Got a bumper crop of webcasts and videos up this week courtesy of the fine folks who refill my checking account:
Consolidation & virtualization roundtable with me, Kevin Kline and Ron Talmage - we raced through about twenty slides at a breakneck pace - about an hour. We seriously could have talked for two hours easily about these topics, because there’s so much to cover even at a high level. If you’re thinking about doing your first consolidation or SQL Server virtualization project, we talk about what makes a successful one and what to watch out for. There’s no hard-core technical stuff here, just project planning info, but it’s good stuff. I actually learned things while we were presenting, and that’s kinda scary.
CSI:DBA - ways to find out who deleted data & how to get it back - this was originally supposed to be me & Jason Hall, but he went on vacation (lucky devil) and you get an hour of non-stop Brent. I covered the native options for auditing database activity, and then demoed how to do it with LiteSpeed v5’s new Log Reader. I gotta be honest: the native methods for doing this totally suck. I know, I work for Quest, but seriously, I wish the LiteSpeed v5 Log Reader would have been out when I worked in the field. It could have saved my bacon a couple of times.
C.Y.A. - Cover Your Apps - DBAs often get called in to do backups before an application upgrade. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could back up the database AND the application files at one time and package them all in a single backup file? LiteSpeed does this with the Attached File Backup.
Kevin Kline’s first videoblog entry is online at SQLServerPedia, and while it doesn’t feature Yours Truly, it’s still worth a watch. I’m looking forward to his next videos.
In a mildly related Backstage note, I’m shopping for rockstar clothes this week in California in preparation for my rockstar photo session with Tracy Manford (Blog - Flickr - Twitter). I’ve been using the same crappy head shot for the last five years, and it’s time to update the photos to reflect my personality. Tracy’s hilarious, and if you want to understand why she’s the right person to photograph me, just check out this one photo of hers. End of story.
