In part 11 of the TechNet webcast series for the ITPro, I spoke briefly about the Oracle Migration Assistant and the recent release of the Community Tech Preview versions of both the Access and Sybase Migration Assistants... A few of you asked for their download location and there were even a few replies that folks had found them... However, after looking around, I figured out that what was found were the OLD and very outdated Access Upsizing Wizards (and that's not this!). The new SQL Server Migration Assistant tools are truly Migration tools - tools that can help convert code, change data types, etc. More than anything they're targeted at being more complete and feature rich than just an "upsizing tool" which is excellent for what it is but still requires a lot of additional work.

Having said all of that, I have the details about the TRUE Migration Assistants.

SSMA for Access download instructions:

Download instructions

1. Open the download page here.
2. Select ‘Receive File from Microsoft’.
3. Enter the Password: w$%dIcKP_TZrf
4. Download and run ssma-for-access-xxx.msi

SSMA for Sybase download instructions:

Download instructions

1. Open the ftp download site page here with the following username and password:
        username: SSMA4Syb2
        password: i456$Lk
2. Download the msi for Sybase or the msi for the Sybase Enterprise Portal (ep).
   
   IMPORTANT: If you access the files from Internet Explorer, please verify IE Browser Settings using Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, under the Browsing section:

CHECK - Enable folder view for FTP sites
UNCHECK - Use Passive FTP (for firewall and DSL modem compatibility)

So... have fun with those downloads and if you run into any issues/concerns - be sure to post in the SQL Server Migration Assistant newgroup.

Cheers,
kt

Hey there everyone - The series has completed and I know that many of you struggled to get access to the surveys... Microsoft has asked me to post links to the surveys...so, for completeness, I decided to create this blog entry to have links for every session, every blog link (resources, demo scripts, etc.) and the survey links. I really did have a lot of fun on the series and I hope we can do this again!

TechNet Webcast Series

Session 1: A Fast-Paced Feature Overview and Series Introduction (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry is here. 
   Session's survey is here.

Session 2: Security (Level 200)
   Presenter: Bob Beauchemin, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry is here. 
   Session's survey is here.

Session 3: Understanding Installation Options and Initial Configuration (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry is here. 
   Session's survey is here.

Session 4: Upgrade Considerations and Migration Paths (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry is here. 
   Session's survey is here.

Session 5: Effective Use of the New Management Tools (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry is here. 
   Session's survey is here.

Session 6: New Application Design Patterns for Scalability and Availability and the Operational Implications of Service Broker (Level 200)   
   Presenter: Bob Beauchemin, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry is here. 
   Session's survey is here.

Session 7: Technologies and Features to Improve Availability (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry is here. 
   Session's survey is here.

Session 8: Implementing Database Mirroring, Part 1 of 2 (Level 200)
   Presenter: Mark Wistrom, SQL Server Program Manager - Microsoft Corp., 
   Session's corresponding blog entry is here. 
   Session's survey is here.

Session 9: Implementing Database Mirroring, Part 2 of 2 (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry is here. 
   Session's survey is here.

Session 10: Recovering from Isolated Disasters and Human Error (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry here. And a second blog entry here.
   Session's survey is here.

Session 11: Best Practices in Building Robust, Recoverable, and Reliable Systems (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry here.
   Session's survey is here.

And that's about it! I hope you really enjoy the series... and if you like that one, you might want to checkout the entire 10-part series on MSDN. The link to the blog entry that has all the links (like this one) is here.

Have fun,
kt

Well... 11 of 11 has completed. Friday was our last chat - until next time ;). It was a summary event where I took a slightly different spin on things focusing on grouping technologies by the amount of effort that's needed to implement them. Simply put, we looked at the technologies in order of what gives you the biggest bang for the buck. We ended the session with a ton of great questions (as always!) and there was even a question on the origin of foo (make sure to also see fubar).

