Webcasts
Webcast Information
Here are the slides from this morning’s Webcast – MOM 2005 Technical Overview. If you are interesed in a replay of the webcast, check back at the Microsoft Webcast site fro archived webcasts. We record ALL webcasts and make themn available online within 24–48 hours.
Cheers!
I am delivering a webcast later this morning entitled – Microsoft Solutions to Windows Update Management. The Webcast starts at 9am Pacific Time and I expect all 23 of you to show up! :)
Cheers!
I would like some feedback from those who read (or at least glance at) my blog. I have been struggling with direction since starting up my blog and have finally come to a crossroads where I need to make a change. A couple of things have brought me to this decision – 1) There is a new version of Community Server that I want to migrate to and I am going to improve my hardware for my network. I like rebuilding my home network now and then just to get my hands dirty. 2) I have a tendency to blog about things that are interesting to me that I think others might find interesting as well. I also NEED to blog more about Microsoft products and technologies as I am an IT Pro Evangelist for the company. The problem is, blogging for work and blogging for interest seem to be muddling up the blog (IMO).
I am not trying to increase hits and readership so much as organize and structure what does get posted. I am even considering splitting my blog into two separate blogs – one for work and one for personal. The downside there is maintaining two blogs. The upside is organization and clarity.
Now….I work mostly with our “BackOffice” server products. I tend to gravitate towards Windows 2003, ISA, and Exchange (and all of their predecessors). I even supported the Small Business Server product as a whole from it’s inception through SBS 2000. I also have a passion around the Media Center and other consumer products (am I not a consumer?). Of course there are blogs-a-plenty on all of those items so I want to offer something they don’t, if I can.
So I would like some feedback from you. Do you like it the way it is? Would you like to see it split? And from a Microsoft perspective, is there something missing from other MS Product and Technology blogs that you want filled in? For that matter, is there an MS Product or Technology that isn’t getting enough or the proper “air-time”? What about podcasts and webcasts? What is valuable to you?
What it really comes down to is this – I don’t want to push a corporate agenda, I want to give you what you want. So…..What do YOU want?
Send me an email – chris.avis@microsoft.com or comment on this post about it. You can even, give me a call if you want – 760-695-7838 – if I don’t answer, leave me a message with a number and I will give you a ring back.
Cheers!
I will be delivering some Technet sessions in Florida next week. Jan 17th in Royal Palm Beach and Jan 19th in Tampa. We are going to be covering a rather large set of topics including – New Features of Windows 2003 R2 such as Active Directory Federation Services, better Distributed File System capabilities, and benefits provided for Branch Office deployments. We will also be discussing some new features in Exchange 2003 SP2, and some great information on how to locate resources that every ITPro should know about to help make their day go a lot smoother.
I am looking forward to heading out to Florida next week and hope some of you make it as well.
Cheers!
Ps… I am delivering these same events in SoCal in late February. No registration links have been made available yet.
Presentations and WebCasts –
New Video & Audio based information for developers is located at these links:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/archive.aspx
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=14
http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/dotnetrocks/
Extending Visual Studio 2005 Team System – Discussion on how Microsoft IT extended Visual Studio 2005 Team System to incorporate software development lifecycle methodology process by modifying the default process template. By modifying the process template developer compliance increased and external tools were eliminated.
Getting Started – Visual Basic Fusion with Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .NET – This presentation walks you through the Visual Basic Fusion articles and shows how Microsoft Visual Basic 6 applications can be extended with the Microsoft .NET framework. This video is the second of a two-part presentation by Scott Swigart of Swigart Consulting.
Beta’s, RC’s and CTP’s…Oh My! –
Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 1.2 – Compatible with Office “12” (Beta 1) – Windows Workflow Foundation is the programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow-enabled applications on Windows. It consists of a Microsoft® WinFX® name space (System.Workflow), an in-process workflow engine, and designers for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Windows Workflow Foundation is available (currently as Beta) for both client and server versions of Windows. Windows Workflow Foundation supports a wide range of scenarios including workflow within line-of-business applications, user interface page flow, document-centric workflow, human workflow, composite workflow for service-oriented applications, business rule-driven workflow and workflow for systems management.
Microsoft Pre-Release Software WinFX Language Packs – December Community Technology Preview (CTP) – The WinFX language packs contain translated text, such as error messages, for languages other than English. Installation of a language pack is not required to run WinFX resources on a non-English operating system; however, it is recommended.
