Inspired by Rhonda Tipton and Dwight Silverman, a couple of the local Houston bloggers I follow, I’ve decided to start posting a recap of the links I’ve found interesting during the past week. Most of ‘em will be SQL Server related, but some are just things I appreciated. You’ll find those links to be useless and a drain on your time. I do not apologize for this.
SQL Server Links
Microsoft SQL Services Labs – it’s like Google Labs, only it’s for SQL Server. I wrote up an explanation of how to use the Data Mining in the Cloud with Perfmon data to help pinpoint SQL Server bottlenecks, and I look forward to playing around with more of the lab tools.
SQL Server Cheat Sheets – Donabel Santos links to several cheat sheets to help DBAs with basic syntax. Whenever Quest gives away posters with syntax for stuff like DMVs and system stored procs, DBAs go crazy asking for them, so I bet you guys will go crazy for these too.
Forcing Indexes to Become Fragmented – sounds odd, but it’s helpful if you want to test your defrag code. This came in handy not once, but twice this week when I had Quest customers running into problems with their defrag jobs.
Understanding HP EVA SAN storage - good SAN consultants cost a ***lot*** of money by the hour. They make me look like a fry guy at McDonald’s. Chris does a good job of breaking down how an EVA allocates storage, and even revisits his blog entry after getting more feedback.
Cloud Computing Links
Microsoft Azure vs Amazon, Google and VMware – fellow Questie Dmitry Sotkinov compares the cloud vendor visions. You, dear reader, probably have a real job in the real world, but those of us who work for ISVs like Quest get to focus on fun stuff like every new cloud vendor that comes out. (Well, yes, it is still real work – we have to decide when & where to deploy products in the cloud – but man, it sure feels like fun.)
Cloud Computing Incidents Database – keeps track of outages at the major cloud vendors. Instead of saying, “I think these guys are pretty reliable,” now you can go find out exactly when they’ve been down for the count.
Windows Live ID becomes an OpenID provider and then so does Google, sorta – remember the Microsoft Passport idea back a few years ago where you’d use one login to access all of your web sites? That idea rocked in theory, but because there were concerns around a single company “owning” your online identity, it never really caught on. OpenID is the new equivalent of Microsoft Passport, only it’s an open standard. You can host your own OpenID – I host mine here at BrentOzar.com. I’m looking forward to the day where I don’t have to have a zillion different logins to sites.
The Junk Drawer
HP Mini 1000 comes out for $400 – I’d love one of these, but I have two problems. One, I gotta stop spending money on gadgets that I only use for two hours per week. Two, it doesn’t have a standard VGA output. (And no, I don’t give Apple a pass on that either – my Macbook Pro has a DVI out and I hate it.) But when I break down and buy it, I’ll pick up one of these cool new netbook sleeves from ThinkGeek.
Penny Arcade brought out two new games – their new game, “Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode Two” is a followup to the first episode, which I found absolutely hilarious. You can suck at gaming and still enjoy it – I certainly do. They also brought out World of Goo, a highly-anticipated followup to an award-winning demo. Watch the demo. Seriously. Amazing. Gaming is so completely different than when I was growing up. When I was young, the gamers were forced to use their imaginations. Now, the developers are really forced to do it in order to stand out from the crowd, and World of Goo does.
Twitter tools Qwitter and FriendOrFollow – two helpful tools for Twitter users. Qwitter sends you an email when someone stops following you, and FriendOrFollow tells you who’s following you that you’re not following. I don’t give a rip about my Twitter statistics, but I know other people out there do, so here you go.
Satirical post on MS SCVMM’s ISO handling – too many acronyms, I know. Here’s the deal: when you have a virtual server farm with a bunch of hosts and hundreds of guests, you sometimes need to attach ISO files to them to act as virtual CD drives to boot or to attach software. VMware can use a shared file repository and attach any ISO file to any guest instantly. Evidently (and I don’t know this firsthand) Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager has to copy the ISO file to the same location where the guest stores its hard drives, which means more storage space used and a longer time to go live. Now that you have the background story, you might laugh at Eric Gray’s interpretation of it. I did, but I’m dry.
Porsche – I Can. – every now and then I get the urge to go build a new Porsche 911 Targa on their web site and I run across a new ad. This one’s gorgeous. I also loved the intro video on the Jaguar XF site, but it still doesn’t help the fact that the front end of the $50k Jag looks like a Buick. It looks great from behind, though. It’s like that old butterface joke….
If you want to get these links as I bookmark ‘em during the week, you can subscribe to one of these RSS feeds:
- My bookmarks on Delicious (if you want everything)
- My SQL Server bookmarks on Delicious (if you only want the SQL stuff)
- My FriendFeed
- My Google Reader shared items
[...] Brent Ozar provided the inspiration for this blog post and the others that will follow. Essentially, the goal is to put together a list of the most interesting/entertaining links that I’ve found in the last week. If you’re easily offended by SQL Server, I suggest you turn away now. [...]
[...] Ozar has started a link series titled SQL Server & Cloud Links for the Week. I am looking forward to seeing these each [...]