First, there were a few links that I wanted to provide from the session, I'll start with those:

• Demo Script on SQL Injection and using QUOTENAME to prevent SOME forms of injection: SQLInjection.sql (3.59 KB)
• TempDB Optimizations referenced in other blog entries: 8 Steps to Better Transaction Log Throughput and Understanding TempDB, table variables v. temp tables and Improving throughput for TempDB

And, we also talked about Migrations:

• SQL Server Migration Assistant for Oracle V2.0,
• Solution Guide for Migrating Oracle on Unix to SQL Server on Windows
• SQL Server Migration Assistant for Access - CTP1 released in May 2006 (read this blog entry for details)
• SQL Server Migration Assistant for Sybase - CTP1 released in May 2006 (read this blog entry for details)
• Migrate to SQL Server with a (limited time offer) discount of up to 50%

Finally, capacity planning:

1. Calculate the amount of space needed for your tables (calculate this as rows per page and then required pages as MB)
2. Calculate the amount of space needed for your indexes (you can use sp_spaceused to get a current ratio of index to data and then use that OR you can estimate 1-3times your current data in indexes...yes, if you have 10GB of tables - you should estimate 10-30GB for indexes)
3. Calculate in your estimate on future growth
4. Take your single largest table and multiply by 1.5 for free space. (Use 2.5 IF you're going to use ONLINE index operations). So, if the single largest table is 3GB then I'd add 7-8GB for free space)
5. Add a "just in case" extra 10-20%
6. And, I didn't mention this BUT you should also include alerts to help you monitor space usage and significant changes to your free space!

And that wraps up the series. Wow - I can't believe how many of you joined in for questions as well as stayed on until the end. It's really great that so many of you are still having fun with SQL Server as well. I look forward to another series with you...at some point! In the interim, here are a few places where I'll be:

• DotNetRocks - Friday, May 26, 2006 - 15:00-17:00 Pacific Time
• Microsoft Tech Ed in Boston, MA - June 11-16, 2006. NOTE: The event is sold out HOWEVER, you can still attend pre-conference workshops and ours will definitely be intense, informative and fun! The abstract is lame but the content is all about designing production systems for performance, reliability, manageability and useability.
• Immersion Event "Indexing for Performance" with Trivadis in Zurich, Switzerland - June 26-27, 2006
• Microsoft Tech Ed for Developers in Barcelona, Spain in November 2006
• SQL Connections in Las Vegas, NV in November 2006
• Microsoft Tech Ed for ITProfessionals in Barcelona, Spain in November 2006

SQLskills Immersion Events - in the US... will be announced shortly. The BEST place to be when we announce the dates for these events is a subscriber on SQLskills. Subscribing is FREE and the announcements are going to be later this month. Here's a link to directly subscribe on SQLskills: http://www.sqlskills.com/login.aspx.

Thanks again for attending the series! It was great fun. I'll post a final blog entry with ALL of the links as well as all of the survey links. I know that they're going to send me these so that you can get easier access to them.

See you next time,
kt

In part 9 of our webcast series titled: Implementing Database Mirroring, we covered the steps from setup to failover to monitoring. There were lots of great questions and I think we could easily go back and do a couple more hours on database mirroring, failover combinations - including manual failover and client application questions. Having said that, there were a few interesting scenarios that came up that I thought I'd add a bit more details about here. For simplicity I created sections...

Where to go for more information on Database Mirroring and SQL Server SP1

• Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2005, TechNet whitepaper by Ron Talmage
• Database Mirroring Best Practices and Performance Considerations, TechNet whitepaper by Sanjay Mishra
• TechNet Webcast: How to Increase Availability Using Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2005 (Level 200), Mark Wistrom's first Database Mirroring webcast from November 2005
• Implementing Database Mirroring, Part 1 of 2 (Level 200), Part 8, Mark's Database Mirroring webcast from our TechNet series, April 28, 2006
• Implementing Database Mirroring, Part 2 of 2 (Level 200), Part 9, my webcast from our TechNet series, May 5, 2006
• SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1
• SQL Server 2005 Books Online Refresh, April 2006 - NOT included in SP1 Update

Database Mirroring with Failover Clustering

These two technologies CAN be combined but there are multiple things with which you should be aware. First, a failover of a cluster is SLOWER than a failover of a Mirror pair... as a result, it is likely that your secondary server will come online as the new principal in the time that it takes your principal (which is on a cluster) to recover. In a lot of cases, this is good because this keeps you online longer and results in less downtime but it may also be undesireable when your primary is now running at your alternate operations site - which is unstaffed. So, in some cases you may want to prevent automatic failover and instead only use the secondary mirror when you absolutely have to (i.e. NOT just when the cluster fails). If this is the case then you might prefer running with the High Protection configuration of Database Mirroring instead of the High Availability configuration.