Note: An English WinFX language pack is not available because all text is in English by default. To download a specific language pack, select the target language from the change language drop-down.
Pre-released WinFX Runtime Components Tool – For best results, install on a computer that has not had pre-release versions of WinFX runtime Components 3.0 installed on it. If your computer has a pre-release version on it, follow the Uninstall Instructions below to uninstall these pre-release bits before installing the November CTP. You must remove them in the correct order to ensure a clean uninstall.
If you have a pre-release version of SQL Server 2005, MSDN, Visual Studio 2005, or the .NET Framework, you must uninstall them by following VS pre-RTM Uninstall Instructions.
Microsoft Pre-Release Software WinFX Runtime Components – December Community Technology Preview (CTP) – "Windows Presentation Foundation", "Windows Communication Foundation", and "Windows Workflow Foundation" are the names for three strategic developer technologies that Microsoft plans to ship in 2006 as part of the Windows Vista operating system. In addition, Microsoft is making these technologies available on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The WinFX Runtime Components December CTP enables developers to continue experimenting with early builds of these technologies, get acquainted with the development experience, and provide Microsoft with feedback.
Hotfixes, Patches, Updates, Service Packs —
Help for Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications SDK – This help file documents all the POSIX style APIs provided by Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications.
Australian Daylight Savings changes in Microsoft Products for the year 2006 – The Commonwealth Games are scheduled to be held during March 2006 in Melbourne Australia. Several Australian states including New South Wales, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Tasmania, have changed the Daylight Savings transition end dates to the first Sunday of April 2006.
DirectX End-User Runtimes (December 2005) Full Download – This download provides the DirectX end-user multi-languaged redistributable that developers can include with their product. The redistributable license agreement covers the terms under which developers may use the Redistributable. For full details please review the DirectX SDK EULA.txt and DirectX Redist.txt files located in the license directory.
This package is localized into Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and English.
DirectX End-User Runtime (December 2005) Web Installer – Microsoft DirectX is a group of technologies designed to make Windows-based computers an ideal platform for running and displaying applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-color graphics, video, 3D animation, and rich audio. DirectX includes security and performance updates, along with many new features across all technologies, which can be accessed by applications using the DirectX APIs.
Windows CE 5.0 Platform Builder Update – KB911711 – Fixes made in this update:
Component: Datasync
Description: ActiveSync connection may fail if a user attempts to re-connect to a device after failing to enter a password.
Tools and Apps –
PlaysForSure Portable Device Test Kit – Microsoft has established the PlaysForSure program to establish compatibility between music or video device and online stores that sell digital music and video using Windows Media technologies. If you are designing or manufacturing a portable media player device, you can use the PlaysForSure Portable Device Test Kit to verify that your device is compliant with the requirements of the PlaysForSure logo program. Please note that you must have a fully executed PlaysForSure Logo License Agreement in place with Microsoft prior to using the logo on your products or marketing materials.
Microsoft Domain-Specific Language (DSL) Tools – Using the Microsoft DSL tools you can create your own designer, integrated into Visual Studio, for a visual domain-specific language. The tools help you define the domain-specific language and generate the code of a graphical designer for you. The resulting designer uses the same underlying modeling technology that is used by the Class Designer and Distributed System Designers in Visual Studio 2005.
The Microsoft Tools for Domain-Specific Languages is part of the Visual Studio 2005 SDK.
SQL Server 2005 System View Map – The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 System View Map shows the key system views included in SQL Server 2005, and the relationships between them.
BizTalk Server 2004 Load Generation Tool – This tool is intended for developers and IT professionals to simulate load on a BizTalk Server. Using this tool, you can simulate load to instrument performance and stress against a BizTalk deployment. In addition, this tool may also be extended by developers to simulate load for custom transports. This tool should be used in a test environment only, and should not be used in a production environment. This tool is provided "as-is" and is not supported.
Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Sample: Deploying Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Solutions using Windows Installer – This download targets developers who want to deploy a Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office solution using a Visual Studio 2005 Setup project to create a Windows Installer package.
The accompanying article provides the following discussions of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office deployment:
- An overview of the main steps required to deploy a Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office solution.
- An overview of how to deploy a Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office solution using the Visual Studio Setup project including how you can add the Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office runtime and the Microsoft Office 2003 primary interop assemblies prerequisites to your setup packages.
