To be honest, I am not a specialist of Windows Azure. In order to learn a little bit more about this subject, I decided to follow a TechEd Europe 2013 session about High Availability and Desaster Recovery on Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Overview of Windows Azure Windows Azure is Microsoft’s application platform for the public cloud. You have the possibility…
Last week, I gave you some news about SQL Server 2014 (here). SQL Server 2014 Community Technology Preview 1 (CTP1) now is available for download on TechNet here (you need a TechNet subscription). Attention: Only the new feature “in-memory OLTP – codename Hekaton” has been added to this CPT. 😕 I hope that other features will soon come with the…
I have the chance to be during this week in Madrid to participate in the TechEd Europe 2013. I will give you a feedback of my best sessions along this week and I’m beginning with the SQL Server In-Memory OLTP project “Hekaton”! Microsoft has been working for four years on this new technology which will come with SQL Server 2014.…
A few weeks ago, I went to the Swiss Database Days 2013 and followed the “Practical SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting” workshop. During this workshop, I have seen a different way of troubleshooting, but I was surprised to see that some participants were not aware that some basic SQL Server Best Practice do not depend on the instance settings. This blog…
Good news for all SQL Server DBAs: DMVs and DMFs poster are now available for SQL Server 2012. You can download them here. You can choose between 2 formats: pdf and xps. What’s new? You will notice the new category AlwaysOn: You can see the ColumnStore Index in the Partitioning section: If you want to know more about the new…
During North America TechEd, Microsoft released some details on the upcoming release of Windows Server. This new version is called Windows Server 2012 R2 and will be at the heart of the Microsoft Cloud OS. Windows Server 2012 R2 is currently in preview and will be soon available for evaluation purposes. Register to be notified when the new product evaluation…
At TechEd North America 2013, Microsoft introduced a lot of new versions: Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2, Windows 8.1, Visual Studio 2013 and, and, and… SQL Server 2014, of course!8-O You think I’m crazy or it’s a joke!;-) No, No, it’s for real. You can see the first page about SQL Server 2014 on Microsoft site here:…
There are three new geospatial features in Microsoft SQL Server 2012: CircularString, CurvePolygon, and CompoundCurve. For the fun and as an example, I will test CompoundCurve, a set of circular strings that may be combined with line strings, and store a “dbi” character set in a table.:-D What is CompoundCurve? It’s a set of circular strings, or circular strings combined…
My last blog was about installing and configuring Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Distributed Replay. This time, I will show you how you can create a trace and replay it with Distributed Replay Clients on a specific SQL Server target. This is my Distributed Replay configuration: Creation of the trace I will use the two Distributed Replay clients to generate…
Three weeks ago, Microsoft published the third Cumulative Update (CU3) for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Service Pack one. As usual, if this Cumulative Update solves an issue you are facing, install it quickly – otherwise, do not install it. Which issues are covered by this CU3? It contains 38 Hotfixes: 27 for the Engine 8 for SSAS 3 for SSRS To…
Distributed Replay is a new fonctionality of Microsoft SQL Server 2012. It helps you assess the impact of future upgrades (SQL Server, hardware, OS) or SQL Server tunings by replaying a trace captured from a productive SQL Server environment to a new SQL Server test environment. This new functionality is similar to SQL Server Profiler, but with more possibilities: e.…
I have read some blog postings concerning the new perfmon counters, but I have not seen really extensive overviews yet. In this post, I would like to present not only what is new, but also what has changed (or not) and how to find it. The first step is to select all objects in SQL2008R2 and SQL2012 from the view sys.dm_os_performance_counters.…
