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My Weekly Bookmarks for October 2nd

Written on October 2, 2009 by Brent Ozar in SQL Server

Here’s my bookmarked links for September 25th through October 2nd:

SQL Server, Cloud, and Tech Links

Viva la Famiglia! – Brad Schulz shows how to use T-SQL to determine family relations. This is freakin’ awesome.
PASS Board 2009 Slate of Candidates – Candidates are Brian Moran, Jeremiah Peschka, Matt Morollo and Thomas LaRock.
PASS Elections and UStream | SQLRockstar – Tom LaRock is on the ballot again this year for the PASS Board of Directors, and you can ask him questions live in a video chat.
Vote for Mr. LaRock – Grant Fritchey, author of SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Distilled, endorses Tom LaRock for PASS Board.
Off-Hours Work: A Guide For Managers – If you have to rally the troops to work after hours, here’s how to do it with minimal morale loss.
Interview with Kevin Kline – Tom LaRock interviews the former president of PASS.
One Million Pageviews – StackOverflow hits the one-million-pageviews-per-day milestone. And yes, the back end is just one single SQL Server on relatively cheap commodity hardware with local disks, not SAN.
HOW TO: Get Started with Google Wave – I think I’m the only guy who’s not jumping up and down clapping about Wave. I think it’s technically awesome, but it doesn’t solve challenges that I can’t solve right now with other methods. I’m going to ride this one out (get it – ride – wave – okay, maybe not) and wait a couple of months to see if it has staying power. (This from a guy who signed up for Twitter the instant he saw it years ago.)
ROI from MCM: A look back 6 months later. – A Microsoft Certified Master talks about the changes it’s had on his billing rates and negotiations.
YES WE CAN!!! – Jen McCown’s announcement about winning the SQLServerPedia Dream Trip contest. Very cool.
DPM 2010 Beta is available now – Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager is a very different way of backing up your databases (among many other things) and I’m interested to see what they brought in this new release. Says “can backup SQL servers with ~700-800 DBs” – makes me wonder what that bottleneck is.
The ABCs of Management Studio Shortcuts – List of keyboard shortcuts for SSMS. Control+I is a neat trick.
The old INNER JOIN syntax vs. the new INNER JOIN syntax – I got lucky – I started with the “new” syntax years ago and never looked back. It’s way better.
Sessions for new DBAs at PASS – Bill Graziano suggests which sessions make sense for first-time attendees and new DBAs.
Free Training in October at the Quest Connect vConference – Kevin Kline and I will be doing presentations and taking questions in our booth.
Pre-Compiled Stored Procedures: Fact or Myth – Grant Fritchey plays Mythbuster.
Inside Amazon’s Cloud: Just How Many Customer Projects? – An analyst estimated customers are launching 50,000 virtual servers a day on Amazon EC2.
SQL Management Pack Survey – Live on Connect – Use Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (the artist formerly known as MOM)? Now’s your chance to influence development of the SQL Server management pack.
Google Docs OCR – Another example of how cloud computing changes everything. The more we move services like this into the cloud, the more we can find creative uses for the data.
Strong Password Generator – Uses T-SQL code to generate strong passwords. Interesting example.
Consolidation Planning – Mike Hillwig is looking for feedback on his server setups.
10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines – Lots of “ah-ha” moments about how to make your web site look better and attract more permanent visitors.
SQL Server Best Practices: Guard the Backup Files – You know the deal: the only reason we do backups is so that we can do restores. Buck Woody talks more about it.
First Look: Zipcar app for iPhone hits the road – Find nearby Zipcars with your iPhone, then unlock them. I gotta play with this now that I’m in a city with Zipcars.
Windows 7 coming to netbooks in all its myriad forms – YES! We won’t have to put up with the bullshit 3-app “Starter Edition” on netbooks – you can get ‘em with any version of Windows 7.
Random Gradient Wallpaper Generator – Does just what it says on the box. Windows only though.
Run Everything Virtualized and Deduplicated : aka Chuck Anti-FUD – Talk about cutting edge – people are talking about running their virtual servers on SANs that are being deduped. That would reduce the storage footprint required for a lot of Windows machines, for example, that all share a lot of the same binaries.
How do checkpoints work and what gets logged – By Paul Randal.
No, I will not do your homework for you – When posting forum & StackOverflow questions, think about phrasing them in a way to make sure nobody thinks you’re posting homework assignments.
SQLIOSim Parser by Jens Suessmeyer & Yours Truly – SQLIOSim pushes load through your SAN storage and can simulate SQL Server IO patterns. However, like SQLIO, the problem is interpreting the results, which get dumped out to text or XML. Now there’s a utility to make it easier.
Mississippi leads the way: 3 MCM’s a requirement in State IT RFP – Mississippi is requiring Microsoft Certified Masters if a consulting company wants to compete for a particular project. Wow. Just wow.
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise edition and Virtualisation – When you use Enterprise Edition, you can install 4 OS guests for free. Andrew Fryer explains.
Heard it from a friend who… heard it from a friend who… – Yet another hilarious blog posting from Colin, aka @BenchmarkIT. This guy’s on a roll. This time, he’s talking about a daisy chain of purity check info.
Toys and Tools – Mike Hillwig’s favorite SQL Server utilities. (And yes, there’s a lot of Quest stuff in there, and no, I didn’t put him up to that.)