- The steps for granting security trust to a solution.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 – Update to the Web Project Conversion Wizard – The Web Project Conversion Wizard in Visual Studio 2005 has been updated to handle newly discovered conversion issues. This update will improve the success rate of the wizard and make it easier for developers to convert their Visual Studio .NET 2003 Web projects to the new Visual Studio 2005 Web Site project model.
Case Studies, Guides and Whitepapers –
Moving to SQL Server 2005 at Microsoft – Discussion on how Microsoft IT moved its line-of-business applications to SQL Server 2005. Additionally, this paper also discusses a number of details and best practices that Microsoft adopted to move its applications on SQL Server 2005 that may help other organizations successfully plan and roll out SQL Server 2005.
Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 to Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 2005 – This guide is intended for software technical decision makers, solution architects, and software developers who are involved in Visual Basic 6.0 application or component development. It helps you understand the issues and risks that go along with upgrading to Visual Basic .NET. It also provides steps for preparing your applications for a successful and cost-effective upgrade. Finally, it gives ideas and pointers about how advance your application after you successfully upgrade it to Visual Basic .NET.
SQL Server 2005business Intelligence Metadata Whitepaper – This white paper covers several interesting and unique methods for managing metadata in SQL Server Integration Services, Analysis Services and Reporting Services using built-in features including data lineage, business and technical metadata and impact analysis.
Related Download: The SQL Server 2005 Metadata Samples Toolkit can be downloaded from:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=11DAA4D1-196D-4F2A-B18F-891579C364F4&displaylang=en
Cheers!
Presentations and WebCasts –
Deploying SharePoint Products and Technologies for Enterprise Collaboration – Detailed discussion about the design and deployment of the Microsoft IT hosted collaboration platform. The platform supports personal storage, team Web sites, group and division portals, and enterprise services. With server farms centralized in three regional data centers, Microsoft saves both hardware and support costs.
Moving to SQL Server 2005 at Microsoft – Discussion on how Microsoft IT moved its line-of-business applications to SQL Server 2005. Additionally, this paper also discusses a number of details and best practices that Microsoft adopted to move its applications on SQL Server 2005 that may help other organizations successfully plan and roll out SQL Server 2005.
Hotfixes, Patches, Updates, Service Packs —
Update for Windows XP x64 Edition – KB903651 – See Below
Update for Windows Server 2003 – KB903651 – See Below
Update for Windows 2003 for Itanium-based Systems – KB903651– See Below
Update for Windows Server x64 Edition – KB903651 – Install this update to allow more than one domain-based DFS namespace to be created on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.
Australian Daylight Savings changes for Microsoft products for the Year 2006 – The Commonwealth Games are scheduled to be held during March 2006 in Melbourne Australia. Several Australian states including New South Wales, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Tasmania, have changed the Daylight Savings transition end dates to the first Sunday of April 2006.
Update for Software Update Services – Run this script and follow the instructions in KB912307 to resolve an issue in Software Update Services (SUS) 1.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) in which all previously approved updates may revert to an unapproved state and the status appears as "updated". This script will reset your approval settings to their previous state. SUS 1.0 SP1 servers that were deployed on or after December 13, 2005 will not encounter this issue.
Tools and Apps –
SQL Server 2005 System View Map – The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 System View Map shows the key system views included in SQL Server 2005, and the relationships between them.
Active Directory Migration Tool v2.0 – The Active Directory Migration Tool (ADMT) version 2.0 provides an easy, secure, and fast way to either upgrade from Windows NT Server 4.0 to Windows Server Active Directory service or restructure Windows Server Active Directory domains between forests or within a forest. The tool migrates users, groups, and computers between domains in a way that allows users to have access to their resources and applications at all times. Version 2.0 includes new features, such as password migration, a scripting interface, and a command line interface, that make migrations easier.
Also available is the Active Directory Migration Tool v3.0, which provides an integrated toolset to facilitate migration and restructuring tasks in an Active Directory infrastructure.
BizTalk Server 2004 Load Generation Tool – This tool is intended for developers and IT professionals to simulate load on a BizTalk Server. Using this tool, you can simulate load to instrument performance and stress against a BizTalk deployment. In addition, this tool may also be extended by developers to simulate load for custom transports. This tool should be used in a test environment only, and should not be used in a production environment. This tool is provided "as-is" and is not supported.
