability to get a current view of your configuration, changes that have been made, and use the most up to date solutions to solve them

Examples of the types of situations that Microsoft Codename Atlanta will alert customers on include:

• Degraded (Ex. Configuration/operational state matches a known “issue signature”)
• Misconfigured (Ex. Service waits for connections on a firewall-blocked port)
• Underpowered (Ex. HW configuration does not meet minimum/recommended specs)
• At risk of data loss (Ex. Event 825: Failed IO Request detected.)
• Unpatched (Ex. “Failure to Install Hotfix KB 962975 on Servers Using Dynamic Disks Could Result in Significant Data Loss in Certain Scenarios”)

The knowledge in this beta release of Microsoft Codename Atlanta are focused on assessing the configuration of the SQL Server Engine within deployments of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.

To find our more information on Microsoft Codename Atlanta, including answers to FAQs and access to the public beta software, visit the Microsoft Codename Atlanta Beta website.  Those who wish to get their hands on the beta software immediate can sign up immediately at http://www.microsoftatlanta.com. 

Sacha Dawes
Sr. Product Planner
System Center Product Management