Writing, Blogging and Networking Links

Books or Blogs: My Perspective – Scott Lowe, a published author, talks about whether or not writing books still make sense. I’d add that books force you to a higher level of technical accuracy due to the number of editors you have to get through.
Tips for Networking at PASS – Great tips on how to meet fellow database administrators and why it can pay off.
Shirts for Speakers? – Of everything in my closet, my very favorite shirt is my PASSCamp Germany polo with my name monogrammed on it. You could have knocked me over with a feather when Christoph and Oliver gave that to me. It made a huge impression, and I’m still really proud to wear it.
9 Ways to Make Your Writing More Compelling – Does what it says on the label.
Tweet 2001: A Social Media Odyssey – OCDQ – Obsessive-Compulsive Data Quality – A ton of links about how LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networks can work for data people.

The Junk Drawer

The 50 most interesting articles on Wikipedia « Copybot – Good way to blow an hour and learn stuff.
Nine Workspaces Where Famous Folks Get Stuff Done [Workspaces] – Most of these are publicity shots, but they’re still useful to see how people like Steve Ballmer set up their offices.
Penny Arcade! – The Distinction – What if football was an RPG? Wait – it is! Final Fantasy Football….
Tokyo Preview: Honda EV-N concept is retro-adorable, has unicycle storage – Please, please build this car. Let the world have an electric car that has some semblance of personality.
9 Secrets of Truly Happy People – You don’t become happy by saying “Yes” to people in an effort to make them happy. You have to pay attention to yourself and your own needs too.
Me, Darth Vader’s brother, Guy Kawasaki and the hijacker from The Usual Suspects. Just, you know, hanging out. – In which The Bloggess comes up with alternate versions of The Little Engine That Could, like “The little engine that can’t take a hint.”
Eff You, Penguin – Not safe for work – uses funny animal photos with NSFW captions.
Penny Arcade! – Love Bombs From On High – Jesus loves me, this I know, because he gave me Gyromancer and…

These bookmarks are automatically imported from my bookmarks at Delicious.com. If you’d like to get up-to-the-minute updates on what I’m bookmarking, you can subscribe to my bookmark RSS feed.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

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My Weekly Bookmarks for September 14th

Written on September 14, 2009 by Brent Ozar in SQL Server

Good news and bad news – the good news is that everybody’s been going wild and crazy for the SQLServerPedia PASS contest. The bad news is that editing the articles & setting up the bloggers has eaten up every moment of my spare time, hahaha. As a result, I had to do the unthinkable this weekend: scan through Google Reader and then hit mark-all-as-read. Here were the survivors, and I’m sure I missed some good stuff:

Letting SQL Server Do Your Scheduling – Mike Hillwig explains the pros & cons of doing task scheduling inside SQL Server.
Using Mirroring to Reduce DB Migration Downtime (Part 2) – Great concept that I discuss in my upcoming SSWUG VC presentation too. If you’re going after high-9s availability, you need to use this technique.
Who Wants $500? – Tom LaRock and Tim Ford talk about the early-bird discount to the PASS Summit and where to eat when you get there.
The DR Cloud: An Example | Jason Massie’s Blog – How to do disaster recovery using a cloud-based SQL Server with Terremark.
A Technical Case Study: Fast and Reliable Backup and Restore of Multi-Terabytes Database over the Network – Whitepapers – Whitepaper from the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team
CodeSOD: The Ultimate State Selector – Awesome WTF snippet of code. What the hell was this developer thinking…
Dear Vendor – Mike Hillwig gives a laundry list of things he wishes vendors wouldn’t do with databases.
BINGO!!! – Colin Stasiuk illustrates the problem with false alarms in a funny way.
Fun with Locked Pages, AWE, Task Manager, and the Working Set… – More from the PSS team about how SQL Server handles memory.
What I’ve Read and Recommend to Others – Joe Celko Edition – Reviews of all of Joe’s books.
Running a Server Side Trace – How to run SQL Server traces without Profiler.
SQL Pretty Printer Add-In for SSMS – Review – $40 SQL formatter plugin for SSMS.
Windows Server 2008 R2 – NLBS and VMware – Workaround! – When you pick virtual device drivers in virtualization, it really does matter what you pick.
Come Learn Some Interesting Stuff about Virtualization – Right Down the Street – Virtualization tour through the US sponsored by the big vendors.