Case Studies, Guides and Whitepapers –
Microsoft CRM 3.0 Implementation Guide – This Implementation Guide provides the information required for a successful Microsoft CRM implementation into your business. This guide addresses the planning, installing (both hardware and software), pre-deployment testing, and operating tasks for the maintenance of the Microsoft CRM system.
This guide is written for the computer system administrator. This guide also assumes that any organization implementing Microsoft CRM software will have the services of an independent software vendor (ISV) or value-added reseller who is partnered with Microsoft and will help you with the entire process of implementing and maintaining your Microsoft CRM installation. Because of this assumption, there are references in this guide to these "partners" who are expected to provide various services to you.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Virtual PC Demonstration – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 release Virtual PC Demonstration. This demo is a one computer setup with Microsoft CRM 3.0 server and Microsoft CRM 3.0 client for Outlook. This demonstartion also contains Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.
Microsoft File Server Resource Manager – The Microsoft Corporation Information Technology group uses Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 File Server Resource Manager as a centralized tool for managing file servers located in branch offices around the world. File Server Resource Manager is a suite of tools that allows administrators to understand, control, and manage the quantity and types of data stored on their servers.
Live Communications Server 2005 Document: Configuring Certificates – This document explains how Live Communications Server 2005 uses certificates and how to configure certificates for each server role using your existing certificate infrastructure.
Terminal Services Scaling and Performance on X64-based versions of Windows Server 2003 – Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 Terminal Server lets users run Microsoft Windows®-based applications on a remote computer that is running one of the Windows Server 2003 family of operating systems. This white paper contains results, analyses, and sizing guidelines for Terminal Services on x64-based versions of Windows Server 2003. Hewlett Packard worked in cooperation with Microsoft to perform the initial sizing tests and data collection in the Microsoft Enterprise Engineering Center in Redmond, Washington. The tests were performed using Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1).
DirectX End-User Runtime – Microsoft DirectX is a group of technologies designed to make Windows-based computers an ideal platform for running and displaying applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-color graphics, video, 3D animation, and rich audio. DirectX includes security and performance updates, along with many new features across all technologies, which can be accessed by applications using the DirectX APIs.
DFS Operations Guide: Using the DFSRAdmin Command-line Tool – The Dfsradmin.exe command line tool is new for the Distributed File System (DFS) in Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 R2. Use this tool to administer DFS replication, including creation of replication groups and replicated folders, adding members to replication groups, and managing the location of staging folders. This guide offers step-by-step instructions for performing these common tasks by using DFSRAdmin.
SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence Metadata Whitepaper – This white paper covers several interesting and unique methods for managing metadata in SQL Server Integration Services, Analysis Services and Reporting Services using built-in features including data lineage, business and technical metadata and impact analysis.
Related Download: The SQL Server 2005 Metadata Samples Toolkit can be downloaded from:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=11DAA4D1-196D-4F2A-B18F-891579C364F4&displaylang=en
Security –
Improving Security at Microsoft through Deployment of Windows XP SP2 – Overview of why and how Microsoft IT proactively deployed Windows XP Service Pack 2. Windows XP Service Pack 2 is a critical security release that addresses Internet-based security threats.
Windows Server 2003 PKI Operations Guide – How to configure and operate a Windows certificate authority, with operational scenarios, custom configuration information, sample commands, and best practices.
MBSA 2.0 Scripting Examples – Sample scripts that illustrate how to extend MBSA 2.0 for greater scalability during scanning and report rollup.
Cheers!
I am delivering Part 1 on Thursday and Part 2 on Friday. We will discuss the challenges an organization faces when dealing with multiple identities and intranet/extranet acess. We will discuss security repurcussions and using Microsoft Identity Information Server. I will update this post in a day or two with the slides I will be using.
Cheers!
This morning I delivered a webcast on MOM 2005 Sizing and Performance. Once of the questions that came up was this —
Can I use MOM 2005 Reporting with SQL 2005 Reporting Services?
I checked the MOM 2005 System Requirements and it notes that SQL 2000 Reporting Services would be required.
I also checked the MOM 2005 team product blog and did not see any announcement of being able to use SQL 2005 for the reporting services.
Finally, I pinged a couple internal distribution lists looking for some guidance and was told taht we do NOT currently support using SQL 2005 for either the MOM Reporting services *or* the MOM database.
I would encourage you to subscribe to the MOM blog above as I am sure it will be annouced there first, and to check the MOM site I linked to above as it will get posted there as well.
Cheers!
