A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Laith Ayesh has a script for us:
In a few scenarios, you might need to scale multiple databases on a logical server (not part of elastic pool) at once, the azure portal only allows you to scale each database individually. This can be achieved using the following PowerShell script:
just modify the parameters like SubID, the resource group and server name and then pick the service tier you want and run the script:
Click through for the Powershell script and an important note.
Comments closedJoji Varghese gives us a hand:
In an Azure Kubernetes (AKS) cluster, Pods can access physical storage resources such as disks or volumes using Persistent Volumes (PV). To use these resources, Pods need to make a Persistent Volume Claim (PVC), which requests a specific amount of storage from a storage class. This claim can then be matched to an available Persistent Volume. Azure offers several storage solutions that can be used to provision Persistent Volumes in an AKS cluster.
This article will provide real-world guidance on securely using Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers to provision Azure File Shares and Azure Blob storage in an AKS cluster.
If you’re looking at setting up Azure Kubernetes Service, give this a review.
Comments closedVaidy Kalpathy takes us through a bit of dimensional modeling in AWS Redshift:
Populating an SCD dimension table involves merging data from multiple source tables, which are usually normalized. SCD tables contain a pair of date columns (effective and expiry dates) that represent the record’s validity date range. Changes are inserted as new active records effective from the date of data loading, while simultaneously expiring the current active record on a previous day. During each data load, incoming change records are matched against existing active records, comparing each attribute value to determine whether existing records have changed or were deleted or are new records coming in.
Click through for the article.
Comments closedWolfgang Strasser wants to try Microsoft Purview but doesn’t want to break the bank:
And my reaction was – Nice, very nice.. I can try and create Microsoft Purview instances for free and test new features..
BUT: I wanted to be sure and check, how much metadata (sources, scan results, data assets, classifications) can fit into 1 MB of metadata.
Read on for Wolfgang’s test, as well as the full set of costs around trying out Purview.
Comments closedRyan Majidimehr has a new round-up for us:
Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.3 has been in Public Preview since November 2022. We are excited to announce that after notable improvements in performance and stability, Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.3 now becomes Generally Available and ready for production workloads.
The essential changes include features that come from upgrading Apache Spark to version 3.3.1, Delta Lake to version 2.2.0, and Python to 3.10.
This month’s set of changes isn’t quite as big as some prior months, though there are a couple items of great importance to make up for it.
Comments closedReitse Eskens ran out of money on our behalf:
In one of my last blogs, I wrote about my first encounter with the Azure Hyperscale Serverless offering. Now it’s time to dig a bit deeper and what it’s up to.
Disclaimer. Azure Hyperscale Serverless is in preview and one of the things that isn’t active yet, is the auto shutdown. This means that it will stay online 24/7. And bill you for every second it’s online. In my case, this meant that my Visual Studio credits ran out and I couldn’t use my Azure subscription anymore. Keep it in mind when testing this out, especially if your credit card is connected to said subscription.
Click through to see what Reitse was able to do in the meantime, before those Azure credits ran out for the month.
Comments closedBob Pusateri spams the 302 response code:
In WordPress, I used a plugin called Redirection, which enabled me to create URLs that would redirect to other websites. They can come in handy, especially when presenting. I’ll often create a custom redirect link for each presentation I give that will point my attendees toward my resources for that topic. For example, if I were giving a talk about isolation levels, I might direct attendees to visit https://sqlbob.com/isolation, which would redirect them to my GitHub repo with links to slides, demo code, and other materials.
But a HTML file really can’t redirect you to another page. To be fair, you can do it via a
<meta>tag, but it’s not guaranteed to work in all browsers. I’m told there’s also a way to do it in JavaScript, but I really wanted a seamless experience for users like the Redirection plugin offered. I also was in need of a little project over the winter months.
Click through for Bob’s solution to the problem.
Comments closedBalmukund Lakhani announces a feature has gone generally available:
Today, we are announcing General Availability (GA) of native implementation of APPROX_PERCENTILE in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. We announced preview of these functions in October 2022. Since then, many customers have adopted these for the applications where response time of percentile calculation was more important than the accuracy of the result.
I have and will continue to extol the virtues of these two functions wherever I go. They’re considerably better than the originals once you start getting into the hundreds of thousands or millions of rows. They’re also available in SQL Server 2022.
Comments closedGrant Fritchey observes the observers:
Last week I posted the results from using Extended Events to snoop on what happens inside an AWS RDS database. This week, I’m taking a look at what happens on Azure SQL Database. I’m using the same toolset again, if for no other reason that I’m consistent in my approach. So it’s basically just rpc_completed & sql_batch_completed on the database in question. Let’s check out the results.
Here’s the prior post, in case you missed it like I did.
Comments closedPrakash P covers a topic near and dear to my heart—saving money by using spot instances:
While it’s possible to run the Kubernetes nodes either in on-demand or spot node pools separately, we can optimize the application cost without compromising the reliability by placing the pods unevenly on spot and OnDemand VMs using the topology spread constraints. With baseline amount of pods deployed in OnDemand node pool offering reliability, we can scale on spot node pool based on the load at a lower cost.
I like this idea a lot, as spot instances trade off saving a lot of money (up to 90%) for unreliability: you lose the spot instance as soon as someone else comes in willing to pay more. This gives you the best of both worlds with AKS: emphasize spot instances for the money savings but include the ability to use on-demand pricing for VMs when spot isn’t available. If I’m understanding the post correctly, this also reduces the downside risk of service instability that you get when spot instances are bought out from under you, as Kubernetes will automatically spin up and down services within a pod to keep a consistent number of instances available across the nodes to users.
Comments closed