These bookmarks are automatically imported from my bookmarks at Delicious.com. If you’d like to get up-to-the-minute updates on what I’m bookmarking, you can subscribe to my bookmark RSS feed.

Brent Ozar

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My Weekly Bookmarks for September 4th

Written on September 5, 2009 by Brent Ozar in SQL Server

Here’s my bookmarked links for September 1st through September 4th:

Tech Links

New Slide Deck Section Added – Kevin Kline shares some of his SQL Server slide decks.
NOT IN not equal to <> – These two operators aren’t always equal in SQL Server.
Ready Today Examples Of The VMware vCloud API – VMware’s built a solution that lets you spin up virtual servers in the cloud right away much like Amazon EC2.
Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen – Scott Hanselman’s 2009 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows – we need something like this for Mac users, come to think of it.
A New Way to Backup from Gladinet: Cloud-to-Cloud – instead of trying to download all your content to your local network, why not back it up from one cloud service to another?
The Value Of Landing Pages – Explained by the Google Analytics team.
You Could Be Suffering Right Now – Mike Walsh talks about problems with implicit conversion. You could have this problem and be completely, blissfully unaware that you’re leaving performance on the table.
SQL Azure Script Verifier – This is interesting, but think about the next step: why not have a web-based SSMS that executes queries against your Azure instance? I can think of a million reasons why it’d be a dangerous idea, but somebody’s gonna build it anyway.
Backing up to NUL vs Backup with Truncate only – Gail Shaw elaborates on the issue of BACKUP LOG WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY being deprecated in SQL Server 2008.
SQL Server Saturday – Swiss Style! – I love the ad banner. Hilarious.

The Junk Drawer

I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced “Wesley-Ann”. – In which The Bloggess gets lost and comes up with a new idea: GPS for Stupid People.
Make a 1up – Make your own 1up symbol out of a radish.
9 Warning Signs for Any Internet User – Print these out and stick them on the side of your parents’ computer.
Social Media Pillows Are All Kinds of Awesome – Want a pillow with Twitter or Facebook logos on it? Me too. (Kinda.)
25 Elegant Workstations for Your Inspiration – beautiful. Just in time for me to set up my new office in Chicago, too. Hmm….

These bookmarks are automatically imported from my bookmarks at Delicious.com. If you’d like to get up-to-the-minute updates on what I’m bookmarking, you can subscribe to my bookmark RSS feed.

Brent Ozar

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SQL Azure Pricing: $10 for 1GB, $100 for 10GB

Written on July 14, 2009 by Brent Ozar in Cloud Computing, SQL Server

Microsoft’s pricing for SQL Server in the cloud, SQL Azure, has been announced. It’s free for now, but around November it’ll be:

$9.99 per month for 0-1GB
$99.99 per month up to 10GB

SQL Azure

There’s currently a 10GB maximum size cap for SQL Azure. For larger data storage needs, you’ll need to break the database into smaller sizes.

Scaling SQL Azure Applications

If you think you’re going to need 100GB in the near term, it probably makes sense to break your application up into multiple separate databases from the get-go (10 x $9.99 = $99.99 anyway) and just make really sure none of the individual databases exceed 10GB. Ugh. I’m surprised by this strategy because Microsoft’s never been pro-sharding before, and now they’re asking database developers to make that jump. One of the things I love about SQL Server is that it scales so well: we can start with just a single database and grow it like crazy. DBAs who like that approach will not like Azure’s 10GB-per-database limits.

I’ve worked with companies who spin up a new database for every new client, copying the same database hundreds or thousands of times, and that has some serious maintenance challenges. Those companies will love SQL Azure’s scaling model, though; if each client has their own SQL Azure database, then it’s easy to pass the database hosting costs on to your clients.

Beep Beep, Back That Database Up

The bandwidth costs for SQL Azure are $.15 per GB of outbound bandwidth. Assuming that you don’t compress the data before you pull it out of the cloud, that means daily backups of a 1GB database will add another $4.50 per month, and a 10GB database will add another $45/month. Daily backups will cost about half of what your monthly service charges cost.

