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Category: Versions

Query Store And CU4

Published 2018-02-27 by Kevin Feasel

Erin Stellato notes that if you ran SQL Server 2017 CU2 with Query Store, you want to upgrade and run a special script:

There is a Query Store fix in the latest Cumulative Updates of SQL Server 2017, and if you are keeping current with the latest cumulative updates, there’s a script you need to run if you’ve installed CU2 at any point.

First, if you are still on CU2, you might want to consider upgrading to CU4 (released February 17, 2018).

Second, if you previously had CU2 installed (and are now on CU3 or CU4), you want to make sure that you’ve run the script included with CU3 and CU4 release notes.

The script removes plans from Query Store that were captured when running CU2.

Read the whole thing and keep those servers patched.

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New SQL Server 2017 On Windows Docker Container

Published 2018-02-13 by Kevin Feasel

Perry Skountrianos announces that SQL Server 2017 Developer & Express editions (running Windows Server 1709) are now available on Docker Hub:

Windows Server version 1709 brings the following important improvements that developers can take advantage of with the updated container images.

  1. First of all, the microsoft/windowsservercore image underneath SQL shrunk by more than 2GB, so the SQL Server images are also 2GB smaller.

  2. The networking support for containers was improved to support Kubernetes, now at beta in version 1.9 beta on Windows, and routing mesh with Docker Swarm.

  3. If you want to store your databases on remote storage, you can now by using global SMB mounts (New-SMBGlobalMapping) along with a docker volume (docker run -v c:\shared:c:\data microsoft/mssql-express-…).

Seems like a useful improvement.

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Hortonworks DataFlow 3.1 Released

Published 2018-02-05 by Kevin Feasel

George Vetticaden and Haimo Liu announce Hortonworks DataFlow version 3.1:

Apache Kafka 1.0 support with full integration with HDF Services – Kafka 1.0 provides important new features including more stringent message processing semantics with support for message headers and transactions, performance improvements and advanced security options.

  • Apache Ambari support for Kafka 1.0 – Install, configure, manage, upgrade, monitor, and secure Kafka 1.0 clusters with Ambari.

  • Apache Ranger support for Kafka 1.0 – Manage access control policies (ACLs) using resource or tag-based security for Kafka 1.0 clusters.

  • New NiFi and SAM processors for Kafka 1.0 – New processors in NiFi and Hortonworks Streaming Analytics Manager (SAM) support Kafka 1.0 features including message headers and transactions.

Click through for the list of top changes.

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Microsoft R Open 3.4.3

Published 2018-01-18 by Kevin Feasel

David Smith announces Microsoft R Open 3.4.3:

Microsoft R Open (MRO), Microsoft’s enhanced distribution of open source R, has been upgraded to version 3.4.3 and is now available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This update upgrades the R language engine to the latest R (version 3.4.3) and updates the bundled packages (specifically: checkpoint, curl, doParallel, foreach, and iterators) to new versions.

MRO is 100% compatible with all R packages. MRO 3.4.3 points to a fixed CRAN snapshot taken on January 1 2018, and you can see some highlights of new packages released since the prior version of MRO on the Spotlights page. As always, you can use the built-in checkpoint packageto access packages from an earlier date (for reproducibility) or a later date (to access new and updated packages).

That brings Microsoft up to speed with base R.

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Getting dbatools To Version 1.0

Published 2018-01-17 by Kevin Feasel

Simone Bizzotto explains what it’s going to take to get dbatools up to version 1.0:

We’re looking for contributors to help us finally reach version 1.0. Currently, we are on par with Gmail’s beta schedule: a whopping 4 years. But, we’re almost there and need your help finalizing our changes. If you’re interested in helping us bring 1.0 alive, we identified four areas with 5 primary contacts on the SQL Server Community Slack:

  • Standardize param names (@wsmelton)
  • Create tests for existing functions (@cl and @niphlod)
  • Review existing function documentation (@alevyinroc or @gbargsley)
  • Prepare for 1.0 with “code style” (Bill of Health, more on that later)

As you can see, a few of us are the main reference (on GitHub and Slack, mostly) for each area.

Read the whole thing and, if you’ve found dbatools to be helpful in the past, see if there’s anything you can do to help them out a little in return.

