[2/8/2010]
Posted by:
Dan Holme
Here at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, we’ve applied SharePoint to many business requirements already.
On the back end, we’ve again turned to AvePoint for backup and restore functionality—there’s no doubt that we need to have the ability to do granular restore! Their suite of products has gotten much richer, and more complex, since Beijing, but it again proved itself a valuable addition to our toolset—kudos to them.
And although I've been working long days here as a Microsoft technology consultant at NBC, I did also manage to get away for a dinner meeting with the folks at Colligo. I’ve been a big fan of their products for years, and have been thrilled to watch them win award after award, including our Community Choice Award here at Windows IT Pro magazine. I didn’t realize until last week that they are headquartered here in Vancouver.
They showed me just how fun the city can be, and it was cool to see that behind their great products is a really great team. Colligo is doing a web seminar, "Is SharePoint 2010 Ready for Enterprise Content Management?" with a keynote from Microsoft’s Tricia Bush, Director of Enterprise Business, on March 2nd. I’m not usually often able to carve out time to attend webinars, but I’m registered for this one.
To read more of Dan's experience with SharePoint at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, visit our SharePointPro Connections website.
[1/20/2010]
Posted by:
Megan Keller
Are you excited to get started with the new business intelligence (BI) and data management features in SQL Server 2008 R2? Well, the wait is almost over—Microsoft announced on Tuesday that SQL Server 2008 R2 will be released by May. In addition, the new release will be included on Microsoft's May price list.
SQL Server 2008 R2 will include PowerPivot for Excel, Master Data Services, enhanced support for virtualization, and support for up to 256 logical processors. PowerPivot for Excel, a managed self-service BI add-in for SQL Server 2008 R2, is the biggest feature in this release. PowerPivot for Excel lets users perform data analysis and create and collaborate on Excel 2010 workbook applications without needing assistance from IT, but gives DBAs and IT pros the ability to manage those applications.
The other big feature new to this release is Master Data Services. According to SQL Server Magazine Technical Director Michael Otey in his article SQL Server 2008 R2: 5 Cool New Features, "SQL Server 2008 R2’s new Master Data Services (MDS) feature provides a central portal from which administrators can create and update master data members and hierarchies, with the goal of ensuring data consistency across the enterprise."
If you haven’t had a chance to try out SQL Server 2008 R2 yet, it’s not too late—you can still download the SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP. You can also check out these articles to see what our experts have to say about the latest version of SQL Server:
[12/22/2009]
Posted by:
Sheila Molnar
What trends should enterprises be watching in 2010, and how will they affect an organization’s security strategies? Slavik Markovich, CTO and founder of the database security company Sentrigo, thinks IT groups should pay attention to these trends—increasing movement toward cloud services, stepped up database virtualization, and growth in hacking tools that allow swift random attacks on data. On the consumer level, Slavik noted that 2010 could be the first year that Mac could experience a major virus attack. “There’s a big misconception from Mac owners that Macs and iPhones are secure,” he said. “An iPhone has an IP address—already there have been a few worms.” At work people just open their mobile devices such as iPhones and connect to the PC or to the service. Slavik recommends that enterprises think hard about how to protect those endpoints.
2010: The Enterprise Moves Data to the Cloud
According to Slavik, the “biggest push in 2010 is the move to cloud-based services. Microsoft will push the Azure cloud platform and SQL Azure database services.” A major hurdle will be “how do you protect the data in the cloud environment?” Organizations need protect data from attacks from both outside and “from your own data administrators, plus your cloud administrators or administrators from the hosting company.” The questions are: “How do you trust them? Or trust but verify that your data is not being accessed or breached?” And “how do you monitor access to the information while it’s kept in the cloud?”
Slavik notes that DBAs have been slow to move data to the cloud because the market hasn’t been ready. “There weren’t good services out there that offered real SQL Server hosting. What you got from Amazon [for example] for their cloud was just basically the platform. And Google of course provided its own database. Smaller companies provided the SQL Server environment, but didn’t provide the whole vision thing. Whereas Microsoft with Azure provides a really strong platform that offers both platform services and higher-level services—SQL Server web services and a path between them.” For more on SQL Azure database services, see Mike Otey’s “7 Facts about SQL Azure,” InstantDoc ID 102766.