It’s not completely clear from the press release, but if Microsoft follows Amazon’s pricing model, bandwidth between the Microsoft cloud services will not incur a cost. That would mean it might make sense to spin up an Windows Azure computing application for $.12 per hour, use that application to compress your SQL Azure database, and then send the compressed data off to Azure storage for backup. That would eliminate the data in/out costs, and minimize the Azure storage costs ($.15/GB). Database administrators would back up their SQL Azure data to Azure Storage, keep a history of backups there, and restore them to SQL Azure faster when needed.

Of course, there’s no native backup support in SQL Azure, and it’s not clear whether Windows Azure will include tools like SQL Server Integration Services.

SQL Azure Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

The cloud isn’t 100% reliable, as the CloudComputing Incidents Database attests. The press release gives SLAs for Azure computing and storage, but not SQL Azure. The computing SLA says:

“For compute, we guarantee that when you deploy two or more role instances in different fault and upgrade domains your Internet facing roles will have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time. Additionally, we will monitor all of your individual role instances and detect within two minutes when a role instance’s process is not running and initiate corrective action.”

They’re essentially pushing the SLA back onto you: you need to make sure to spin up two web servers in two different datacenters, and only then they’ll guarantee 99.95% availability. That’s 4.38 hours of downtime per year, 21.56 minutes of downtime per month. Note that they didn’t distinguish between planned and unplanned downtime.

The storage SLA says:

“For storage, we guarantee that at least 99.9% of the time we will successfully process correctly formatted requests that we receive to add, update, read and delete data. We also guarantee that your storage accounts will have connectivity to our Internet gateway.”

Note that bold part, “that we receive” – that’s because the second part of the SLA guarantees that your storage accounts will have connectivity. Nice. The three-nines rate means 8.76 hours of downtime per year, 43.2 minutes per month.

If you’re a DBA scoffing at these costs and availabilities, make sure you have your own numbers ready before your boss asks. Sooner or later, your boss is going to compare costs and SLAs in the cloud with your own internal costs and SLAs. You need answers.

My Internal Costs vs SQL Azure

A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation using a 2-cpu server with 8gb ram, SATA drives, Windows 2008 and 2 CPUs of SQL Server Standard at list price puts me around $15,000. (Yes, enterprises get dramatically discounted stuff, but enterprises don’t need SQL Azure at rack price either.)

Let’s say I use this server for three years – that’s $416 per month. That does not include:

Power
Connectivity costs (but neither does the Azure $9-$99 price, either. Remember that bandwidth costs extra for Azure.)
Management (but neither does Azure, since you still have to roll some of your own utilities. Remember that Azure doesn’t support things like Profiler.)
Backups (but neither does Azure, and no, Microsoft telling me “it’s backed up” doesn’t count.)
Clustering or geographic high availability. I probably wouldn’t achieve three nines of uptime with this configuration, but if I wanted to go for that, I’d add a second server in another location with SQL Server’s database mirroring.

The tough part of all this is the future:

Will SQL Azure’s costs go down? Hardware prices always go down, so it’s interesting to try to compare long-term pricing between the two.
Will SQL Azure add more features? I can back up a locally hosted database easily, but backing up Azure is going to be a little tricky for now. If I want to add filestream data or TDE, that’s a piece of cake with local databases, but not with Azure.
Will SQL Azure stick? If I had a dollar for every piece of technology built then Microsoft abandoned, I’d be Steve Jobs. The nice thing about developing for SQL Azure is that it’s a subset of SQL Server anyway. Worst case scenario, Microsoft abandons SQL Azure – you just light up your own SQL Server and deploy your app there anyway.

Learning More About SQL Azure

For more information about the charges that will be appearing on your credit card next year:

SQL Azure Team Blog – the fine folks at Microsoft behind the curtain
TSQL Support in SQL Azure – lists which commands will be supported
Windows Azure pricing press release
Oakleaf Systems Blog – they do great news recaps with links to the latest cloud stories.

Brent Ozar

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I’m Going to Disn-errr, #SQLPASS!

Written on June 12, 2009 by Brent Ozar in #SQLPass, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication

Woohoo! I’m presenting three sessions at the PASS Summit in Seattle this year. I’m doing one with Jason Massie (Twitter – Blog) on Social Computing for the Database Professional (I don’t have the abstract handy for that one), and these two:

Session: Yes, I’m Actually Using The Cloud

Security in the Cloud

There’s a lot of hype around cloud-based databases. After you get past the knee-jerk reaction about security, what else matters? Is it time to buy in, and what should you watch out for? Brent explains some of the pros and cons hes experienced running SQL Servers in the cloud, and will demonstrate how easy it is to fire up a new SQL Server in the cloud.