This will allow you to manually failover when desired.

As another option - you can increase the timeout for Database Mirroring failover to 90 seconds. If the cluster comes back online within 90 seconds then the automatic detection/failover of the High Availabilty configuration will not occur unless the cluster does not come back online (as the principal) within x seconds. You can configure the Database Mirroring Failover timeout by using ALTER DATABASE.

ALTER DATABASE dbname SET PARTNER TIMEOUT x

Please note, this is only one timeout of many. There are many different types of timeouts in the system that can cause a failover. However, a hard error code generally starts the failure procedure sooner.  Mark pointed this out in his failure detection slides in our TechNet webcast series, Part 8.

Review this section in the SQL Server 2005 Books Online (April Update): Database Mirroring and Failover Clustering.

Database Mirroring with Replication

These two technologies CAN be combined together but not all configurations are supported and where supported, there are specific setup requirements. From the BOL: Replication supports mirroring the publication database for merge replication and for transactional replication with read-only Subscribers or queued updating Subscribers. Immediate updating Subscribers, Oracle Publishers, Publishers in a peer-to-peer topology, and republishing are not supported.

 

Review this section in the SQL Server 2005 Books Online (April Update): Replication and Database Mirroring

Database Mirroring with Log Shipping

These two technologies CAN be combined together but it will require a bit of manual configuration to continue log shipping when a mirror becomes the new principal.

Review this section in the SQL Server 2005 Books Online (April Update): Database Mirroring and Log Shipping.

In the last few minutes of the webcast (part 10), I goofed up one line of code and didn't realize it until today. As my very last demo (and there were at least 10 different scenarios/concepts/demos yesterday) in my webcast, I decided to show a Database Snapshot on a Mirror database. It was the second database snapshot that I had created so my first database snapshot demo was just fine. However, when I went to create the database snapshot on the mirror, I inadvertently left off the most important part "AS SNAPSHOT OF AdventureWorks". The irony is that I tried to query some tables and just ended up (because we were right at the end of the webcast ;)) saying that I probably wasn't getting the table names right. Ha - there were no tables... I hadn't created a database snapshot, I had created just another database - so the only tables I was seeing were the catalog views.

Anyway, just for clarity, I corrected the "Demo Scripts" zip that's associated with Part 10 BUT if you've already downloaded it then you'll have the old (and incorrect) version of this script (SnapshotOnMirror.sql). And, for completeness, I'll put the code that I executed during the webcast here:

USE AdventureWorks
go

USE master
go

CREATE DATABASE AdventureWorksSnap
ON
( NAME = N'AdventureWorks_Data',
FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\AdventureWorksSnap_Data.mdfss')
-- , SIZE = 167872KB , MAXSIZE = UNLIMITED, FILEGROWTH = 16384KB )
go

and the code that I should have executed here:

USE AdventureWorks
go

USE master
go

CREATE DATABASE AdventureWorksSnap
ON
( NAME = N'AdventureWorks_Data',
FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\AdventureWorksSnap_Data.mdfss')
-- , SIZE = 167872KB , MAXSIZE = UNLIMITED, FILEGROWTH = 16384KB )
AS SNAPSHOT OF AdventureWorks  <<<< ----------
go

USE AdventureWorksSnap
go

SELECT * FROM person.contact
go

So, quick demos right at the end of the webcast might not have been my best idea ;). But - I'm surprised none of you called me on it?! I'll blame it on this for now.