2010: Time to Virtualize Database Services
While virtualization has been a big trend in 2008 and 2009, Slavik looks to 2010 as the time when “you won’t see any organization without some virtualization. The push will be for backend service virtualization, which includes database virtualization. Up until now organizations were hesitant about putting databases inside virtual machines (VMs), but I see more and more customers are putting SQL Servers and Oracle databases on VMs.”
He attributes the openness to virtualization to the maturity of the platforms. On the security side, challenges he calls out are the dynamic nature of the environment and changes to traditional security models. “The old-school models of perimeter protection and network monitoring are going to break down. Models based on localized activity, monitoring at the database wherever it may pop up in a virtual environment are going to be more critical. Virtualization deserves its own type of security." For more on SQL Server virtualization, see Mike Otey’s “The Inevitable Virtualization of SQL Server,” InstantDoc ID 102784.
2010: The Proliferation of Hacking Tools
The security game changer for Slavik is the variety of new tools, courtesy of the hackers, that enable automated random attacks on data. “Getting from a vulnerability to an exploit is going to be very easy for hackers, especially when you talk about databases and patching. Once a vendor releases a patch we might see worms that immediately try to exploit the patched vulnerability. Hackers know that enterprises out there just don’t patch as quickly as they should.”
Slavik notes that “It’s all about economics. There’s a lot of money to be made hacking into companies and stealing credit card information. This motivates organized crime too. It’s not just the super-skilled hackers. Anyone can download those tools.”
Slavic does security presentations for SQL Server and Oracle groups and he says that “I’m still amazed at how much of the basic stuff is still a mystery. Effort should be invested in training developers and DBAs in using secure coding practices. An organization should go with a multi-layered security approach. Definitely one of the things there should be real-time monitoring and alerting tools deployed to prevent attacks. [Sentrigo is one of those tools vendors.] Organizations should also consider reducing the attack surface by making sure that the critical information, the credit card, is not stored in many locations.” He recommends using tokenization. “Store the credit card in one very secure location and put on tokens in all the other locations. Those tokens can actually even look like a credit card but they are not. If the database is compromised hackers will not get to the credit card.”
It seems clear that as trends come and go, a key factor in any business decision is an understanding of its security implications. Slavik notes that the first security move is to simply become aware that you could have problems.
[12/1/2009]
Posted by:
Sheila Molnar
Today Mary Jo Foley's column predicted that May 6, 2010 would be the official "due date" for SQL Server 2008 R2. A Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) benchmark for SQL Server 2008 R2 was published in early November 2009. According to Microsoft, the TPC rules require a product to be released within 185 days of the published benchmark. Add up the days and you get a release in early May 2010.
We checked with Microsoft to see if the software giant is ready to commit to the May 6 release date. Not yet. Or maybe, close but no cigar. Here is the official explanation:
"We are working hard to get SQL Server 2008 R2 to our customers quickly, while ensuring delivery of a high-quality release, incorporating feedback from the November CTP. We remain committed to a delivery date in the first half of calendar year 2010. In November we supported our partner, Unisys, in publishing the first-ever TPC benchmark results with SQL Server 2008 R2 on a server with >64 logical processors. The 'by May 6, 2010' date noted in the blog post comes from the TPC rules that requires products to be available within 185 days of benchmark publication. As we have in the past, we intend to comply with these rules. If this release needs some additional time, to deliver the quality our customers and partners expect, these benchmark results would be re-published using the final build of the product."
There you have it. Look for a release or another benchmark publication by May 2010.
[11/16/2009]
Posted by:
Megan Keller
Sheila Molnar and I had the opportunity to meet with Quest Software’s Ari Weil, product manager for SQL Server performance products, and Christian Hasker, director of product management and marketing, at PASS to discuss two new product releases: Spotlight on SQL Server 6.0 and the debut of Foglight for SQL Server.
Spotlight on SQL Server 6.0 now offers business intelligence (BI) monitoring, including monitoring and diagnostic functionality for SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). This release provides automated CPU diagnosis for both SQL Server and Windows in one place. In addition, SQLServerPedia information has been integrated into Spotlight for SQL Server, providing you with more information about the performance problems you’re encountering, as well as information about how to use the product.