Brent’s involved with StackOverflow.com as an advisor, and he’ll talk about the decisions they made about whether to host production and/or disaster recovery servers in the cloud.

Session Goals

Learn to estimate an application’s costs in the cloud
Learn options for cloud-based disaster recovery
Learn how to talk to developers and managers about cloud database options

Session Outline

What’s In The Cloud Now
- Cover the services currently available in the cloud for DBAs
- Demonstrate starting up a new SQL Server in Amazon EC2
The Elephant In The Room
- Security, and why it matters
- Why (and when) it doesn’t matter
Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
- Explain methods of log shipping and database mirroring to the cloud
- Cover drawbacks of current solutions
- Show how I’m using it now
- Talk about why StackOverflow chose not to use it
Predicting Cloud Costs
- How to query MSDB to predict log shipping costs in the cloud
- How to use Perfmon to predict bandwidth costs of a cloud-based SQL Server
How to Talk Cloud to Managers
- How to lay out the pros and cons of cloud-based DR
How to Talk Cloud to Developers
- How to explain the risks of cloud-based hosting with today’s solutions
Questions & Answers

Session: DRP101 – Learn the Difference Between Your Log And Your Cluster

Hurricane Ike in Houston

Developers and accidental DBAs: if you know more about how SQL Server handles crashes and disasters, you’ll be able to make a better decision about how to prepare. In this session, Brent will cover all of SQL Servers backup and high availability options at a high level, including clustering, log shipping, mirroring, replication and more. He’ll show the pros and cons of each, and teach you how to pick the right method for your application. We won’t have enough time to dive into actual implementation demos due to the number of solutions we’ll cover, but we’ll show screen shots and give links to the best resources for each method.

Session Goals

Learn the difference between high availability and disaster recovery
Learn real-world drawbacks of each solution
Learn which methods complement each other for even better protection

Session Outline

High Availability and Disaster Recovery – What’s the Difference?
- Show examples from each category of crash
- List the SQL Server protection methods for both
HA: Clustering
- Explain the hardware requirements
- Point out the single point of failure (the SAN)
- To plan for SAN failure, we can use clustering in combination with…
HA: Synchronous Database Mirroring
- Explain the hardware requirements (and separate drive arrays)
- Live demo of setup and failover
- List drawbacks (accidental failovers, single-db failovers, index maintenance jobs, etc)
HA, DR: Replication
- Explain basic requirements
- Cover drawbacks (schema changes, 3rd party application support, monitoring, management overhead)
DR: Asynchronous Database Mirroring
- Explain the differences between synch and asynch
- Give examples of when each is more appropriate
DR: Log Shipping
- Discuss how it’s set up
- Talk about non-DR uses (development servers, testbeds)
- Note SQL 2008′s advantage due to compression
DR: SAN Replication
- Cover hardware requirements, expense
- Discuss advantage of using a single DR method for all applications (SQL/Oracle/Exchange/etc)
DR: Virtualization Replication
- Explain requirements and how it works
- Note that it only works for virtual servers
My Personal Favorites
- Explain why I like to use a combination of clustering and log shipping
Backup Best Practices
- Things to do or avoid doing no matter which HA/DR method you choose, such as:
- Back up to a different SAN in possible
- Do regular fire drills
- Get the tapes offsite as fast as possible
- How to estimate timelines for managers
Questions & Answers

I’m excited to see everybody there!

Brent Ozar

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The Cost of Log Shipping SQL Server to Amazon S3

Written on April 21, 2009 by Brent Ozar in SQL Server

Want to know how much it’ll cost to back up your database transaction logs to Amazon S3? I’ll show you with a snippet of T-SQL.

Note the parameters at the top for retention periods. The defaults assume one full backup weekly. DBAs would normally want to do full backups more often, but when you’re paying by the upload, you may want to consider only uploading one full backup per week and then uploading transaction log backups the rest of the time. You can still take full and differential backups locally for faster local recovery times as long as you set your backup parameters correctly so that you don’t break your log chain.

The @months_to_retain_full_backups parameter says we’re storing two months of full backups in S3. This gives you some offsite flexibility while minimizing your upload costs.

The upload cost is set at $.10 per gig because that’s Amazon’s long-term price. There’s a temporary sale going on for $.03 per gig for uploads, but you can’t set your budget by that.

With no further ado, here’s the query. If it doesn’t work on your system, let me know – this is a really rough draft that I’ve only used on a dozen or so systems, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s got bugs.