Have a great weekend,
kt

OK - today's session was quite fun... lots of demos and quite a few "tie-ins" where I tried to bring together many things that we've touched on in our series. And - that's really the point of the series - creating a reliable, robust, scalable and available environment takes MANY different features. You really need to architect a complete solution in order to handle the many potential problems that may occur. And, unfortunately, it's a never ending process; you're never done and you're never going to get everything (sorry!). You will need to re-evaluate, monitor, and manage your system as long as it runs to keep it reliable, available and fast. Something will come up...someday...that you didn't think about, evaluate and/or prevent. But, then you'll know and then you'll put something into place to keep it from happening again.

So - to tie back into some of the other sessions and resources, here is a list of everything to date in the series as well as a few specific references I made during the session.

Demo Scripts are here: 20060512_TechNetWebcast-Part10.zip (25.46 KB) (updated on Sat, May 13 at 2:55 PDT)
Credit Database zip is here. NOTE: This is a 48MB zip which expands to a 175MB backup and restores to a 700 MB database (with a lot of free space for testing, etc.).

TechNet Webcast Series

Session 1: A Fast-Paced Feature Overview and Series Introduction (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 2: Security (Level 200)
   Presenter: Bob Beauchemin, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 3: Understanding Installation Options and Initial Configuration (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 4: Upgrade Considerations and Migration Paths (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 5: Effective Use of the New Management Tools (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 6: New Application Design Patterns for Scalability and Availability and the Operational Implications of Service Broker (Level 200)   
   Presenter: Bob Beauchemin, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 7: Technologies and Features to Improve Availability (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 8: Implementing Database Mirroring, Part 1 of 2 (Level 200)
   Presenter: Mark Wistrom, SQL Server Program Manager - Microsoft Corp., 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 9: Implementing Database Mirroring, Part 2 of 2 (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here.

Session 10: Recovering from Isolated Disasters and Human Error (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   You're reading it! :-)

Recovery Models and Backup/Restore

• MSDN Webcast Parts I and II cover Recovery Models and some issues/best practices related to changing recovery models. Check out the blog entry here which has links to the sessions and their associated blog entries.
• MSPress Title: SQL Server 2000 High Availability, Chapter 9: Database Environment Basics for Recovery is here. The MSPress page for this title is here.
• SQL Server Magazine Article on Isolated Disasters and Recovery (using RESTORE with STANDBY/STOPAT to investigate when a database became damaged) is here. Check out a consolidated list of all of my SQL Server Magazine Articles here and SQL Server Magazine here.

Table and Index Partitioning

• MSDN Webcast Part8 covers Table and Index Partitioning. Check out the blog entry here which has links to the sessions and their associated blog entries.
• MSDN Whitepaper: SQL Server 2005: Table and Index Partitioning

RAID 0+1 and RAID 1+0

There was a question that came up on this and the question basically asked - which is better. Well, this is a hard question to answer because they both have pro's and con's BUT before I get to the pro's/con's there's also another [more important] issue; these two get confused and swapped all the time. In fact, many vendors USED to refer to these interchangeably and even just lumped them together as RAID 10. Today, most people don't do this and most people also try to refer to the underlying technlogy instead of the numbers. Having said all of that, RAID 1+0 is Striped Mirrors and is my general recommendation because it tends to be more reliable than 0+1 and can tolerate more drive failures than 0+1. RAID 0+1 is Mirrored Stripes - which generally outperforms RAID 1+0 but cannot tolerate the loss of more than one drive and because of that it's more vulnerable. In the end, I'd suggest a simple "educational" site here (it's on a commercial site but it has a nice - and short - description of the different types of RAID arrays).

See you next week - for our LAST part in this series - Part 11: Best Practices in Building Robust, Recoverable, and Reliable Systems (Level 200).

Thanks for reading, listening and continuing to ask great questions!
kt

Last week Mark Wistrom (Program Manager in the SQL Server Team at Microsoft), delivered part 8 of our TechNet webcast series. Most of the resources needed to prepare for this session - as well as learn more about Database Mirroring - have already been posted in the blog entry for part 7 (as homework!). However, there were two things that we wanted to post from Mark's session:

(1) The case study that was presented during the session is here.
(2) The Q&A that was created by a few of Mark's team who were answering during the session (and then Mark did a scrub of it as well to clean it up- THANKS Mark) is here (29.1 KB).