Quest Software also announced the debut of Foglight for SQL Server, its remote performance monitoring and diagnostic software, at PASS. This product is web-based and comes with built-in dashboards, workflows, and alerts that expose data at all levels of your organization. According to Hasker and Weil, Foglight helps you quickly troubleshoot performance issues by objectively providing you with information about the query and cause of the problem. And like Spotlight on SQL Server, Foglight provides links to SQLServerPedia content. So how does Foglight for SQL Server work?
"Foglight for SQL Server is a fully remote special purpose monitor (SPM). The SPM is a self-contained entity that supports download and go (so if you don’t want to leverage the entire Foglight enterprise solution, but do want to leverage all of the advanced management and monitoring capabilities it provides), and provides all the information a DBA would need to diagnose and resolve a performance issue in a presentation that makes sense to a SQL Server DBA," explains Weil. "Plus, because it’s fully remote, mass deployments are a simple endeavor, and there are no change management processes to address."
Weil says, "What’s unique about Foglight for SQL Server, however, is that it’s the first SPM available that leverages all of the strengths of Foglight in a fully-remote, domain-specific, and SQL Server friendly fashion. It can be fully installed and configured via a simple wizard, and all of the day-to-day administration, configuration, and deployment activities a DBA may want to perform are available in intuitive wizard-style interfaces that DBAs can understand and use easily."
You can learn more about Spotlight for SQL Server and Foglight for SQL Server, as well as download free 30-day trial versions of these releases, by visiting the Quest Software website.
[11/9/2009]
Posted by:
Megan Keller
Today, Microsoft made the SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. The November CTP will be available to non-subscribers on Wednesday, November 11th. You can download the SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP from www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2Downloads.aspx.
According to Microsoft, "The November CTP of SQL Server 2008 R2 adds to features previously made available including: Application and Multi-server Management; SMP scale up with support for up to 256 logical processors; Report Builder 3.0 with support for geospatial visualization; and StreamInsight, a low-latency complex event processing (CEP) platform." In addition, the November CTP offers a first look at Master Data Services, data compression, enhanced virtualization support, and functionality in SQL Server 2008 R2’s Datacenter edition. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like many of us will get to test out PowerPivot for Excel any time soon—it will be available only as a limited trial (along with PowerPivot for SharePoint) for Microsoft Office 2010 beta testers later this month.
To learn more about SQL Server 2008 R2, visit www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2.aspx.
Related Articles about SQL Server 2008 R2
[11/9/2009]
Posted by:
Brian Reinholz
For the past two weeks, I've been researching best practices for resumes/cover letters, interviews, and more for employees in IT. I've had the opportunity to speak with recruiters, hiring managers, and jobs seekers on lessons learned. I've shared the results of this research on our sister site, Windows IT Pro, through the following four-part series:
Please take the time to read these articles, and send your feedback through email or via Twitter.
[11/8/2009]
Posted by:
Sheila Molnar
At PASS Summit 2009, Tom Casey, the Microsoft General Manager for SQL Server Business Intelligence chatted with Michael Otey and me about the new editions for SQL Server 2008 R2 and what Microsoft is doing to make it easier for developers and DBAs to try SQL Azure.
Michael Otey: Can you fill us in on the new SQL Server 2008 R Datacenter edition?
Tom Casey: People were telling us they wanted it. People wanted more capabilities and differentiation at the high end. Virtualization and consolidation are a big theme in IT right now. People are trying to get the utilization of CPUs up about 50% in the datacenter. This is an important task for many including Microsoft’s own IT department. They’re looking at deploying much more massive infrastructure and having fewer physical units to manage and deploy. The feedback around Windows Server’s work with Hyper-V and virtualization was so positive that people were saying “Help me do the same class of things with the database as well.”
What is the cloud really? A cloud is really just a collection of compute power that’s available to you in an environment that you can go to do that. But we build from a datacenter, because a well-run and virtualized datacenter is in essence a model of this capability.
Michael Otey: What differentiates the Datacenter Edition from the Enterprise Edition?
Tom Casey: We previously had a physical limit of about 64 logical processors. The big news is support for up to 256 logical processors. The Datacenter edition has the ability to scale an application multi-server management hub. You can get a lot of big apps and a lot of little apps together in an environment and make those more manageable. There will be scale limitations in the Enterprise edition relative to that kind of function. The Datacenter edition applies to the very highest workloads that an enterprise might have around big projects like consolidation.