DECLARE  @upload_cost_per_gb              DECIMAL(6,2),
         @storage_cost_per_gb             DECIMAL(6,2),
         @days_to_retain_log_backups      INT,
         @full_backups_uploaded_per_month INT,
         @months_to_retain_full_backups   INT
 
SET @upload_cost_per_gb = .10
SET @storage_cost_per_gb = .15
SET @days_to_retain_log_backups = 14
SET @full_backups_uploaded_per_month = 4
SET @months_to_retain_full_backups = 2
 
SELECT   bs.database_name,
         COUNT(* ) AS backups,
         SUM(bs.backup_size / 1000000000) AS transaction_backup_size_gb,
         SUM(bs.backup_size / 1000000000 * @upload_cost_per_gb) AS transaction_backup_upload_cost,
         SUM(bs.backup_size / 1000000000 * @storage_cost_per_gb / 30 * @days_to_retain_log_backups)
                   AS transaction_backup_storage_cost,
         (SELECT   TOP 1 (fbs.backup_size / 1000000000)
          FROM     msdb.dbo.backupset fbs
          WHERE    bs.database_name = fbs.database_name
                   AND fbs.type = 'D'
          ORDER BY backup_start_date DESC) AS last_full_backup_size_gb,
         (SELECT   TOP 1 (fbs.backup_size / 1000000000 * @upload_cost_per_gb
                          * @full_backups_uploaded_per_month)
          FROM     msdb.dbo.backupset fbs
          WHERE    bs.database_name = fbs.database_name
                   AND fbs.type = 'D'
          ORDER BY backup_start_date DESC) AS full_backup_upload_cost,
         (SELECT   TOP 1 (fbs.backup_size / 1000000000 * @storage_cost_per_gb
                          * @full_backups_uploaded_per_month * @months_to_retain_full_backups)
          FROM     msdb.dbo.backupset fbs
          WHERE    bs.database_name = fbs.database_name
                   AND fbs.type = 'D'
          ORDER BY backup_start_date DESC) AS full_backup_storage_cost
FROM     msdb.dbo.backupset bs
WHERE    bs.type = 'L' /* log backups only, not diffs or fulls */
         AND bs.backup_start_date &gt;= DATEADD(dd,-30,GETDATE())
GROUP BY bs.database_name
ORDER BY bs.database_name

This query revolves around transaction log backups, but if you only do incrementals, you could change that bs.type = “L” filter in the query to be “I” instead, and you’ll get the cost on incrementals. I don’t have a query for databases that only do full backups, but frankly, if you’re only doing fulls, your data probably isn’t important enough to get internet-based online backups available.

This query is good for more than just gauging costs, too: keep in mind that your internet connection will need to be able to handle uploading your backups out to Amazon S3.

This is only a ballpark estimate. There are other costs that this query does not cover. For example, Amazon charges you for some types of requests, like checking directory contents. These costs can vary, but they’re generally very small relative to the bandwidth and storage costs. This query also doesn’t check for backup compression, but if you’re paying by the byte for bandwidth and storage, you should seriously consider using backup compression. The ROI is extremely high: software like Quest LiteSpeed pays for itself here in no time.

If this topic interests you, I’ll be discussing it in much more detail during my “Log Shipping To The Cloud” session at the SSWUG Virtual Conference on Thursday. (Use VIP code SPVBOZSP09 for $10 off the $125 entry price.) If you register for the V-Conference, you can watch the sessions whenever it’s convenient for you – not just Thursday. However, if you happen to watch it during the first showing on Thursday, I’ll be online in the chat room for the session and you can ask me questions live.

Brent Ozar

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PASS Summit 2009 Call to Speakers Open! #SQLPass

Written on March 20, 2009 by Brent Ozar in Cloud Computing, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Twitter

The Professional Association for SQL Server Summit is being held again this November in Seattle, and the Call to Speakers is now open. You can only submit 4 sessions, which seemed very small to me until I realized that I do entirely too many presentations.

In Twitter, somebody mentioned that it’d be a good idea if we could see what abstracts had been submitted so that we didn’t all try to cover the exact same topics. With that in mind, I’m listing my abstracts here, but lemme tell you something: don’t let my abstracts hold you back from submitting sessions with the same topics as me. Well, not the exact same – at least change the wording, maybe fix my typos.

Famous or Infamous? Turn Your Brand Up to Eleven

Blogging and Twittering aren’t just social distractions: they can be instrumental in your career by helping you to make more money, get yourself in front of the right clients and put you ahead of other job candidates.

Brent Ozar has been blogging at BrentOzar.com since 2002, and it paid off in 2008 when he was hired at Quest Software as a SQL Server Expert. He’ll explain how blogging and Twittering helped his career, and why he believes social networking and brand-building will be critical in the coming years.