Enjoy!
kt

Well, Part 7 has completed and we're on the home stretch... focusing on part of the new Always On technologies of SQL Server 2005. We've made our way through quite a few discussions and my main point for the sequence - as defined - was to make clear that keeping a system available takes a myriad of choices, features, configurations - and more. In fact, even once you think you've done it you still need to monitor, manage and re-evaluate your configuration if unexpected events occur and bring your system offline and/or unavailable in any way. And - well, that's also a big part of my focus... what does "availability" mean to you? Do you believe that only unplanned downtime counts or that *any* impact to the system's availability counts as "downtime"? (btw - I'd really like to know!)

Regardless, that's been our primary focus for the series... I believe that the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2005 can keep your system available through a very wide number of system hiccups, damage and even more catastrophic disasters. In the previosu sessions we looked at migration and installation (ensuring a proper configuration - right from the start), we covered creating a secure environment (which also impacts availability), we looked at "finding the right tool for the job" and then we started looking into alternative designs that may help to improve availability by scaling out our design. If you missed any of the sessions you might want to go back and see what's what! Here's the list of sessions at a quick glance:

Session 1: A Fast-Paced Feature Overview and Series Introduction (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 2: Security (Level 200)
   Presenter: Bob Beauchemin, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 3: Understanding Installation Options and Initial Configuration (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 4: Upgrade Considerations and Migration Paths (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 5: Effective Use of the New Management Tools (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 6: New Application Design Patterns for Scalability and Availability and the Operational Implications of Service Broker (Level 200)   
   Presenter: Bob Beauchemin, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 7: Technologies and Features to Improve Availability (Level 200)

Session 7 was a great deal of fun - we covered 11 different technologies (12 if you count partitioning) and discussed the architectural reasons to choose each teachnology - as well as the barriers it provides protection against. We talked about a lot of technologies and a lot of resources:

• Remote Mirroring - Always consult your hardware vendor and make sure they support block size preservation and write-order preservation. Ideally, RM should be combined with Failover Clustering - when that's the case you have a "Geographically dispersed failover cluster" which removes the single point of failure in Failover Clustering. See the Windows Server Catalog, specifically for the Geographically Dispersed Cluster Solution category.
• Failover Clustering - A combination of hardware and software to provide protection against server failure. Only solutions from the Windows Server Catalog, specifically for the Cluster Solution category for supported solutions in failover technologies.
• Database Mirroring - See the homework references below as well as come back for the next two upcoming sessions where we cover DBM for two weeks.
• Log Shipping - While this is still supported *and* while there are still some excellent uses for Log Shipping, this is not a "favorite" solely for failover. If you're looking for a "warm" failover solution (warm = no automatic detection, no automatic failover) with less potential for data loss - you should consider the "High Performance" configuration of Database Mirroring. If you would like to continue using Log Shipping for a more latent secondary (a log load delay) for managing disasters (either investigation or recovery) of data from an older "version" of the database then LS is an option but Database Snapshots can also help in *some* cases. This technology is well documented as well as written about.
• Peer to Peer Replication - I demo'ed and discussed this in session 1 as well as referenced a few helpful links for TechNet sessions, etc. See the session and "blog" links as listed above.
• RAID - Redundant Array of Independant Disk
• Partial Database Availability, Online Piecemeal Restore and Database Snapshots - come back for Session 10 where I'll cover these and demo these!
• Raid.edu - a short - but interesting overview of all the different raid types.
• MSPress title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 High Availability, Chapter 9: Database Environment Basics for Recovery
• SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 support for mounted volumes
• MSDN "Developer/Design" Webcast Series: Blog entry with all of the links
  • Online Index Operations, Part 5
  • Snapshot Isolation, Part 6
  • Partitioning, Part 8
• Scalable shared databases are supported by SQL Server 2005
• Oracle Real Application Clusters and Industry Trends in Cluster Parallelism and Availability

