A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Josephine Bush works around a deprecation notice:
I’m saddened that the Workspace Summary is being deprecated in Log Analytics Workspace. I am trying to reproduce it in workbooks. While it isn’t an exact match, workbooks provide me with enough information to use and share with others.
Click through to see what you could get from the Workspace Summary and how to re-implement a fair amount of that in Azure Workbooks.
Comments closedThis is the first follow up post from: Azure SQL TDE and Customer Keys (BYOK). Microsoft?…your name isn’t down, so you aren’t coming in. (sqlrod.com) , which explained how to use Customer Keys with Azure SQL DB (and Managed instance), and some of the dangerous pitfalls that you can face. We need to know when there may be trouble on the horizon, so key (pun fully intended) to this is monitoring.
Yes, i’m rambling on again about monitoring…but I like monitoring.
Be seeing you, Number Six.
Comments closedJosephine Bush has some advice:
Here’s a quick description of the options we explored:
- Azure Data Factory – Orchestrates and automates data movement and transformation. You can create workflows, pipelines, and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes using it.
- Databricks – A unified data science, engineering, and analytics platform based on Apache Spark. It simplifies data exploration, preparation, and machine learning workflows, allowing teams to collaborate efficiently. Interactive notebooks make Databricks a versatile tool for scalable data analysis and processing.
- Synapse – Integration of big data and data warehousing in the cloud. It facilitates collaborative analytics and AI-driven insights using serverless and provisioned resources across various data sources. Integrated analytics, warehousing, and data integration are part of Synapse’s unified experience.
- Fabric – An all-in-one analytics solution for enterprises that offers data movement, data lakes, data engineering, data integration, data science, and real-time analytics.
Read on for pros and cons of different options Josephine & crew reviewed, as well as the option they landed on and why.
Comments closedStephen Sumner shows off some changes:
Microsoft is excited to announce a significant update to the Azure Well-Architected Review assessment helps you build and optimize workloads. It walks you through a series of questions about your workload. Based on your responses, it generates tailored and prioritized recommendations to improve your workload design. The guidance is actionable and applicable to nearly every workload. It aligns with the latest best practices across the five key pillars of reliability, security, cost optimization, operational excellence, and performance efficiency (see figure 1).
I’m a big fan of the Well-Architected Framework and the assessments Microsoft has put together. An assessment can take teams within a company days to complete because the questions are so thorough, but once you do get through the list, you’ll get some great practical insights on your setup and what you can do to improve performance and save money.
Comments closedDimitri Furman fills us in on recent happenings:
To better support Extended Events in Azure SQL, in recent months we have made several improvements. Now, you can:
- View event data in SSMS without downloading xel files from Azure Storage
- Watch live data for an event session
- Use the XEvent Profiler
- Use the histogram target
- Monitor Extended Events performance
- Use granular Extended Events permissions
Much of this is already available in the box product. Dimitri also notes some performance improvements and other updates as well.
Comments closedDan English continues a series:
This is a bit overdue and a follow up to a few other posts I have regarding using Service Principal authentication with Power BI reports Power BI using Service Principal with Synapse SQL Pool and Power BI using Service Principal with Synapse Data Explorer (Kusto) Pool.
With the other two posts I did last year I had to use the SQL Server ODBC driver to get that to work and the big downside to that is that you need to use a gateway with that. Well in this case we are going to take a look at the new Shareable Cloud Connections that were announced earlier this year Streamlining cloud connection management for datasets, paginated reports, and other artifacts | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI
Click through to see what you need to get it working.
Comments closedSo what’s up this time. Our client has moved to Azure in classic lift and shift scenario. Well, almost. They’ve deployed new VM’s and installed SQL Server 2019 Standard in nice DTAP setting. The VM’s are standard E16-4as-v4 SKU. 4 vcpus and 128 GB memory. The disks are Premium SSD LRS ones with 2300 Max IOPS.
Their on-premises environment was a SQL Server 2016 standard edition running on a virtualisation layer with 128 GB of memory and 8 cores.
In both cases there are 2 numa nodes dividing the amount of cores between them.
Read on to learn more about the problem and what Reitse & co did to resolve it. Also check out the comments—Daniel Hutmacher, in particular, I think has the reason nailed.
Comments closedRod Edwards shares some hard-earned guidance:
Some organisations are more strict on security than others. Thats just the way of the world, whether it be local policy, industry policy, paranoia or worryingly…just not considering it a priority.
This is why Microsoft have to offer BYOK, no, not the famous Icelandic singer from the 90’s and beyond either. I’m (very) tenuously referring to “Bring Your Own Key” which allows customers to let the encryption key to be handled by Microsoft for their encryption purposes, but create and use one of their own.
Read on to learn more about how it works, as well as a couple of important warnings you should keep in mind.
Comments closedLouis Davidson shares some notes:
As I have dealt with other platforms, PostgreSQL has stood out to me as the platform I am most interested in because it feels like the one that is most competitive with SQL Server’s platform (Oracle is out there too, as is MySQL, and many others, but PostgreSQL feels like the balance of affordability and features that it has a similar feel enough to get started.)
There are a few high-level differences that can be confusing. A cluster is really just a server (or in SQL Server, an instance). Second, the way you execute a batch of code is very different, and sometimes this is based on the tool you are using. As you dig into how PostgreSQL works, some things will feel really normal, and some stuff will be very different from the other servers you have used.
Read on for the first post in the series, covering setup and connection.
Comments closedJose Manuel Jurado Diaz doesn’t want to run out of disk space:
In this article, we will introduce a PowerShell script that helps monitor the usage of Query Data Store (QDS) in SQL Server databases. The script automatically sends an email alert when the storage space used by the Query Data Store reaches or exceeds 80% of its maximum allocated space. This can be particularly useful for database administrators to proactively manage and optimize their database storage.
Before we dive into the details, it’s essential to note that the script provided is a recommendation and should be adapted according to your specific environment and requirements. The responsibility of ensuring its compatibility and the impact on your system lies solely with the user.
Click through for the script. A quick glance of the code makes me think it will also work with on-premises SQL Server.
Comments closed