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Cloud Computing

When Should You Hire a Consultant for Amazon RDS?

April 26, 2016

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL Server

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…

Breaking News, Literally: SQL CLR Support Removed from Azure SQL DB

April 8, 2016

Breaking News, Microsoft Azure

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…

Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts: Much Cheaper SQL Server Licensing

October 6, 2015

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Licensing, SQL Server

When you build SQL Servers in your data center, and you license the host with Enterprise Edition, you get the ability to run as many virtual SQL Servers as you want on that hardware. In the cloud, though, you haven’t had that luxury. In the past, with Azure VMs and Amazon Web Services’ EC2 VMs,…

Enabling Query Store in Azure SQL Database

September 2, 2015

Jeremiah Peschka

Execution Plans, Microsoft Azure, Query Store (QDS)

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…

When Did My Azure SQL Database Server Restart?

August 13, 2015

Microsoft Azure, SQL Server, Wait Stats

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…

Amazon RDS Instance Backup Settings

The Easiest Way to Restore Transaction Logs to A Point In Time (Spoiler: Use AmazonRDS)

July 16, 2015

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL Server

… is to use a SQL Server where a robot does it for you! Let’s take a look at how you can do this in AmazonRDS’s hosted SQL Server these days. Normally, restoring transaction logs is super tedious. You’ve got to restore all the files in the right order, for every single database. Even if…

The Fastest Way to Reconfigure a Bunch of Servers

July 1, 2015

Jeremiah Peschka

Cloud Computing, SQL Server

… is to use a SQL Server where a robot does it for you! I stole that from Kendra – someone else already wrote the sentence for me and why not keep re-using things, right? Configuring SQL Servers the Usual Way What’s the usual way to do this? There are a few commercial tools on…

Announcing Row-Level Security in Azure SQL Database

January 30, 2015

Microsoft Azure, SQL Server

Your users probably shouldn’t be able to view all of the data. You might have regional sales managers who should only see sales for their region, or human resource staff who should be able to see employee details but not salaries. This is usually challenging with databases. How We’ve Historically Built Row-Level Security in SQL Server…

Is Azure Really 60% Faster?

September 23, 2014

Jeremiah Peschka

Microsoft Azure, SQL Server

Microsoft just announced a new round of D-grade VMs that have 60% faster CPU and local SSD than can go up to 7,000 IOPS in a canned IOmeter test. Before jumping to conclusions or, even worse, picking a cloud provider, it’s best to look at these numbers critically. CPU Speeds The new CPU is being…

Sizing SQL Server for AWS

June 12, 2014

Jeremiah Peschka

Amazon Web Services (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…

What Amazon RDS for SQL Server Users Need to Know about Multi-AZ Mirroring

May 28, 2014

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Database 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…

How Would You Change Windows Azure SQL Database?

December 19, 2013

Cloud Computing, SQL Server

This artist formerly known as SQL Azure is a cloud service something akin to Microsoft SQL Server. SQL Azure is still under legal drinking age. When it first came out, it had a lot of challenges – a small subset of T-SQL commands and datatypes, inability to take backups, and absurdly small database sizes. But much…

Auto-Scaling SQL Server Always On Availability Groups with Virtualization

December 18, 2013

Always On Availability Groups, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Virtualization

always on, availability groups, scalability, 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…

Who Needs an Operating System?

October 30, 2013

Jeremiah Peschka

Cloud Computing

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…

CorrugatedIron 1.4

July 19, 2013

Jeremiah Peschka

Cloud Computing

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…

Cloud Alternatives to Microsoft SQL Server

April 16, 2013

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Computing, SQL Server

When people say “cloud”, they’re simplifying a lot of different solutions into a single catchphrase. Let’s break out the different options and compare them. 1. SQL Server in Amazon EC2 and Azure VMs Amazon EC2 is a virtualization platform. Amazon buys servers, installs their secret sauce software, and rents you Windows virtual machines by the…

Creating a Data Lifecycle Rule

Long Term Backup Storage With Amazon Glacier

November 20, 2012

Jeremiah Peschka

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

aws, backup, sql server

A while back, Jes asked who’s taking your backups. Making sure you have good backups is important. How much thought are you giving to handling historical backups? Right now, there’s a really good chance that you’re using a solution based on tape. While tape backups work, there’s a better way. How Are You Archiving Backups Right…

Amazon Web Services Architect Training Recap

September 17, 2012

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Computing, SQL Server

amazon, amazon web services, aws, cloud

Going into Amazon Web Services (AWS) architecture training last week, I expected to get whiteboard-level training for project planners, and it met expectations. We spent time talking about how Amazon’s most popular services fit together and how they can be used to solve our business needs. Nothing in the training itself was groundbreaking for me – I keep…

Why I’m at Amazon Architect Training This Week

September 11, 2012

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Architecture, Cloud Computing

amazon web services, aws, training

People bring me in when they’re having data problems. They can’t store data fast enough, they can’t make it reliable enough, they can’t hire people to manage it, etc. When I’m in the conference room, it’s because there’s a fire in the disco datacenter. You know how it is as a DBA, though – DBA…

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