SQL Server

SQL Server – Collecting last backup information in an AlwaysOn environment

Introduction Sometimes you face interesting challenges with unusual environment. One of my customer needed a automated and flexible backup solution. Said like that nothing very complex you will say. But if I mention that some databases were 60TB big with(…)

Using non-root SQL Server containers on Docker and K8s

This is something that I waited for a while, in fact since SQL Server 2017 … and the news came out on Wednesday 09th September 2019. Running(…)

When Read-Scale availability groups and Windows Failover Cluster are not good friends

A couple of days ago, with some fellow French data platform MVPS (@thesqlgrrrl and @Conseilit) we discussed an issue around Read-Scale availability groups(…)

SQL Server 2019: Java in SQL Server hard to believe, no?

It has already been a few months that we are testing the next version of SQL Server: SQL Server 2019. I already blogged about a previous version of SQL Server supporting R and Python. With the new version(…)

SQL Server containers and docker network driver performance considerations

Few months ago I attended to the Franck Pachot session about Microservices and databases at SOUG Romandie in Lausanne on 2019 May 21th. He covered some performance challenges that can be introduced by Microservices architecture design(…)

Deploying SQL Server on Azure virtual machine with Terraform

We are entering now to the infrastructure as code world and provisioning a SQL Server infrastructure is not excluded from the equation. This is especially true when it comes the Cloud regardless we are using IaaS or PaaS. One(…)

Windocks, SQL Server and Azure in our internal CI pipeline

During the last DevOps Day in Geneva, I presented a sample of our CI implementation related to our MSSQL DMK maintenance product(…)

Upgrading SQL Server pods on K8s and helm charts

It has been while since my last blog. Today it is about continuing with helm charts and how to upgrade / downgrade SQL Server containers to a specific cumulative update. My first write-up in my to-do list. Last(…)

SQL Server Temporal Table – How to store a history table in another file?

Few days ago, a customer asks me if it is possible to move the history table to slower but cheaper storage. The question behind this is whether it is possible to create a history table on a separate filegroup(…)

Transparent Data Encryption – Certificate in master database: is it really a good practice?

As encryption solution in SQL Server, Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) is simple and quick to set up. That's why this is a common encryption mechanism. TDE encrypts data with a certificate at the page level, before SQL Server writes on(…)