[Video] Office Hours at the Blue Lagoon
Road trip time! I'm recovering from jet lag after flying over to Iceland, so I went through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://youtu.be/MZg_OkJHMfk
Virtualization and Deployment Foundations
Virtual machines and comparable deployment-infrastructure tradeoffs.
19 associated posts18 primary posts
Production DBA
Should you run SSAS/SSIS/SSRS on the SQL Server?
When you're building a new SQL Server, you're going to see a few intriguing checkboxes during setup.
The services are all free, right? You can just check the boxes for Machine Learning Services, R, Python, Data Quality Services, PolyBase, Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services - it's not like you have to put more coins in the front of the server. So what's the drawback? Why not collect 'em all? What are the pros and cons?
Nodes Offline: Why Your SQL Server VM Can’t Use All Its Virtual Hardware
When you install SQL Server Standard or Web Edition in a virtual machine with more than 4 cores, things can look like they're just fine - when in reality, you're not using anywhere near your server's potential. See, these editions have a tricky limitation - let's look at the documentation: Here's the catch: the lesser of 4…
T-SQL & Development
Two Code Patterns That Don’t Virtualize Well
Virtualization used to be a really Big Deal™ for database admins: we had to do a lot of careful planning to get a virtualization project done right. These days, virtualization is more and more of a no-brainer: most apps make the transition just fine. Every now and then, though, an exception pops up - usually…
Hyper-V: Getting Your Host And Guest Connected
Because I always forget stuff like this
I have a confession to make, dear readers:
I am a horrible VM admin.
Should I Install Multiple Instances of SQL Server?
Instance stacking is the technique of installing multiple instances of SQL Server on the same Windows instance. For example, you might have a VM or server named SQLPROD1, and have:
SQLPROD1 - default instance of SQL Server, say SQL 2016
SQLPROD1\SQL2014 - for our older apps
SQLPROD1\SharePoint - because it's supposed to be on its own instance
SQLPROD1\development - for our QA & testing
How to Troubleshoot SQL Server Connection Timeouts
If your application can sometimes connect to SQL Server - and sometimes not - it can be really tough to troubleshoot. If SQL Server doesn't even hear the call, it can't log any errors.
Here's the questions I ask to get to the root cause:
Are You Getting the Benefits of Virtualization?
Here's some of the reasons companies usually virtualize their SQL Servers:
Cost savings on hardware
Cost savings on Windows OS licensing
Cost savings on SQL Server licensing
Protect against the failure of a single hardware element
Leverage extended features for Disaster Recovery
Automatic load balancing across multiple hosts
Easier hardware replacement/migration
Production DBA
Who Needs an Operating System?
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…
Big Changes for Big Virtual Machines in VMware vSphere 5
Even if your SQL Server is the only guest on a host, it still might not be as fast as bare metal. One of the reasons is NUMA, which stands for Not Ur Momma's Architecture. Okay, no, smart reader, you caught me - it actually stands for Non-Uniform Memory Access. In your momma's architecture (Symmetric…
How to Set SQL Server Max Memory for VMware
SQL Server has two settings that kinda-sorta govern how much memory we'll use to cache data: min server memory and max server memory. I explain the basics of how they work in my Sysadmin's Guide to SQL Server Memory, but things are a little different under virtualization. VMware does a great job of sharing memory…
Why Your SQL Server Cluster Shouldn’t Be Virtualized
When people buy my virtualization training video, one of the followup questions I get most often via email is, "Can I build SQL Server clusters in VMware and Hyper-V?"
In theory, yes. Microsoft's knowledge base article on SQL Server virtualization support says they'll support you as long as you're using configurations listed in the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).
SQL Server Virtualization Q&A
In my recent "Why Is My Virtual SQL Server So Slow?" webcast, we got a lot of great questions in chat. Here's some of the highlights:
Question: "Why would I virtualize a 4-core server and turn it into a 2-core VM? Doesn't performance go down?"
Top 10 Keys to Deploying SQL Server on VMware
The most successful deployments of virtual SQL Servers have a few things in common. When a company is doing all of these things, odds are they’re going to be very happy with their virtual SQL Servers: 10. Use vSphere 4.1, not earlier versions. vSphere 4.1 introduced major improvements in multi-CPU scheduling that vastly improve performance. …
Laptop Virtualization Best Practices – And a Contest!
Whether you're using Windows or a Mac, if you're thinking about using virtualization for the first time on your laptop to test out new operating systems like Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2, there's a few things you should know.
Get Another Hard Drive
Laptop drives aren't quick to begin with, and running two operating systems simultaneously doesn't make life any easier for your pokey drive.
Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Virtualize SQL Server
I've blogged about why you should virtualize SQL Server, but it's not all unicorns and rainbows. Today we're going to talk about some of the pitfalls and problems.
It's Tougher to Get More Storage Throughput
Servers connect to Storage Area Networks (SANs) with Host Bus Adapters (HBAs). They're like fancypants network cards, and they come in either fiberoptic (FC) or iSCSI varieties. These components are the place to focus when thinking about virtualization.
Why Would You Virtualize SQL Server?
I talked about why sysadmins want to virtualize servers, and today it's time to talk about why you as a DBA or developer might want to virtualize some of your SQL Servers.Virtualization Means Cheap High AvailabilityIn a perfect world, every SQL Server would be a cluster on a SAN with instant failover. This isn't a…
Why Your Sysadmin Wants To Virtualize Your Servers
DBAs and developers: right now, your Windows admin is talking to management about all the time, money and hardware he can save by virtualizing servers.He might not start with SQL Servers first, because frankly, he's scared of database administrators. DBAs only have one answer: "No."Thing is, though, he's going to start by eating his own…
SQL P2V: What Really Killed the Dinosaurs
Say we have a physical database server sitting over there in the rack. For the sake of discussion, let's pretend it's a slightly older model, a HP DL380 G2 with a couple of P3 CPUs, 4gb of ram, and six local 36gb drives. The storage is broken up into a mirrored pair of drives for…