In SQL Server, scaling out reads (i.e. using Active secondary replicas via AlwaysOn Availability Groups) is a lot easier than scaling out writes. So what are your options when you have a tremendous amount of writes that scaling up will not handle, … Continue reading →
Last week Microsoft released a public preview of a new service called Azure Archive Blob Storage, offering customers a lower-cost cloud storage solution for rarely accessed data. This allows for storage tiering, where organizations can place their critical data on expensive, … Continue reading →
Data virtualization goes by a lot of different names: logical data warehouse, data federation, virtual database, and decentralized data warehouse. Data virtualization allows you to integrate data from various sources, keeping the data in-place, so that you can generate reports … Continue reading →
I previously blogged about Microsoft certification changes, and since then there have been some new Microsoft Big Data certifications exams released: Already live: 70-773: Analyzing Big Data with Microsoft R 70-774: Perform Cloud Data Science with Azure Machine Learning 70-775: Perform … Continue reading →
Microsoft has released a preview of the Azure Analysis Services web designer. This is a browser-based experience that will allow developers to start creating and managing Azure Analysis Services (AAS) semantic models quickly and easily. SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) … Continue reading →
Azure SQL Data Sync has been ignored for quite some time, but has finally gotten an update (it’s in public preview). This release includes several major improvements to the service including new Azure portal support, PowerShell and REST API support, … Continue reading →
Microsoft has introduced two new disk sizes for Azure IaaS VMs in P40 (2TB) and P50 (4TB) for both managed and unmanaged Premium Disks and S40 (2TB) and S50 (4TB) for both managed and unmanaged Standard Disks. This enables customers … Continue reading →
I have blogged before about data lakes (see What is a data lake? and Why use a data lake?), and wanted to provide more details on this popular technology, some of which I cover in my presentation “Big data architectures and the data lake“. … Continue reading →
I have been working at Microsoft now for 3 years and 4 months (side note: it’s by far the best company I have ever worked for). You would think by now I know about every Azure product, but we release … Continue reading →
The Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM) is a customized VM image on Microsoft’s Azure cloud built specifically for doing data science. It has many popular data science and other tools pre-installed and pre-configured to jump-start building intelligent applications for advanced … Continue reading →
I had previously blogged about the Data Warehouse Fast Track for SQL Server 2016, a joint effort between Microsoft and its hardware partners to deliver validated, pre-configured solutions that reduce the complexity of implementing a data warehouse on SQL Server … Continue reading →
If you are looking at providing high availability (HA) for SSAS, here are 3 options: Install SSAS on a Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) Here’s a good article. The main issue with this option is that SSAS isn’t cluster-aware, so … Continue reading →
With so many product options to choose from for building a big data solution in the cloud, such as SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW), Azure Analysis Services (AAS), SQL Database (SQL DB), and Azure Data Lake (ADL), there are various combinations … Continue reading →
Another Microsoft event and another bunch of exciting announcements. At the Microsoft Build event this week, the major announcements in the data platform space were: Azure Cosmos DB Azure Cosmos DB is the next big leap in the evolution of … Continue reading →
Announced today are some really cool new Power BI features: Power BI Premium Previously available were two tiers, Power BI Free and Power BI Pro ($10/user/month). The problem with Power BI Pro is that for large organizations, this can add … Continue reading →
Yesterday was the Microsoft Data Amp event where a bunch of very exciting announcements were made: SQL Server vNext CTP 2.0 is now available and the product will be officially called SQL Server 2017: Runs on Linux and Docker Support … Continue reading →
There are a number of options for using Azure for free. This is very useful for those of you who are not familiar with Azure and want to “play” with it: Create a free Azure account and get $200 in … Continue reading →
The new buzzword in the industry is “Artificial Intelligence” (AI). But exactly what is AI and how does it compare to “machine learning” and “deep learning”? The best definitions I have seen come from the excellent article “Why Deep Learning … Continue reading →
There are various Microsoft tools that you can use to help you migrate your database (updated 1/16/19): Data Migration Assistant (DMA) – enables you to upgrade to a modern data platform by detecting compatibility issues that can impact database functionality … Continue reading →
Azure Data Lake Analytics (ADLA) is a distributed analytics service built on Apache YARN that allows developers to be productive immediately on big data. This is accomplished by submitting a job to the service where the service will automatically run it … Continue reading →