I’m frequently on the move and switch between devices. I could be working at home one day, at a hotel working, on site at a customer office with no internet, on a plane. I just never know. Part of my workflow is running some of my daily activities on an Azure VM. I can get to it from pretty much anywhere and it doesn’t matter what device I do or don’t have access to, I can...
Any database professional that has been around the Microsoft world for more than about 3 minutes will be familiar with the old, faithful sample dataset created and published by Microsoft: Adventure Works. The Adventure Works databases follow the sales of a (fictional) multinational conglomerate looking to take over the work one bicycle sale at a time! The samples included a couple of databases...
In a recent post I wrote about collecting server performance metrics using Performance Monitor, a free utility built into Windows. With a little work up front, we are able to collect metrics for minutes, hours, or even days to gain insights into how our servers are being used. I often use this to evaluate SQL Servers that my customers are migrating to Azure. It helps me figure out if their...
Whether you’re a DBA/administrator looking to tune a server, planning for hardware updates, or looking to make a move to the cloud there are a few key performance metrics you’re going to want to collect. How do you know if the bottleneck is memory, disk or CPU? How do you know which of the Azure VM sizes to choose? The answer to these questions and other lies in the performance...
In a recent post about creating Azure VMs using PowerShell, I noted a common issue that I run into where the name of the OS disk does not conform to naming standards. The format for a VM OS disk when created using the Azure portal or when not otherwise specified through PowerShell is {VMName}_OsDisk_1_{UniqueIdentifier}. For most organizations that does not meet their naming standards. For me, in...
Every so often I set out to create new resources in my Azure subscription using the command line tools (PowerShell or CLI) just to keep up to date on the changes and improvements in the different methods. While the Azure portal is a great GUI for creating virtual machines, it definitely leaves something to be desired from a customization standpoint. I’m fairly OCD about my environment and...
In a recent post I wrote about a new functionality for Azure SQL Database’s TDE feature: Bring Your Own Key. At the time the only way to bring your own key was through PowerShell and T-SQL. Thankfully, that has changed. A recent update added a UI for managing your TDE keys using Azure Key Vault. Check out the quick, easy details below on setup and configuration. Before you start...
For those who use PowerShell to do things in Azure you will know that occasionally there is a parameter that you need to get right but are unsure of the exact value that should be there. In the Azure Portal it’s easy, you pick from a drop down menu where the required, pre-defined, values are and enter into the text box where it’s a free form value. Last week I wrote about using...
Occasionally I will come across the need to use PowerShell for my day to day activities. One such need came up this week when I was preparing to do training with a customer. Part of that meant creating 6 data science VMs. So we updated the software on a VM and went to clone it, ran into some issues and then decided to break out the PowerShell to fix the issue. For those who use PowerShell to do...
I have previously written about using Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) with Azure Key Vaule as a great way to store and manage encryption keys for SQL Server. With Azure SQL Database there has long been an option to enable TDE with just the click of a button. A lot of users I talk to say that is great, but they need to be able to manage the keys themselves. That could be for a variety of...
Bradley Schacht is a Senior Program Manager on the Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics team based in Jacksonville, FL. He has worked with Microsoft SQL Server and Azure data services since 2009 as a consultant, trainer, and architect. He has co-authored 4 SQL Server and Power BI books, most recently the Microsoft Power BI Quick Start Guide. Bradley enjoys solving interesting problems and teaching others to use new technology. He frequently presents at community events around the country, is a contributor to sites such as SQLServerCentral.com, and is a member of the Jacksonville SQL Server User Group (JSSUG).