Tom LaRock started blogging at SQLBatman.com using Brent’s guidelines. He’ll act as a devil’s advocate, and help draw the line between zealous online marketing and practical tips for people who make a living doing database administration, not blogging. He’ll explain what parts are easy for DBAs to do, and what parts require time and attention.

Session Goals:

Learn how to start and configure a blog and a Twitter account
Learn how to position yourself on the Internet and get noticed in all the noise
Hear real-world stories about when blogs turned from positive assets into dangerous liabilities

Yes, I’m Actually Using The Cloud

Brent’s involved with StackOverflow.com as an advisor, and he’ll talk about the decisions they made about whether to host production and/or disaster recovery servers in the cloud.

Session Goals:

Learn to estimate an application’s costs in the cloud
Learn options for cloud-based disaster recovery
Learn how to talk to developers & managers about cloud database options

DRP101: Learn the Difference Between Your Log and Your Cluster

Developers and accidental DBAs: if you know more about how SQL Server handles crashes and disasters, you’ll be able to make a better decision about how to prepare. In this session, Brent will cover all of SQL Servers backup and high availability options at a high level, including clustering, log shipping, mirroring, replication and more. Hell show the pros and cons of each, and teach you how to pick the right method for your application. We won’t have enough time to dive into actual implementation demos due to the number of solutions we’ll cover, but we’ll show screen shots and give links to the best resources for each method.

No prerequisites! This session is targeted at DBAs and developers who don’t know their cluster from their logs.

Session Goals:

Learn the difference between high availability and disaster recovery
Learn real-world drawbacks of each solution
Learn which methods complement each other for even better protection

Social Networking for IT Professionals

Jason Massie and I are co-submitting this one, and we’re putting the abstract for this together over the weekend.

I find this hilariously appropriate because Jason & I met each other via Twitter, started a web site together, and I’ve never even met the guy. If this session gets approved, we’re going to be meeting for the first time at the very conference where we’re going to speak about social networking! It’d be even funnier if we pledged not to see each other face to face until the session is about to start, but I dunno if I can go that far. Only if the session is scheduled for the first day.

Submit Your Abstracts Today!

I submitted abstracts last year and got turned down. At the last minute, a few speakers couldn’t make it, and PASS asked me if I could go forward with one of my presentations. For me, that was the best possible thing to happen: I got the privilege to speak at PASS, but I didn’t have any of the worries ahead of time like polishing my presentation over and over to make sure it was good enough. They were just happy to have me speak.

I’m hoping that same approach works this year: I’ve asked the selection committee to please turn my sessions down, and I’ll write them anyway in hopes that another speaker gets food poisoning or hit by a bus. In order for this plan to work, I need other speakers to be approved, and that’s where you come in. Give it your best shot – I’m counting on you. Thanks. I’ll send flowers.

Brent Ozar

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Spring SSWUG Virtual Conference coming up

Written on March 3, 2009 by Brent Ozar in Cloud Computing, SQL Server

Last fall, I spoke at the SSWUG Virtual Conference and had a really good time with it, so I signed up again to do the Spring SSWUG Virtual Conference too.

Here’s how it works: I fly out to Tucson to record my sessions in SSWUG’s sssswanky TV studio ahead of time, and then you can watch all of the sessions in your web browser later. On the release days, when my videos are scheduled to go out for the first time, I sit in on the sessions in the chat room. I answer questions you’ve got about the material, clarify things, and the other attendees can also share tips and tricks in the chat. If you can’t clear your schedule on the release days (April 22/23/24), you can go back and watch the videos later – the only drawback being that I won’t be there to hold your hand while you watch it. Of course, you can always email me with questions too, or catch me on Twitter.

I’m really excited about my sessions:

Log Shipping to the Cloud

In an ideal world, we’d have a standby SQL Server in a disaster recovery datacenter, but we can’t always afford that luxury. In this session, Brent Ozar will explain how to log ship your databases to Amazon S3, a cloud-based file service, and bring up a standby SQL Server in the event of an emergency. It’s like having your own disaster recovery datacenter, but without the cost – until emergency strikes.

Reaching Compliance with SQL Server 2008

To become a production DBA at a public company, hospital, bank or even just a security-minded firm, you need to understand the basics of regulatory compliance. In this session, you’ll learn how to talk the language and learn what tools are available in each version of SQL Server to make your job easier.

SQL Server Encryption

Regulatory compliance needs are a big pain point for DBAs. How do we make sure our data stays safe? Brent will explain the options available for SQL Server 2005 and 2008, do a Transparent Data Encryption implementation with SQL 2008, and demonstrate its strengths and weaknesses. Attendees will get scripts and sample Policy-Based Management policies.

