James works at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where he has been for most of the last eleven years. Before that he was an independent consultant working as a Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence architect and developer. He is a prior SQL Server MVP with over 40 years of IT experience. Check out his book Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh.
The Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW), that I blogged about here, is now generally available. Here is the official announcement. In brief, SQL DW is a fully managed data-warehouse-as-a-service that you can provision in minutes and scale up in seconds. … Continue reading →
I see a lot of confusion when it comes to creating a private cloud. Many seem to think that by virtualizing your servers in your local on-premise data center, you have created a private cloud. But by itself, virtualization falls … Continue reading →
The pricing for Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW) consists of a compute charge and a storage charge. For compute, it is not based on hardware configuration but rather by data warehouse units (DWU). DWU can be scaled up or down via … Continue reading →
Today is the day: SQL Server 2016 is available for download! You can download all the versions (enterprise, standard, web, express with advanced services, express, developer) of SQL Server 2016 now if you have a MSDN subscription, and you can also … Continue reading →
Azure storage is a great, inexpensive solution for storing your data in the cloud. There are many types of Azure storage options, but I wanted to list here the pricing of the most common type: block blob. The pricing below … Continue reading →
Hopefully you went through my presentations Should I move my database to the cloud?, Introducing Azure SQL Database and Implement SQL Server on an Azure VM and are convinced to move your databases to the cloud. If you are going to migrate to Azure … Continue reading →
Have you ever wondered what Azure region would be the fastest to host your applications when those applications are accessed from your office? Obviously the closest data center would probably be the best choice (each region has multiple data centers), but how … Continue reading →
In Azure, there previously has been only one kind of storage account, which is now called a “General Purpose” storage account. Just introduced is a new kind of storage account, called “Cool Blob Storage”. When creating a storage account, the … Continue reading →
Woo hoo! Microsoft has announced that SQL Server 2016 will be generally available on June 1st. On that date all four versions of SQL Server 2016 will be available to all users, including brand new ones, MSDN subscribers, and existing customers. Here … Continue reading →
Over the last few years I have been involved in reviewing the architectures of various companies that are building or have built big data solutions. When I say “big data”, I’m referring to the incorporation of semi-structured data such as sensor … Continue reading →
Pricing Azure SQL database is difficult because various database service tier options such as database transaction units (DTU’s), max database size, disaster recovery options, and backup retention days are used to determine pricing instead of hardware (CPU/RAM/HD). Generally I recommend starting out … Continue reading →
The Analytics Platform System (APS), which is a renaming of the Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW), has just released an appliance update (AU5), which is sort of like a service pack, except that it includes many new features. Below is what is new in this … Continue reading →
There are so many benefits to the cloud, but one of the major features is the ease of use in scaling a virtual machine (VM). A common scenario is when you are building an application that needs SQL Server. Simply … Continue reading →
I frequently present at user groups, and always try to create a brand new presentation to keep things interesting. We all know technology changes so quickly there is no shortage of topics! There is a list of all my presentations … Continue reading →
Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW) is a new platform-as-a service (PaaS) that distributes workloads across multiple compute resources, called massively parallel processing (MPP). Loading data into a MPP data warehouse requires a different approach, or mindset, than traditional methods of loading data into … Continue reading →
I’m sure you are aware of Microsoft Azure, but are you aware there is special version of Azure for U.S. governments? Microsoft Azure Government is a cloud computing service for federal, state, local and tribal U.S. governments. It was generally available … Continue reading →
Looks outside: pigs are flying! In an announcement yesterday, SQL Server will be made available on Linux. The private preview of SQL Server on Linux is available now, and Microsoft is targeting availability in mid-2017. Microsoft will offer both on-premises and cloud versions … Continue reading →
A limitation with Azure SQL database has been its inability to do cross-database SQL queries. This has changed with the introduction of elastic database queries, now in preview. However, it’s not as easy as on-prem SQL Server, where you can … Continue reading →
No, Superdome X is not the name of the stadium where they played in the last Super Bowl. Rather, Superdome X is HP’s top of the line server running Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition or Windows Server 2016 … Continue reading →
(updated 10/28/20). Life we be so much easier if we could just trust everyone, but since we can’t we need solid security for our databases. Azure SQL Database and Azure Synapse Analytics have many security features to make you sleep … Continue reading →