Cloud Computing

SQL Server Timeouts During Backups and CHECKDB

So you’re hosting your SQL Server in the cloud – say Amazon EC2, Azure VM, or Google Compute Engine – and you’ve noticed that when you’re running a backup or a DBCC CHECKDB, you suffer from extreme performance problems. Queries run slow, and even worse, applications report timeout errors even just trying to connect to…
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When Should You Hire a Consultant for Amazon RDS?

Powered By Somebody Else’s Database on Somebody Else’s Computer You’re hosting your SQL Server databases in Amazon RDS, and performance has been getting slower over time. You’re not sure if it’s storage IOPs, instance size, SQL Server configuration, queries, or indexes. What’s the easiest way to find out? Ask a few questions: Are you using…
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Breaking News, Literally: SQL CLR Support Removed from Azure SQL DB

Breaking News, Microsoft Azure
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In the on-premises, boxed-product version of SQL Server, you can build your own CLR assemblies and call them from your T-SQL code. For years, this feature was missing from Azure SQL DB – Microsoft’s platform-as-a-service database offering – and users voted that they wanted it. In December 2014, Microsoft brought SQL CLR code to Azure SQL…
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Enabling Query Store in Azure SQL Database

Enter Query Store Query Store, in short, is a way to track query performance over time. In Microsoft’s words, “The feature automatically captures a history of queries, plans, and runtime statistics, and retains these for your review”. It’s like sys.dm_exec_query_stats but it persists across reboots! And it has execution plans! The Query Store is a…
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When Did My Azure SQL Database Server Restart?

In Azure SQL Database, no one can hear you scream query common system objects that tell you when a restart happened. You don’t get the access you need to sys.dm_os_sys_info, sys.dm_exec_sessions, sys.traces, or sys.databases. The closest I’ve been able to get is to query sys.dm_os_wait_stats for several common wait types that seem to correspond with…
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Sizing SQL Server for AWS

Let’s skip the shenanigans and get right down to it – you’re responsible for SQL Server and someone in your company wants to move things into Amazon Web Services (AWS). You’ve got SQL Server setup covered thanks to our helpful SQL Server setup checklist and you’re confident you’ve got hardware under control, but things are…
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What Amazon RDS for SQL Server Users Need to Know about Multi-AZ Mirroring

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) now supports multi-availability-zone SQL Servers. This means you can have a primary database in one data center, and a secondary replica in another data center. Those Portland folks were always a little bit backwards anyway. When your primary server goes down, OR when the entire AZ goes down, you can fail…
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Auto-Scaling SQL Server Always On Availability Groups with Virtualization

Time for a thought exercise. Thought exercises are hard. You’ve got a database application that has bursty and unpredictable loads. Out of nowhere, you’ll suddenly get socked with a large amount of SELECT queries. Due to the way the app is written, you can’t cache the query results – the queries keep changing, and the business…
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Who Needs an Operating System?

Cloud Computing
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In the 1950s, the global economy saw a tremendous change – container ships revolutionized global commerce. Shipping costs got 36 times cheaper with the introduction of containerization. What if you could reduce operational costs and revolutionize application and database deployment in the same way? Containers to the Future In the last few months, the developer world…
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Success in the Cloud

Cloud Computing
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Right now, someone in your company is thinking about moving your operations up into the cloud. If your company is like 95% of companies out there, “the cloud” is really a synonym for Amazon Web Services (AWS). Thinking about a move to AWS is happening across many companies, and it’s not something that you need…
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CorrugatedIron 1.4

We’re happy to announce that we’ve released CorrugatedIron 1.4.0. This release contains a large number of bug fixes, new features, and enhancements. That’s right, brand new Riak and .NET straight to you! Get it while it’s hot or keep reading for more details. Riak 1.4 Support CorrugatedIron 1.4.0 brings Riak 1.4.0 feature support including: Index…
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