Plus Great Sessions by Much Smarter Guys

Get a load of these:

Using Database Mirroring for High Availability by Eric Johnson
Become Your Own Picasso: Writing Better T-SQL by Jason Strate
Disk IO Tuning for SQL Server 2005 by Kevin Kline
7 SQL Server Development Practices More Evil Than Cursors by Paul Nielsen
Panic! Disaster Strikes by Sarah Barela
Visual Studio Team System Database Edition – Managing Database Deployment by Ted Malone
Optimizing Backup and Restore Performance by Tom LaRock
Auditing Your Users by TJ Belt

And I’m only scratching the surface – check out the full list of SQL Server abstracts.

Register for the SSWUG V-Conference now and use VIP code SPVBOZSP09 for $10 off. That coupon code can be combined with other discounts, too, like the early bird registration or the alumni registration.

This is a heck of a lot of quality training for less than $100. I’ve heard from a lot of DBAs whose training budgets have been sliced away, and I gotta tell you that this is probably the best way to spend $100 on training. The video style is really easy to follow, the speakers are just top notch, and the subject matter is really appropriate for what DBAs have to do in their jobs. I hope you join me in my sessions!

Brent Ozar

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Okay, forget the shirt idea.

Written on January 31, 2009 by Brent Ozar in Personal

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about starting a web site where you could get your own custom Twitter shirt. Here’s what the visits looked like:

Social-Shirt.com Visits

I got roughly a thousand visits in two days when I posted the blog entry, and after that – silencio. Got a lot of retweets on Twitter, lots of people saying they were interested, but….

My Twitter Shirt

Nobody actually bought one!

Well, other than me, as shown here. I offered free ones to a few Twitter celebrities, and nobody was interested even in free ones!

Interestingly, Zazzle (the t-shirt vendor) lists shirts by how hot they’re selling, and my Twitter shirts were consistently in the top 1/4 of the list of Twitter shirts – even though I hadn’t sold a single one. Evidently nobody else is getting rich off these either.

I loved this as an experiment. I had a business idea, and I was able to get it off the ground in minimal time with minimal skills and minimal investments – roughly $10 for the domain name, and around $2 for the traffic on Amazon S3.

I learned that people aren’t quite ready to wear their Twitter profile on their chest. This makes sense, as a lot of us have our own picture as our avatar. I tried selling shirts without the picture, too, but that just didn’t have the pizzazz factor.

So I imploded it, slapped WordPress on there, turned it into a Twitter shirt portal, and did some links to Zazzle. I left it up until the domain expires, but I’ll be surprised if anybody ever buys a shirt off there.

Except me. You’ll recognize me at user group meetings because I’ll be wearing my Twitter profile or StackOverflow score when I’m not presenting.

Brent Ozar

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Spring SSWUG Virtual Conference

Written on January 22, 2009 by Brent Ozar in Cloud Computing, SQL Server

Ah, spring – that time of year when young men’s thoughts turn to T-SQL. The next SSWUG V-Conference will be April 22-24th, and I’ll be giving a few sessions:

Log Shipping To The Cloud (300-level)

In an ideal world, we’d have a standby SQL Server in a disaster recovery datacenter, but we can’t always afford that luxury. In this session, I’ll explain how to log ship your database to Amazon S3, a cloud-based file service, and bring up a standby SQL Server in the event of an emergency. It’s like having your own disaster recovery datacenter, but without the cost – until emergency strikes.

Attendees will learn:

What Amazon S3 is, and how it works as a log shipping target
What Amazon EC2 is, and how you can turn on a new SQL Server in the cloud in a matter of minutes
Best practices learned from real-life deployments

Log Shipping Basics (100-level)

The boss wants you to plan for disaster, and wants to know the business will be protected if the production SQL Server goes down. Be armed with answers about log shipping with this presentation, which will cover the basic concepts and how to implement it.

Attendees will learn:

Best practices for log shipping setups
How to use the secondary server for reporting purposes
Risks involved with log shipping, and how to avoid them

Reaching Compliance with SQL Server 2008 (200-level)

SQL Server Encryption (200-level)

Regulatory compliance needs are a big pain point for DBAs. How do we make sure our data stays safe? I’ll will explain the options available for SQL Server 2005 and 2008, do a Transparent Data Encryption implementation with SQL 2008, and demonstrate its strengths and weaknesses. Attendees will get scripts and sample Policy-Based Management policies.

If you sign up to attend, I’d highly recommend watching the live sessions on those days (22nd-24th) instead of watching the recorded sessions. During the live sessions, some of the speakers actually attend, and you can ask them questions in the chat room. I’ll definitely be there for all of my live sessions.

Brent Ozar

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