Category Archives: IT Pro

SQL Server 2016 Is Generally Available

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I have always had a sweet spot for SQL Server as I used to work more with it than I do to day. However I keep a keen eye on it and especially it’s capabilities for I’m also doing SQL Server virtualization on Hyper-V with great results.

So today is a good day. SQL Server 2016 is generally available.

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This means you can grab the evaluations bits here, the production bits from Microsoft Volume License Center.

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I’m downloading as we speak and my DBA’s are extra enthusiastic and ready to roll/

For those who hadn’t yet hear the good news. The SQL Server Developer Edition is now FREE. So have a ball, everyone can test & develop against the latest and the greatest SQL Server version and all its features!

My Veeam Endpoint Backup Setup

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My main workhouse at home is important to me and for that reason it get’s protected with Veeam Endpoint Backup.

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I don’t like messing around with external disk bays or even the external quick swap bays. Normally they’re in the way, cables lingering etc. But when it comes to backups you need a reliable and easy way to backup to disk and to remove that disk for save keeping. Not just for the occasional location based disaster in your workstation such as a power surge or even a small fire. But also as a protection against ransom ware such a bit locker.

When you use an internal disk you should really make it a dedicated disk. It’s not going to help storing your OS and data backups on the same disk that you are protecting. What I do is I have quick swap bays build in to my rig. Yes, that’s the beauty of building your own. I use the Sharkoon SATA Quickport Intern disk bays for that purpose.

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Both the single or the Multi disk versions will work. It’s cost effective and practical. The Multi edition allows for SSD, HDD and has USB 3.0 connectors for any external disk bay you might still want to attach. Pretty slick. They also have a single 2.5” disk (SATA or SSD bay) if that’s more to your liking.

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I can swap out the disks easily and store them away from my workstation of even off site. It works really well for me. I have the ability to use a SATA SSD if I want that for speed or a normal SATA HDD. The only thing I’d want is multiple jobs and schedules for more flexibility. If, potentially, Veeam Endpoint backup could build the intelligence to detect which of my drives I have in my disk bay and run certain jobs based on that it would be completely fantastic!

Attending the MVP Global Summit 2016

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The Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2016 has been announced last week. For any MVP this is a  happy communication to get and we start planning time away from work and look into flights.

The MVP Global Summit 2016 happens in Bellevue (offices, hotels) and Redmond (campus), the two locations where Microsoft has it’s main presence in the Puget sound area.

It at least 4 –5 days of intensive feedback sessions, brainstorming, education along with a non stop exchange of knowledge and experiences. But even on the weekend before and after the meet ups and discussion start or close the MVP summit. Those are the days you can get together and talk shop with your fellow MVPs and experts from all around the world. How often can you get such people to converge in such numbers in the same location?

There’s always extra opportunities to organize meetings and discuss technology with the people in the know. Both at Microsoft and with Microsoft business partners in and around the greater Seattle area, or the ones that fly in to be able to talk to us. That’s what many of us do while we’re there, stay the entire week and weekend. Many of us take some vacation days to make that happen.

It’s an intense period of long days and lots of activity. You’ll be tired that’s for sure. But that’s not even a thought that enters your mind. For passionate IT people this part of work is so interesting and stimulating you float through it as if you’re walking on air. It’s over before you know it.

My advice is to stay at least an entire week and make sure you get to talk to the people you want to have a chat with. If you’re not from the US you’ve flown long haul just to get here, make the most of it. Start your list of topics you’d like to discuss. Then prepare to find and contact the people you need to talk to about these. Don’t shy away from doing so on weekends. Many are willing to meet up with you in the evening or spend a few hours in the weekends over breakfast, lunch or dinner. In that regards, the MVP Summit is really an investment for all involved, we get our return on investment based on the time and the effort we put in. So yes it’s work, but as passionate IT people this is the kind of thing we love. People are more than willing to talk to you. Bring feed back, experiences, ideas, insights. Invest a bit in this al year round. The PMs at Microsoft really want to reach out and help make their products better and do well in real life.

Read more about the MVP Global Summit 2016 at T-Minus 182 Days to the MVP Global Summit!

SOFS / SMB 3 Offers Best VM Resiliency Experience

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I have blogged about Virtual Machine Resiliency in Windows 2016 Failover Clustering before in Testing Virtual Machine Compute Resiliency in Windows Server 2016 

Those test and demos were done with block lever storage, CSV on Fibre Channel, iSCSI or shared SAS. Today we’ll look at the experience when you’re running your VMs on a continually available file share on a Scale Out File Server (SOFS). This configuration offers the best possible experience.

Why well, when the cluster node is in Isolated mode this has no impact on the SOFS share as this is a resource external to the Hyper-V cluster. In other words it remains on line. This means that the VMs, even if they have lost their high availability during the time the node is Isolated, they keep running. After all there is nothing wrong with Hyper-V itself. With block level CSV storage you lose access to the storage as that a cluster resource and the node got isolated. That’s why the VMs go into a paused critical state during a transient failure with block level storage but they don’t when you’re using SOFS.

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The virtual machine compute resiliency feature in action shows you that the VMs service a transient failure without issues. Your services need never know something was up. Even when the transient failure is reoccurring that doesn’t mean it will cause down time. The node will be quarantined and if it come backup the workload will be live migrated away.

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You can watch a video of this in action here on Vimeo:

The quarantine threshold and duration as well as the resiliency period and can be tweaked to your environment to get the best possible results.

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SMB 3 for the win! This is yet one more convincing argument to start looking into SOFS and leveraging the capabilities of SMB3. Remember that you can run as SOFS cluster against your existing shared storage to get started if you can get the IOPS/latency you require. But also look into storage spaces, especially storage spaces direct which avoids some of the drawback SANs have in such a scenario. High time for storage vendors to really scale out, implement SMB 3 well and complete and keep the great added value features they already have in their offering. It’s this or becoming yet a bit more irrelevant in todays storage scene in the Microsoft ecosystem.