November 2010 - Posts
Lecturer: Noam King
A lot was written about SQL Azure. SQL in the Cloud is something I heard a lot about in the last months. I'll explain why I'm under the impression SQL Azure is a great solution for tiny and simple databases only. Most of our customers are enterprise size and the solution is just not ready yet.
The Good things:
- Easy management. Setting a database + backup + High Availability finished in less than a minute. The power of the cloud.
- Hybrid approach - feel free to place the databases in the cloud and keep your applications local. Of course you can place your application in the cloud too.
- Each database has (automatically) two replicated databases with automatic failover.
More info about the capabilities and limitations of SQL Azure can be found in the document General guideline and limitations (SQL Azure)
What's missing?
- Unless your database is very simple, probably you'll have to redesign and rewrite the database.
- Database is limited to 50 GB so you'll have to design a scale out database solution (federation). However, you will be able to use CREATE FEDERATION command to (relatively) easily partition / federate the data to multiple SQL Azure databases. (not ready yet).
- No jobs (yet)
- SQL Authentication only, no Windows authentication (yet)
- All table must have clustered indexes
- Probably there are more limitations, these are just few from the document http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee336245.aspx
Migration wizard
In Codeplex you can find the SQL Server Azure Migration Wizard. The SQL Azure Migration Wizard helps you migrate your local SQL Server 2005 / 2008 databases into SQL Azure. The wizard walks you through the selection of your SQL objects, creates SQL scripts suitable for SQL Azure, and allows you to migrate your data.
Conclusion:
As I said earlier, SQL in the Cloud in great idea and I'm sure sooner or later we'll see great implementations of it. But in the near future I'm afraid it will be very hard to justify such a migration of big complex solution.
SQL Server Azure Reporting Services CTP
The team blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlrsteamblog/archive/2010/10/29/sql-azure-reporting.aspx
Sound promising. Still a CTP ( = errors during the demo). I strongly recommend waiting few months before considering implementing it.
SQL Azure Data Sync
Manual Sync of databases. The User has control to which worldwide data center will be deployed. It is a CTP2 version (= erros during the demo)
Itay@twingo.co.il
www.twingo.co.il
I'm so busy lately, I barely wrote anything in my blog about my lecture at Tech Ed Israel next week.
As you can imagine, I work very hard on it (among other things such as delivering MDX training, a very interesting BI project for SCCM and SQL Code Review).
So, to make a long story short, I will speak about all the common mistakes I've handled at the 3-4 customers I've visited in the last 10 years. I will demonstrate many quick no-brainer solutions. I'll teach the DBA how to solve 90% of the problems in 10% of the time.
I know the SSAS is a big black box for many DBA. After only one hour you'll know so much more.
Definitely worth coming.
See you all in sunny Eilat
"חברים יקרים,
ארבעה דברים שלא ידעתם על טק-אד הקרוב, ושבגללו כדאי לכם לרוץ ולהירשם אם עדיין לא נרשמתם:
•1. תהיה חשיפה גדולה ל- SQL Server Denali, הגרסה החדשה של SQL Server. ישנן הרצאות מלוות בהדגמות חיות של פיצ'רים חדשים. למשל, בפעם הראשונה בארץ ניתן לראות את הממשק החדש מבוסס ה-web לחיבור דוחות. נראה כאן את כל ההרצאות שהיו בנושא זה בטק-אד אירופה לפני כשבועיים.
•2. 25% מהמרצים הם מקבוצת המוצר בחו"ל!
•3. לפחות 50% מההרצאות זה דמו.
•4. במסלול יושק מוצר חדש - appliance למחסני נתונים גדולים בשם SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse.
נתראה בטק-אד במסלול בינה עסקית,
רונן ואיתי"