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Cloud Computing

Amazon RDS Instance Backup Settings

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

Last Updated February 13, 2017

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

Last Updated June 20, 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

Last Updated February 13, 2017

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?

Last Updated February 13, 2017

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

Last Updated February 9, 2017

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

Last Updated February 10, 2017

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?

Last Updated December 12, 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

Last Updated February 13, 2017

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

Last Updated October 25, 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

Last Updated 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

Last Updated February 13, 2017

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

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Last Updated February 9, 2017

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

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

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Architecture, Cloud Computing

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…

Architecting with AWS – Course Overview

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The Friday before class started I received an email from people running the Architecting with AWS training class about how to get to the class, what time class got started, a schedule of topics, and a link to prerequisites that I should go through before arriving at class on Monday morning. Most training classes I’ve…

Architecting with AWS – Before You Go

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Architecting with AWS is a three day training session held at the AWS offices in Seattle (classes are available in other locations). Both outsiders and AWS employees come together to learn about building scalable solutions on the AWS platform. This is a practical training program – there’s no certification behind it. The Architecting with AWS…

AlwaysOn Availability Groups in AWS Revisited

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Always On Availability Groups, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

If you’ve ever wanted to use the cloud for a DR site, there’s good news: as of this week you can use AlwaysOn Availability Groups and set up an asynchronous replica of your data into Amazon Web Services (AWS). If you’re already in the cloud, or if you were holding off, this means that you…

SQL Server RDS

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL Server

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a platform that offers a ton of services ranging from block storage, operating systems, to mail queues, DNS, and caching. When you say “cloud”, a lot of people think of AWS. AWS hosts a variety of businesses, large and small. Unfortunately, you still have to administer and configure your servers.…

SQL Server Always On Availability Groups in AWS

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Always On Availability Groups, Cloud Computing

Many companies are investigating a move into cloud hosting. With the recent release of SQL Server 2012, these very same companies are also looking at a migration to SQL Server 2012 to take advantage of readable secondaries. Combining Amazon Web Services and SQL Server 2012 seems like a perfect match. Unfortunately, there are some gotchas,…