Cloud Computing

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

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

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

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

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

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,…

SQL AZURE LOST ITS LEASE! EVERYTHING MUST GO!

Last Updated May 26, 2020

Crazy Ballmer’s Database Hut is having the fire sale of the century! SQL Azure pricing is sliced in half or more. We must be crazy, they say! Check out these discounts: SQL Azure Pricing Reductions When SQL Azure first came out with its absurd limitations (no backups, tiny database sizes), I viewed the pricing the…

SQL Server in EC2

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Always On Availability Groups, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The cloud is robust and reliable. The cloud solves all of our scaling needs. The cloud makes my poop smell like roses. While all of these statements are theoretically true it takes some effort to make them true in reality, especially when a database is involved. Who Is Deploying SQL Server in EC2? A question…

SQL Azure Frequently Asked Questions

Last Updated March 13, 2018

On Monday 2/1, SQL Azure goes commercially live. Microsoft’s charging for service now, and that means it’s officially official. I talk to a lot of enterprise DBAs, project managers, and developers about SQL Server in the cloud. Here’s some of the questions I get asked most often. What is SQL Azure? SQL Azure is Microsoft’s…

Playing Around with SQL Azure and SSMS

Last Updated February 13, 2017

The latest build of SQL Server Management Studio for SQL 2008 R2 includes built-in support for SQL Azure. The November CTP is still only a feature-complete preview, not a release candidate, so don’t go installing it willy-nilly on your production desktop. To use this, you’ll need a SQL Azure account. You can register for an…

Microsoft SQL Azure: The Flat Pack Database

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Erika’s friends call her “Fancy Feast” because she only likes the best things in life. She’s got champagne tastes, but we can’t afford to buy the best of everything. I recently picked up a coffee table from Ikea, and it got me thinking about SQL Azure.

In a perfect world, I’d have on-premise SQL Server for every database. I’d use cutting-edge storage and cluster everything. But this isn’t a perfect world…

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

Last Updated February 13, 2017

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…

Sky Blue Screen of Death

Last Updated February 13, 2017

I don’t have anything insightful to add, but Microsoft’s Azure cloud service suffered its first nearly day-long outage. I have this vision of looking up to the clouds and seeing a giant BSOD, only with lighter colors. Might be the flu medicine, though. I’ll be back in the game tomorrow or Wednesday.

Amazon Web Services Explained

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL Server

Amazon Web Services When I talk to database administrators, I hear a lot of questions like: What is Amazon S3? What is Mechanical Turk? How do these things matter to a real business? I’ve got a story I like to tell around how to use these services, but for a couple of years I’ve held…

Bad storage performance on Amazon EC2 Windows servers

Last Updated February 13, 2017

This week I presented at the SSWUG Virtual Conference on how to benchmark your storage performance with Microsoft’s SQLIO utility. Last week I talked about running SQL Server in the cloud on Amazon EC2. Take those two things together, and we’ve got storage benchmarking on Amazon EC2 servers: Maximum write speed: 68 MBs/sec Maximum read…

Getting Started with Amazon EC2 SQL Server 2005

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Sometimes you need an offsite database server in case something goes wrong, but you can’t afford a full-blown disaster recovery datacenter. Or maybe you’ve got some ideas that you’d like to try out with a big SQL Server 2005 box, but you don’t have the hardware sitting around idle. Or maybe you’d just like to…

Amazon EC2 Windows support now live!

Last Updated February 13, 2017