As promised, here are some WMV files of the demo sessions that I had to cut from this afternoon’s webcast. The upside is you can download these and view at your own liesure. Please email me if you have questions!
Demo 1 – Introducing System Center
Capacity Planner Pre-Req’s
Installing Capacity Planner 2006
A Brief Introduction
Demo 2 – Creating Architecture Profiles
Creating the Global Topology
Creating Usage Profiles
Creating Hardware Profiles
Demo 3 – Running Model Simulations
Exploring the Topology Viewer
Running the Model Simulator
Viewing Simulation Results
Cheers!
Here are the slides for the Webcast we did this morning. I have added a couple extra decks that add some additional information for your use. If you are interested in seeing this session LIVE, check out www.technetevents.com for a live “Best Of SQL” event near you.
Cheers!
My co-worker and friend Michael Murphy is debuting the first of his Internet Radio series today with an interview with Bill Zack, co-author of Programming SQL 2005 (due out from MSPress early 2006).
From MJ’s site — “In keeping with that theme here is a 20 minute interview with Bill Zack, one of the co-authors of Programming SQL 2005 due out from MS Press early 2006. We spend the first five minutes discussing Bill's many other projects including his software architects User Group in Manhattan and get into a discussion of SQL 2005 at about the 4:45 mark.”
Chek it out!
Cheers!
I am delivering a webcast next Wednesday on AD Remote Admin. We will talk about remote deployments of AD, using WMI for remote admin, as well as a variety of tools from the resource kit and some that are shipped on the Windows 2003 media.
Cheers!
I picked up this webcast for tomorrow. I am placing some supporting information online now, and will update this post over the next week with anything I find that is interesting. if you have suggestions, hit the comments (I am still waiting to hear from the CS Forums on the remember me function).
For those of you new to AD or if you want a quick refresher – Intro to AD in Win 2003 whitepaper
I will briefly mention a nice Excel spreadsheet you can download that has all of the available GP settings as of 2003 SP1. I posted about this after Part 2.
The Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) is here.
Excellent whitepaper on Admin of GP with GPMC.
If you work for an enterprise this page links out to some more detailed management information when using the GPMC.
For you scripters out there, you have to bookmark the Scripting Guys and the Technet Script Center. From here you can grab the Scriptomatic tool, learn about scripting, and automate your daily rigor.
WMI Information can be found here.
For some free support on Group Policy, try the Microsoft Group Policy Newsgroup – peer-to-peer support and MVP’s hang out there. MS People too.
Cheers!
I will be delivering Part 1 of a 3 part Webcast series on Understanding Group Policy this Friday.
Here is Part 2 and Part 3
This a great series of webcasts for people who are new to Group Policy or have gotten their feet wet and want a little deeper information. We have been doing this series for a while now so if you can’t make these particular webcasts, they are being recorded *or* you can search for previous recording by your favorite presenters here.
Cheers!
Kevin Remde, one of my fabulous co-workers is delivering a webcast on Virtual Server 2005 tomorrow. It is an overview of VS 2005 but don’t let that fool you. Even if you are familiar with Virtual PC or Virtual Server, you will find some interesting tidbits you may not be aware of.
If you have never worked with Virtualization technologies before, I suggest you check it out as they are a benefit to just about everyone from the End User wanting to play with software and applications on a minimal hardware allowances to ITPros testing and configuring software in a lab to huge corporations that are consolidating servers.
I will be sitting in on Q&A along with others from the Technet Evangelist group.
Cheers!
As promised on my webcast from this morning, here are some resources on the Security enhancements to SP1 as well as some specific docs around Quarantine Services.
These documents are VERY high level. Overviews really. No meat, just gravy. Oh yeah, we can do Quarantine Control on the LAN as well.
What is Remote Access Quarantine Control?
Planning for Network Access Quarantine Control
Configuring Network Access Quarantine Control
This Document adds some potatoes to the Quarantine meal…..
Implementing Quarantine Services with VPN Guide
Now the Meat!!!!
Step-By-Step Guide for setting up Quarantine services in a LAB
Step-Bt-Step Guide for deploy Remote Access Policies with RRAS
VPN Quarantine Sample Scripts I used in the demo
VPN Quarantine and ISA 2004
I believe Paul (or was it Raul?) asked about using RSA SecureID and VPN – Here ya go!
Cheers!
<first…….go grab yourself a 6 pack….this is a long one>
<beer 1>
I admit it…..I am a SQL n00b…..So I am taking a SQL 2072 course next week in Oklahoma City.