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Hadoop 3.0 Ships

Published 2017-12-18 by Kevin Feasel

Alex Woodie reports that Hadoop 3.0 is officially out there, and looks at what’s forthcoming in 3.1 and 3.2:

As we told you about last week, Hadoop 3.0 brings two big new features that are compelling in their own right. That includes support for erasure coding, which should boost storage efficiency by 50% thanks to more efficient data replication; and YARN Federation, which should allow Hadoop clusters to scale up to 40,000 nodes.

The delivery of Hadoop 3.0 shows that open open source community is responding to demands of industry, said Doug Cutting, original co-creator of Apache Hadoop and the chief architect at Cloudera.

“It’s tremendous to see this significant progress, from the raw tool of eleven years ago, to the mature software in today’s release,” he said in a press release.  “With this milestone, Hadoop better meets the requirements of its growing role in enterprise data systems.

But some of the new features in Hadoop 3.0 weren’t designed to bring immediate rewards to users. Instead, they pave the way for the Apache Hadoop community to deliver more compelling features with versions 3.1 and versions 3.2, according to  Hortonworks director of engineering Vinod Kumar Vavilapalli, who’s also a committer on the Apache Hadoop project.

“Hadoop 3.0 is actually a building block, a foundation, for more exciting things to come in 3.1 and 3.2,” he said.

Click through to see some of those exciting things.

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Upgrading That Expired Evaluation Copy Of SQL Server

Published 2017-12-01 by Kevin Feasel

Cody Konior finds a way to extricate the poor souls who need to upgrade expired evaluation copies of SQL Server from their mess:

Common advice here is to set the clock backwards. My problem with that is that you’re probably doing this on an unsupported unknown black-box flaming garbage can of a system set up by someone who wasn’t meant to do it – because otherwise they wouldn’t be using the evaluation edition. So what are the repercussions of setting the clock backwards? Perhaps their application spawning silently in the background and trashing this or other databases with bad date information? Perhaps you’ll lose your RDP connection and then be unable to connect back in because of the SSPI error generated by a clock mismatch?

No thanks. Instead you need to do some detective work.

Read the whole thing.

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Upgrading A Cluster To Windows Server 2016

Published 2017-11-14 by Kevin Feasel

Ryan Adams shows how to upgrade a failover cluster running Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016 without having to start from scratch:

Starting in Windows Server 2012 R2 you now have a way to upgrade a cluster to Windows 2016.  The best part is it’s not an OS upgrade, but a rebuild.  The magic is that you can join a Windows 2016 server to a Windows 2012 R2 cluster.  You can upgrade your cluster with as little as one failover and thus very little down time.  Everything stays in compatibility mode until all nodes are upgraded to Windows 2016 and then you upgrade the cluster functional level.  This is great news for those of us running FCIs or AGs.

Click through for a listing of steps and a video.

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Using dbatools To Determine SQL Server Versions

Published 2017-10-17 by Kevin Feasel

Simone Bizzotto walks us through a new dbatools feature:

You get back on a jiffy:
– the Build
– the Major Release
– the Service Pack
– the Cumulative Update
– the KB related to that version
– when the support for that version ends
– if all of the above are matching a verified build
– if a warning is shown, you passed a bad build or the JSON must be updated

Getting the build is easy; getting some of this other information is where they add a lot of value.

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Installing Zeppelin With Spark2 Support On HDP

Published 2017-10-11 by Kevin Feasel

Paul Hernandez shows how to install Apache Zeppelin 0.7.3 on Hortonworks Data Platform 2.5 in order to gain Spark2 support:

As a recent client requirement I needed to propose a solution in order to add spark2 as interpreter to zeppelin in HDP (Hortonworks Data Platform) 2.5.3
The first hurdle is, HDP 2.5.3 comes with zeppelin 0.6.0 which does not support spark2, which was included as a technical preview. Upgrade the HDP version was not an option due to the effort and platform availability. At the end I found in the HCC (Hortonworks Community Connection) a solution, which involves installing a standalone zeppelin which does not affect the Ambari managed zeppelin delivered with HDP 2.5.3.
I want to share how I did it with you.

Read on to see how Paul did it.  It’s not trivial but Paul lays out the process step-by-step.

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