Want to watch a free 5-minute video about the basics of Microsoft SQL Server consolidation? No? Maybe you just want to see me talking with my hands while wearing a guayabera. (If you get the chance to grab one of the Quest guayaberas, grab one. They’re choice.) Either way, Christian Hasker, the Director of Product Marketing for Quest Software, interviewed me about SQL consolidation.
We talked about some of the things I covered in my article for the free SQL Consolidation Guide we’re distributing at TechEd. If you’re even thinking about doing any SQL Server consolidation, go register for that guide - it’s got some great articles. I definitely learned from some of the other authors in the guide, and these are all tips that you don’t want to learn the hard way - after your consolidation project goes haywire.
One of the things I love about working at Quest is that they’re genuinely interested in giving back to the community, and this consolidation guide is a great example of that. Pick it up, read through it, and you’ll absorb a lot of information that is useful whether you use Quest software products or not. At Quest, so much of what we do centers around making you (the DBA) look good. Like the old Paul Mitchell ad says, if you don’t look good, we don’t look good. If you’re using the native tools, cool, we can pass on knowledge that will help, because we have to work closely with the native stuff in our discovery process to see what we can do better.
Capacity Manager, one of the products mentioned in the consolidation guide, is a tool I’ll be blogging about over the coming weeks. I promise you won’t see any marketing info here, but I want to show some of the features and capabilities because they’re things I would have really appreciated as a DBA, things that would have made my job easier.
I gave one of my former managers a quick tour of Capacity Manager’s new version 2.5, and his first reaction was, “Wow, I wish we would have known about this a year ago! We gotta have this.”
If you want to learn about CM on your own, you can go hit the Capacity Manager pages, or stick around and I’ll post some short video walkthroughs soon showing the features DBAs will really appreciate. No spam, I promise.