Go ahead…..I know you want to…..have your chuckle about how Oklahoma sucks and you know it does cuz that is the only thing that keeps Texas from falling into the Gulf of Mexico.
I like that joke btw…..BUT!
The fact is, I will be learning more about SQL in one week…..in Oklahoma…...than I have in the past 10 years.
<beer 2…..you know you chugged the first one right after you saw “Oklahoma” and “Texas”>
On a personal level, I have had zero use for SQL. For that matter I have had zero use for databases of any kind for the last 10 years or so. I used to have an Access (95) DB years ago. The only reason I had that one was to make an attempt at moving my fantasy football league over from AppleWorks and my Apple //gs to my brand spanking new AMD 486–120 (I still have that machine and I still use it now and then….it posts and boots to a Win95 OSR2 desktop faster than most of my gHz boxes get to WinXP) ((I also have my Apple //gs still which comes in handy for playing Wizardry!))
Wow…..I feel like I just jumped into the way-back machine with my pet boy, Sherman…..but I digress….
I tried to port my fantasy football league over from AppleWorks (which I loved) to Access (which I hated). I didn’t know I hated it until after trying to figure it out. I never did get comfortable with Access but I blame the simplicity of using AppleWorks on that.
Now I find myself in the position of having to learn SQL for my job….which isn’t a bad thing. It’s not like I haven’t been in a similar position about every two weeks for the last 8 years with the monstrous number of products and technologies we churn out. I believe anyone at Microsoft will tell you “If you don’t like learning new stuff, you work at the wrong company”.
I have just never had a use for or had to learn SQL…..till now.
In 1994, I never imagined that a database application – one that could essentially run on a home PC – would be capable of storing and querying the massive amounts of data that SQL can today. Of course, in 1994 I never imagined that I would need more than 200 megs of hard drive space or that my 5 1/4 floppy would be useless in just a couple of years. Back then, it would take my Apple //gs (which had an Applied Engineering TransWarp GS Accelerator) 30 minutes to parse the AppleWorks database and create the scoring report for my 10 team fantasy football league. It took well over an hour if I turned the TransWarp “off”. That database only held a few hundred players with weekly – not cumulative – stats in it. Today www.fanball.com supports hundreds of individual leagues, each determining their own scoring method, players rosters, play off schedules and ALL with the ability to provide immediate scoring information.
And that is just the football portion of their site. They also do baseball.
All that accessibility……all of those stats…….all of that FOOTBALL!!!!!….because of a database….
<beer 3…..come on…..we have a football related topic here>
*Note* – I don’t know what database Fanball uses…..for all I know they have linked a couple thousand TransWarped Apple //gs machines together and have Wozniak on the payroll….The point I am trying to make it how far we have come……
Now…..I was semi–advanced back then. On my Apple //gs I actually had two 5 1/4 floppies AND two 3.5 floppies. I even had two SCSI hard drives but I used most of the hard drive space for my BBS. The fantasy football stuff was pretty small and I wanted to make use of the 5 1/4’s as long as I could so I ran AppleWorks from the 3.5’s and stored the football stats on the 5 1/4’s. I learned a few tricks in those days…..you could notch the floppy disks with a $5 disk notcher (or a pocket knife if you were lazy) and use both sides. This allowed me to use both sides of the floppy – doubling storage capacity – AND it saved me money which I desperately needed for beer. But it always seemed to reduce the reliability of the floppy disks. It certainly shortened their life spans. But even on an un-notched disk, sneeze the wrong way and those old floppies would scramble data faster than a Waffle House cook does eggs. That meant manually backing up data to another floppy. I usually made yet another copy just in case (I almost always sneeze in pairs…) THAT was how I backed up my data and guaranteed it was accessible when I needed it.
Now, with SQL 2005, we have things like log shipping and peer-to-peer replication. Magical, wondrous, computer voodoo to someone who manually made 3 copies of their data just in case it was allergy season.
But my favorite way to guarantee that SQL 2005 guarantees data is protected (and ALWAYS available!) is - mirroring with automatic failover.
If, like me, you are new to SQL/Databases (or just haven’t been exposed to SQL 2005 yet), let me offer a very simplified explanation of what is involved.