Finally, be ready to watch Mark's session on Friday, April 28. Here's your homework for Session 7:

1. Review: Release notes and information for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 
2. Watch: TechNet Webcast: How to Increase Availability Using Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2005 (Level 200) 
3. Read: Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2005 

And the details for Session 8:

TechNet Webcast: SQL Server 2005 for the IT Professional (Part 8 of 11): Implementing Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2005 (Part 1 of 2) (Level 200)
Presenter: Mark Wistrom, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Database mirroring was released for testing when Microsoft SQL Server 2005 shipped in November. As the first service pack has shipped, it's time to get prepared for database mirroring in production! In this session, understand the barriers of what database mirroring will protect against, what constitutes a "failover", what the performance criteria are and how the monitoring has been brought together for release. Attend this first part of two - as the eighth webcast in the SQL Server 2005 for the IT Professional series to obtain better insight for when database mirroring should be implemented as well as what to expect moving forward in service pack 1 (SP1). Part 9 will cover implementation from start to finish - as an end to end demo.

Start Time:   Friday, April 28, 2006 9:30 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) 
End Time:   Friday, April 28, 2006 11:00 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) 

See you in Part 9: TechNet Webcast: SQL Server 2005 for the IT Professional (Part 9 of 11): Implementing Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2005 (Part 2 of 2) (Level 200) on May 5th.
kt

In doing my final preparations for part 7 of my TechNet webcast series on Building Robust, Reliable and Recoverable Systems, I decided to (once again) review my abstract. I do this as a last step to make sure I cover everything I said I would cover. Here's the abstract:

TechNet Webcast: SQL Server 2005 for the IT Professional (Part 7 of 11): Technologies and Features to Improve Availability

Find the right technology for the job in this seventh webcast of the SQL Server 2005 for the IT Professional series. Join us to learn which technologies provide the right solution for a specific problem, as well as the pros and cons of each technology. Designing a system to protect you against the faults most likely to occur is the first and most important strategy, but finding the right combination to minimize both downtime and data loss is critical. This webcast covers many of the “AlwaysOn” technologies at a glance: remote mirroring, failover clustering, database mirroring, log shipping, [peer to peer] replication, RAID, partial database availability, piecemeal online restore, database snapshots, snapshot isolation, and online index operations.

Start Time: Friday, April 21, 2006 9:30 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) 
End Time: Friday, April 21, 2006 11:00 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)  

So, in re-reading this it certainly sounds like a lot to cover. But - rest assured, this session is what we're going to use to lead into the rest of the series. Parts 8-11 go into more detail on some of the new and more complex topics covered in that list. For example, parts 8 and 9 cover Database Mirroring and part 10 covers Partial Database Availability, Online Piecemeal Restore and Database Snapshots. Also, for a few topics, I'll point you to some great resources to keep you going in learning these other technologies. In the end, my goal for Friday is make sure you understand the best use case for each of these technologies. Once you know when it's best to use them, you can really begin to architect the *right* solution for your system! Parts 8-11 will focus more on implementation and demos!

If you're wondering what your options are and how to get better direction on the architecture to implement, join us on Friday: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032290562&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Oh, and in the actual abstract, there's a typo...not sure if we'll have time to cover log hipping. ;) ;)

Talk to you on Friday!
kt

Well, Friday brought another flood of great questions from everyone as we moved our way through many of the new 2005 tools. The one thing that I really wanted to stress was that *many* SQL Server 2005 tools (SQLCMD, SSMS and SQL Profiler) offer important features that can be leveraged today, even if your primary production servers are still SQL Server 2000. I did move through the tools quickly and showed quite a few new features; there are a lot of excellent resources to help you dive in deeper now that you're interested, ready and know some of the rewards of starting now. Here are a few of those resources:

