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Author: Kevin Feasel

Using Azure Key Vault with Azure Databricks

Published 2020-03-26 by Kevin Feasel

Jason Bonello shows how easy it is to integrate Azure Key Vault into Azure Databricks:

In Azure Key Vault we will be adding secrets that we will be calling through Azure Databricks within the notebooks. First and foremost, this is for security purposes. It will ensure usernames and passwords are not hardcoded within the notebook cells and offer some type of control over access in case it needs to be reverted later on (assuming it is controlled by a different administrator). In addition to this, it will offer a better way of maintaining a solution, since if a password ever needs to be changed, it will only be changed in the Azure Key Vault without the need to go through any notebooks or logic.

If you don’t use Key Vault, Databricks does include its own secrets storage, so there’s really no reason to keep them in plaintext.

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Using relog to Make PerfMon Better

Published 2020-03-26 by Kevin Feasel

Erin Stellato shows us how to use relog:

Today I had to remember the steps for using relog. If you’ve never heard of relog, stay with me. It’s a tool for merging PerfMon files, and also for extracting smaller data sets from Perfmon. I still love PerfMon friends, I admit it. It’s been a staple for understanding performance on a Windows Server since I’ve started in IT. But I haven’t used relog in forever so I completely forgot the commands I needed.

Click through for usage instructions.

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Powershell 7 and SMO

Published 2020-03-26 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad gives us a primer on SMO with Powershell 7:

There are two ways you could use SMO in PowerShell 7 (cross-platform):

1. Installing the SMO NuGet packages, two packages are requiered:
a. Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlManagementObjects Version 150.18208.0 (as of 03/23/2020)
b. Microsoft.Data.SqlClient Version 1.1.1 (recommended)

2. Installing the PowerShell Module: SqlServer Version 21.1.18221 (as of 03/23/2020)

Keep in mind, once the packages and/or modules are installed, you need to update them manually.

Read the whole thing.

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Getting SQL Server with Current Linux Distributions

Published 2020-03-26 by Kevin Feasel

Tejas Shah announces the availability of SQL Server 2019 on the latest long-term releases of Ubuntu, Red Hat, and SuSE:

SQL Server team has been working diligently in adding support for current Linux distributions. To this end, the team announced support for SQL Server 2019 on RHEL 8.0, Ubuntu 18.04 and SLES 12 SP5 within last quarter.

The team is glad to announce that the Azure marketplace PAYG (Pay As You Go) images for SQL Server 2019 on RHEL 8.0, Ubuntu 18.04 and SLES 12 SP5 have been made generally available. You can deploy these images to get the latest of both SQL Server 2019 functionality and operating system improvements.

With Ubuntu 20.04 coming out soon, it’ll be interesting to see when that officially becomes supported.

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sqltxls Now Supported Cross-Platform

Published 2020-03-26 by Kevin Feasel

Randolph West has made sql2xls work on Linux and MacOS:

Last year I released sql2xls, a free open-source tool which lets you throw a bunch of scripts into a folder, run them automatically against SQL Server and get the results back in a nicely-formatted Excel file, one tab per script.

A year later, I am happy to announce that the tool now runs cross-platform. You can compile and run it with .NET Core 3.1 LTS to run on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It uses the new Microsoft.Data.SqlClient library from NuGet, as well as the latest beta of ClosedXML.

Read on for a few more tips and go check the project out.

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Authentication in Hadoop with Apache Ozone

Published 2020-03-25 by Kevin Feasel

Xiaoyu Yao explains how we can use Apache Ozone to perform service account authentication for a Hadoop cluster:

Like Hadoop delegation tokens, Ozone security token has a token identifier along with a signed signature from the issuer. Ozone manager issues delegation token and block tokens for users or client applications authenticated with Kerberos. The signature of the token can be validated by token validators to verify the identity of the issuer. This way, a valid token holder can use the token to perform operations against the cluster services as if they have Kerberos tickets of the issuer. 

Read on for the high-level overview.

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Figuring out How a Plan was Forced

Published 2020-03-25 by Kevin Feasel

Erin Stellato wants to know whether a DBA forced a plan or SQL Server did automatically:

If you use Automatic Plan Correction, and thus also Query Store, you may wonder how was a plan forced: manually or automatically with APC?  The type of forced plan is tracked in sys.query_store_plan, and you can use this simple query to determine how a plan was forced:

Click through for a simple query, as well as a more complex form which gives you a bit more info.

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Upgrading SQL Server Reporting Services to 2017

Published 2020-03-25 by Kevin Feasel

Alexandre Hamel walks us through the new process for upgrading SQL Server Reporting Services:

In the past, we could run the SQL installer to do an in-place upgrade of SQL server including the SSRS instance to a newer version. As of 2017, SSRS is a separate install from SQL server, so this is no longer possible. In fact, if you do an in-place upgrade of SQL 2014 to 2017 for example, you will see a warning that SSRS will be uninstalled. Before proceeding with the SQL upgrade, follow these steps to upgrade the SSRS instance.

It’s not as easy as it was before, but Alexandre takes us through the step-by-step process and even includes some notes on how to roll back your upgrade attempt if necessary.

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