Virtualization is definitely a feature differentiator for Datacenter Edition. Virtualization is on a lot of CIOs’ minds. Whether they’re running the occasionally used application in a virtual machine so that they can keep it offline and bring it online for the couple months or weeks that they need it, or whether they’re trying to reclaim space for operations, surface area within their environment has shrunk down.
CIOs and IT directors view BI as an area of spend so that they can understand their data better and get more value out of what they have. We’re seeing spend on virtualization continuing to be a hot area as well; people are trying to do the same thing with their physical infrastructure. Typically virtualization is one of the top three areas of focus.
Michael Otey: I remember in the Enterprise edition that if you licensed all the processors in a physical system you could run an unlimited number of virtual instances in SQL Server. Has that changed at all with the Datacenter Edition?
Tom Casey: Yeah it has. With the new capabilities in R2 and with going to a larger set of processors, we’ve put a couple of caps in place in the Enterprise Edition around thing like number of processors, physical memory, and virtual machines. There aren’t a lot of boxes out there that have 256 processors, so we’ve accommodated and set those limits in such a way that for the majority of they’re not at a place where they’re going to notice a transition point unless they’re opting into much larger workloads.
Sheila Molnar: Can you tell us more about the new SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse edition?
Tom Casey: The Madison edition is now the Parallel Data Warehouse Edition of SQL Server. This is an appliance-like offering that builds on the success we’ve had with the fast track and reference architectures from Dell, HP, Bully, Unisys, and now IBM. These partners are signed up to deliver the Parallel Data Warehouse appliances that will have the Parallel Data Warehouse edition of SQL Server installed on them. They will be optimized for that. They’ll have the right match of hardware, software, reference guidance, configuration, etc. to go scale. People can choose what they want by the capacity that they need, and so there’s everything from a terabyte all the way up to 100s of terabytes with the advent of Parallel Data Warehouse Edition.
Michael Otey: Customers would buy these from the vendors, correct?
Tom Casey: Yes.
Michael Otey: How do vendors differentiate these offerings from one another?
Tom Casey: Many IT shops have a preferred hardware vendor. Rather than go down the path others have where they stick a brand on something and sell you one thing, we’re responsive to the fact that people want choice. The vendors’ normal diffentiations in their service, their architecture, and the other things they provide will still apply. Within the Parallel Data Warehouse Edition these appliance vendors will offer different sets of scale up and reference configurations that they’ll support. And then they’ll augment that with their own configuration references and services and other things that will help with implementations and optimizations for certain domains or vertical markets. We think it creates another opportunity for customers to be successful with SQL Server and these very, very high end mission critical workloads that the large data warehouses have become. It creates a great partner opportunity for partners to accelerate their existing practices or build new practices around this domain.
Sheila Molnar: Who’s the customer? Organizations who want to do hosted services in the cloud?
Tom Casey: The more typical customer would be your larger enterprises that are seeking to deploy a significant-sized data warehouse. Last time I checked, there was something like 85% of the world’s data warehouses under 6 terabytes. Not everyone is going to need 100 terabytes of information. But there are very large mission critical data warehouses that do exist in places like telecommunications, for example. We see a lot of call data, individual discrete transactions that grow rapidly. In the government sector you see a lot of this where you’re tracking people. You have compliance requirements. Another area is sensor networks in energy: Where you’re taking information off of oil rigs you could have thousands of feeds every second. Those things coming together and needing to be archived become really important. Many of those industries will lead the way to the largest sized deployments. But if your business has accumulated a bunch of data in your data warehouse you deserve great response out of your 20 or 50 terabytes as well. And that’s the reason that there are these scalable offerings, so it will scale up and down across the spectrum of what people want in the enterprise.
Sheila Molnar: Can you elaborate on the SQL Azure announcements at PASS? What do customers have to look forward to in January?
Tom Casey: The SQL Azure database that we talked about before is now feature complete and has been made available live. Customers can go take advantage of SQL Azure and Windows Azure as they’ve been doing during our beta programs but it’s now more broadly available. In January customers who choose to do so can actually register for the service and start to pay subscriptions for the service. It moves from something that was in effect a pilot. People can get a sense of what their subscription level needs to be. Even when a subscription starts in January we’re going to delay the cycle so that you can get a look at your January utilization and really understand what level of access you truly need. What size data do you need? What are your volumes and transactions, and so forth. We want customers to have insight into what their real utility will be in the cloud. I’m really excited about it. We’ve come a long way towards offering something that works in a very similar manner on premises and off premises.