• My Blog entry: SQL Server 2005 Tools - Resources to Effectively use SQLCMD this includes a few additional links but most importantly, links to the TechNet webcast: Scripting in SQL Server 2005, by Michiel Wories.
• TechNet webcast: Manage SQL Server 2005 Using Command Line Tools and the SQLCMD Utility by Ramesh Singh. 
• TechNet Webcast: Administration Tools
• TechNet Webcsat: Monitoring Tools
• And - checkout the large number of related "on-demand" webcasts here: http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetsqlserver2005.mspx

For deleting old database backup history, there are a couple of stored procedures in msdb that can be used:

• sp_delete_backup_and_restore_history
• sp_delete_backuphistory
• sp_delete_database_backuphistory

For cycling errorlogs, use: sp_cycle_errorlog.

And - lots of other questions that I primarily answered online in the last 40+ minutes. We had a great group and I hope everyone had fun. For the second half+ of the series we're going to focus on architectures and solutions - mostly related to disaster recovery and avoidance. However, the next part of the series is going to branch into a new (and *very* interesting) area of SQL Server 2005 - Service Broker. There are many impacts of Service Broker on the SQL Server system AND you might find a few applications of the technology within your own application as well. Have a great time with Bob for part 6 and I'll be back for part 7 next Friday.

See you soon!
kt

And another one bites the dust! Wow - what a great group today... soooooo many questions! For those of you that weren't there - the lecture was 80 minutes and the additional Q&A went on for another 45 minutes. So - as a result, there were *a lot* of additional resources needed. Let me get started with all of those right away.

To prepare for moving to SQL Server 2005 there are a few EXCELLENT resources with which you should start:

Phase 1 - Prepare to Upgrade/Migrate

• Thoroughly Review -> Knowledge Base article: Getting ready for SQL Server 2005
• Thoroughly Review -> SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Handbook
• Browse -> Upgrading to SQL Server 2005 website
• Download and execute: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor

Phase 2 - Database-level Testing

• Copy Database Wizard or
• Backup/Restore or
• Detach/Attach

Phase 3 - Server-level Testing

• Consider upgrade in-place or
• Make sure that you manually migrate all EXTERNAL objects, logins, jobs, error messages, etc.

Phase 4 - Testing/Updating after the upgrade/migration

• Update statistics immediately
• Test application code, database compatibility modes, session settings
• Check for "broken code" in terms of system table changes
• MOST of this should have already been done and assessed in Phase 1 but better to be safe!

And - finally - the other things we talked about and the rest of the links are here:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 Community Technology Preview
• Best Practices Analyzer Tool for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 v1.0
• SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer overview with Christian Kleinerman - from MSDN TV
• Troubleshooting Performance Problems in SQL Server 2005 - covers some excellent DMV usage scenarios
• Upgrading the Database Engine / New features in SQL Server 2005 - part 1 by Don Vilen (IMPORTANT: the video is labeled incorrectly as part 2 but video 46 is part 1) 
• Upgrading the Database Engine / New features in SQL Server 2005 - part 2 by Don Vilen

And - that's it for this week. See you next Friday when we chat about the new Management Tools and how to effectively use them!

Thanks for listening/watching and asking GREAT questions,
kt

OK - so Bob Beachemin delivered Part 2 and I was back for Part 3. We had lots of folks on board with this session (more than 400) and as a result, I had a lot of questions. More than anything it seems like a lot of you wanted to know which versions of which came with what and could go with what (in terms of OS)... so, even getting started - and probably installing at home to play around ;). I was expecting tons of questions on the technical tidbits of installation options so you sure kept me on my toes!! Here are probably two very useful MSDN Links to SQL Server BOL Topics:

Hardware and Software Requirements for Installing SQL Server 2005 - In fact, this has a GREAT matrix of all the different platforms and which versions can be installed where!

Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2005 - The BOL topic is very detailed.

And - in addition to those, there were quite a few more topics discussed during the webcast. The rest of the blog entry focuses on those questions! I hope this helps... enjoy!