For database mirroring with automatic failover to work, you need….take a deep breathe…..relax……<grab your beer so you don’t commit alcohol abuse>…….three (3) SQL Servers……
<finish beer 4, grab beer 5 but don’t open yet…..>
….I know you winced. You may have blown beer out your nose. Some of you may have even decided to quit your job as a SQL DBA and (gasp!) become a SQL Developer…..
Let me finish and then I will tell you a little secret that may save you some beer money…..
….breathe……relax…..
<bathroom break>
<beer 5……nurse it>
Server 1 is the “primary” or “principal” database server. It is the machine you want up 24/7. It is the “all the eggs in one basket” machine. It is online and active and is the DB server that all of your applications are writing to and reading from. The apps have no concept of any additional servers in the mix.
Server 2 is the “backup” or “mirror” database server. It *must* start off with an exact copy of the primary database data. Simplest thing is to just restore a backup of the primary to this machine. There is some planning involved here to make sure this DB has the exact same data as the primary….but I only had you grab a 6 pack. For the 12 pack version come to a Live Technet briefing or find a local SQL 2005 Roadshow or SQL Launch Event or read this.
As our applications are reading and writing data on Server 1, we will commit the transactions at both servers at the same time (technically we don’t commit to the primary until we can commit to both at the same time). This can introduce some latency so monitor your network especially if you have bandwidth concerns. The trade off is availability and redundancy.
Server 3 is called a “witness” server. The witness server is essentially the innocent by-stander at the scene of the server failure crime. It’s purpose is to just keep an eye on both servers and determine if one or the other goes offline. if one goes off line it notifies the other that it is now the primary. If the original primary comes back it notifies the servers and we can switch roles again after data is back in sync.
So you decide to implement this solution. You go purchase a SQL 2005 Enterprise license. Cough of the same amount for the Backup server license, Then you grab SQL 2005 Express edition as a witness server.
<waitadamnminute….. beer muffs must have distorted my hearing>
Did I just say you could use SQL 2005 Express Edition as the witness server to a SQL 2005 Enterprise mirror?
Yes I did.
No need to have an Enterprise class server twiddling it’s thumbs and keeping an eye on two other servers. Use it’s little brother to do that job…..you can even fudge things a little and have a second instance on the primary or backup server act as a witness but if that dual-role server goes offline you won’t be failing over automagically. Just so ya know….ANY version of SQL 2005 can act as a witness.
How far have we come in just 10 years…..
<beer 6>
Enjoy at your leisure……
Cheers!
I have received a number of requests for the slide decks from our Rock Solid SQL 2005 session so I have decided to post them here and refer people to the blog instead of flodding the MS Mail servers with a buch of decks.
Cheers!
ugh…….
Demonstrating a product can be a love/hate relationship. BillG knows this first hand from the famous and quite public Comdex 1998 USB Crash.
I like demos. In fact I prefer demos to all of the slides because, when they work, they seem to communicate MUCH better than a PowerPoint slide ever could. I am pretty darn good at cutting slides in favor of demos and that is the way I like it.
But when demos fail, they just leave you feeling blah….
I have had 3 webcasts in the past week and at least one demo failed in each one. In my most recent webcast, EVERY demo failed. I tried to recover but I realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t going to happen so I pressed on. I have committed to posting a video of the working demo so everyone can see what it is supposed to do.
I am going to cheat a little…..
I have done the ISA session from this morning after least dozen times either as a webcast or a live Technet Briefing. So I am going to point you to a version of this I did in JANUARY where the demos didn’t fail.
Now…..here is WHY they failed.
We use a product called Virtual PC for hosting mulitple Operating Systems on a single piece of hardware. It is a truly amazing product. But it does have to be configured properly. In particular, if the virtual machines have to talk to each other via networking. You see….my laptop has 2 interfaces, my local ethernet and my wirless adapter. For those of you that watched the ISA webcast, I was supposed to first publish a web site, secure it with SSL and then view it.
That Failed…..
I was then supposed to publish OWA, secure it with SSL and view it…..
That failed….
Why?????? My VM’s were not connected. In retrospect I should have realized this when I pinged from my client machine and the name resolved but the ping timed out. But when you are flustered and in a crunch for time, those details sometimes get missed. My “client” machine was on the wireless adapter while my ISA and Web servers were connected to the local LAN adapter. To put it another way – if the networks aren’t connected they don’t talk to each other.
So needless to say, as soon as the session was over I found the issue, tested, and the demos went off without a hitch. I still don’t know WHY I was configured that considering I ran through the demos several times just this morning and don’t recall switching networks….