Michael Otey: I’ve recently done a development article, and I’ve gotten to use SQL Azure. I got the service accounts and connected to it and connected apps that were using it as a back end. I was really impressed. I thought it would be way different and the similarity to SQL Server really struck me. It was really comfortable to use.
Tom Casey: IT professionals and developers sometimes think “there’s this new thing called the cloud and I have to completely retool myself. I feel threatened by it.” You don’t need to feel threatened and you don’t have to completely retool yourself. We talk TDS to the thing. It’s just SQL Server in the cloud to your application, for the most part. There are minor changes to revector yourself to the connection string through the URL and you’re good to go. It’s very accessible and it’s another example trying to help IT professionals not just do more of the same thing with less but do some different things. Deliver new experiences to people. Deliver experiences that are coherent both on and off premises.
Michael Otey: With SQL Azure you now have what’s essentially a globally accessible database backend. That’s a new capability for most developers.
Tom Casey: It is. Remember too that it’s a complementary capability to what people have on premises. The fact that we have a common architecture, programming model, and administrative experience wherever possible between what people do on premises and what they do in the cloud is really important. It’s different than the cloud approach taken by many others, and we’ve evolved to it from when we first started on this project. We feel like we have the right thing and people like you and others have started responding. So that’s good.
Michael Otey: I was concerned when I saw the SQL Server Data Services as it was first announced. It had a different interface and connected with SOAP. I said “I don’t know about this.” So when I went into Azure I said “Well what’s this going to be like?”
Tom Casey: So you were a skeptic coming in.
Michael Otey: I was happy to see that it was so familiar.
Tom Casey: Hey! We take feedback. Never let it be said that we don’t take feedback.
[11/3/2009]
Posted by:
Sheila Molnar
It wouldn't be a PASS Summit without some SQL Server announcements! At the early-bird keynote (8:15 am) Bob Muglia and Ted Kummert, Microsoft senior executives, announced the upcoming delivery of the November feature-complete community technology preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2008 R2. They also announced two new SQL Server 2008 R2 editions that will provide a high-level of scaling solutions: SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (the later has been known by the code name "Madison").
Over 2000 SQL Server DBAs, BI professionals, and developers streamed into Seattle to attend PASS Summit 2009 to learn the latest news from Microsoft, attend great technical sessions, check out the latest Microsoft and third-party solutions, and get together with fellow SQLheads. It's a pleasure to walk into a place that's 100 percent SQL Server, all the time.
At the keynote Kummert told the audience that Microsoft is delivering data warehouse applications with various hardware partners. IBM is the newest partner, offering three hardware configurations as part of SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse 2.0. Other companies announcing new configurations for version 2.0 include HP, Bull, and Dell.
"Microsoft's vision is to deliver an information platform enabling all businesses to gain strategic value from information," Kummert opined. "Companies are looking to compete and grow by reducing costs and identifying the highest value opportunities for their business. We're moving forward rapidly to address these challenges with new capabilities in manageability, business intelligence, data warehousing and the first relational database cloud offering in SQL Azure."
SQL Azure will be big news in the next generation of SQL Server. Kummert advised PASS attendees to stay tuned and look for major advancements 24-36 months from the SQL Server 2008 R2 release. More down to earth Azure news: SQL Azure billing will start in 2010. A new utility that synchronizes on premises solutions with the cloud will be available later this month.
[10/22/2009]
Posted by:
Sheila Molnar
There promises to be a huge Microsoft presence at this year’s PASS Summit, November 2-5. Tom Casey the Microsoft General Manager for SQL Server Business Intelligence, with broad responsibility for BI across Microsoft, took some time talk with me about BI and issue a call to action for SQL Server professionals to become BI change agents. Tom previews highlights of the keynotes, including his own, that Microsoft execs will give at the fast approaching PASS Summit.
To listen to the podcast go to Tom Casey PASS 09 Keynote Highlights.
For more on the SQL Server 2008 R2 BI feature PowerPivot, formerly code named Gemini, see SQL Server Magazine’s October 2009 interview with Donald Farmer, Donald Farmer Discusses the Benefits of Managed Self-Service BI, at InstantDoc ID 102613.
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