Resource Links for all On-demand TechNet Sessions in our series for the ITPro

Part 1 - A Fast-Paced Feature Overview and Series Introduction
   On-demand link
   My blog entry for the session

Part 2 - Security
   On-demand link
   Bob's Blog Entry for the session

Part 3 - Understanding Installation Options and Initial Configuration (Level 200)
   On-demand link
   Blog entry link (well, you're already here ;)

Session 3 Resource Links as discussed during the session:

• Demo Scripts: 20060324-TechNetDemoScripts.zip (4.77 KB)
• Scalable Shared Databases supported on SQL Server 2005 RTM: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=910378
• SQL Server 2005 Features Comparison: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/features/compare-features.mspx

Submitting Product Feedback

• MSDN Product Feedback Center: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/
• Tips for Submitting Feedback on the Feedback Center (tips were related to Visual Studio but there are some great general tips about how to file useful feedback!): http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=138235&SiteID=1
• Add the Help Toolbar and connect to Product Feedback from within the SQL Server 2005 Tools. In SQL Server Management Studio, select View, Toolbars, add Help. Once the Help toolbar is visable, select the Send Feeback button which should be in the "Ask a Question" section at the end of the toolbar.

If you're thinking about downloading - check out the newly bundled SP1 downloads:

SQL Server 2005 RTM Enterprise Eval Edition
SQL Server 2005 RTM Express Edition

SQL Server Express Edition with SP1 (SQLEXPR.EXE)
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with SP1

SQL Server Express Edition with Advanced Services (SQLEXPR_ADV.EXE)
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with SP1 + Advanced Services includes SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE), support for full-text catalogs, and support for viewing reports via report server.

SQL Server Express Edition Toolkit (SQLEXPR_TOOLKIT.EXE)
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Toolkit (SQL Server Express Toolkit) provides tools and resources to manage SQL Server Express and SQL Server Express Edition with Advanced Services. It also allows creating reports by using SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS).

SQL Server Management Studio Express (SQLServer2005_SSMSEE.msi)
SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE) provides a graphical management tool for managing SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with Advanced Services instances. SSMSE can also manage relational engine instances created by any edition of SQL Server 2005. SSMSE cannot manage Analysis Services, Integration Services, SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition, Notification Services, Reporting Services, or SQL Server Agent.

And - that's it for this week. See you on Friday, March 31 when we'll chat more about Upgrade and Migration. Here's the link to register for this upcoming session: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032290477&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

See you soon,
kt

Hey there everyone - Well there was lots of excitement around our first session...so much so that apparently a Live Meeting server went down and caused MANY of you to get booted-out or even blocked-from attending (figures, right!).... Ugh (talk about the irony here - a series on high availability that isn't available because a server crashes...hhmmm, I think I know where to go for my next potential customers ;) ;). Regardless, I'm glad that at least a couple hundred of you did get in. For the more than 1000 others that were registered but unable to get in - I truly want to apologize!

The good news is that we now have the on-demand link available and for all of you who registered, it should have been sent to you via email. Also, as promised, I've attached the resources and demo scripts we talked about today.

Partial Database Availability Demo Scripts: PartialDBAvail-DemoScripts.zip (4.19 KB)
Database Mirroring Demo Scripts: DatabaseMirroring-DemoScripts.zip (3.74 KB)
Replication Demo Scripts - Since this demo was completed through the UI, here are some useful references on Replication:

• TechNet Center: SQL Server 2005 Replication
• TechNet Webcast: Building Highly Available Database Systems that Scale with Peer-to-Peer Replication (Level 200)
• SQL Server Books Online: How to: Configure Peer-to-Peer Transactional Replication (SQL Server Management Studio)

Other Resources:

SQLCMD Resources: My blog entry after Michiel Worries' Webcast (includes links to webcast, etc.)
TechNet Resource Center: SQL Server 2005 Mission Critical High Availability
Demo: Windows Server System Reference Architecture Design Considerations for SQL Server 2005 High Availability
Whitepaper: Choosing a Database for High Availability: An Analysis of SQL Server and Oracle

Also, to get you ready for SQL Server 2005 - check out the Upgrade/Migration Resource Center: Upgrading to SQL Server 2005

And... that should keep you busy between now and next week!

Have fun,
kt