So there ya go…..check out the good version of the webcast and let me know what ya think and if you have any questions……
Cheers….
ps…..I also promised some information on SONAR and Secure-NAT…..those posts will be later today or over the weekend. Right now……lunch.
This nice little titbit regarding virtulization came across the wire today……
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Microsoft President, Steve Ballmer, stated publicly at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas on April 20th, 2005 that we see virtualization as a core enabling technology. To that end, Microsoft will provide Windows virtualization in the Longhorn Server wave.
This is not a secret. Virtualization technology is going into the OS.
Rather than try to paraphrase, I’m going to point you to the URL so you can see and hear Steve yourself as well as obtain a transcript and copy of his PowerPoint deck. If you don’t believe the Microsoft commitment to virtualization after this, listen to it again. If you want to skip to the part on Microsoft virtualization, fast forward about 50 minutes into the demo. Since this is public information, you should feel free to forward this link to your customers as well.
Keynote:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/mgmtsummit/keynotes.asp
On a more detailed level, we have a publicly available slide deck delivered by Mike Neil, Windows Virtualization Product Unit Manager at WinHec. This deck explains our roadmap from Virtual Server 2005 RTM to Windows Virtualization. This deck details some of the key features we are considering and discusses the new architecture that will be employed in Windows virtualization. This deck is publicly available at:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/8/f/98f3fe47-dfc3-4e74-92a3-088782200fe7/TWSE05008_WinHEC05.ppt
Some of the key points in this deck are:
- Virtualization is going into the OS in the Longhorn Server wave.
- Windows virtualization will be hypervisor based and take full advantage of hardware innovations from Intel and AMD in the forms of VT and Pacifica, respectively.
- Windows virtualization will provide 32-bit and 64-bit guests.
- We will have a smooth migration from path from Virtual Server to Windows virtualization. We want our valued customers know that their Virtual Server investment will be safe with a migration path to Windows virtualization.
- …and plenty more so check out the deck…
***Updated***
***I added references to the tools that I was unable to demo due to time ***
I will be delivering a WebCast on the above subject tomorrow. I am doing Part 2 of the webcast while my most excellent colleague, Chris Henley, presented Part 1 last week.
I am providing some supporting links here for those that want a jump on the WebCast or for those of you that have attended the webcast and want to grab the URL’s mentioned.
Main Session Guide for Part 1 & 2
Windows Management Instrumentation Overview
Windows Management Instrumention Architecture
Scriptomatic Tool
About the Scripting Guys!
The Scripting Guys Webcasts
WMI Command Line Tool Info
WMI Code Creator Tool <— Brand Spankin’ New!
Querying with WQL
Windows 2003 Server Resource Kit Tools
Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 1 Support Tools
Windows 2003 Server Admin Pack
SONAR for Win 2000/2003 ***update***
Cheers!
I am delivering some Live Technet Briefings next week in Santa Barbara, CA on 8/16 and Burbank, CA on 8/18.
I am delivering the same sessions in Irvine, Ca on 9/13 and San Diego, Ca on 9/15.
The subject will be SQL 2005 and will be a little different from Technet Sessions you may have attended in the last couple of years.
We have traditionally done 2 or even 3 sessions in the 4 hour window we have. With the SQL 2005 Launch coming up in November, we are focusing all of our attention on SQL 2005 for the entire 4 hours. We also normally swap content every three months or so. Again, with the SQL 2005 Launch on the horizon, we are going to maintain this same content from August through basically Dec 1st. There will likely not be any Live Technet Briefings during the month of November as our presenters will be supporting our local Districts with the SQL Launch.
Here is a summary of SOME of what I will be discussing -
Upgrading/Migrating from previous versions of SQL to SQL 2005 and the SQL Upgrade Advisor
SQL 2005 Security / Surface Area Configuration Tool / User Schema Seperation / SQL Server Agent Proxies
Database Tuning Advisor and the SQL Profiler Tool (<- SQL 7!! article....couldn't find a more recent one!)
SQL Management Tools / Dynamic Management Views
Pessimistic and Optimistic Concurrency Controls
Snapshot Isolation
Peer-to-Peer Replication
Database Mirroring
Now you see why we are spending 4 hours on this session....
Cheers!
ps....Note that we are starting our Technet Briefings at 8am and end at 12 noon. NOT 8:30 - 12:30 anymore!