Microsoft usually has some interesting announcements at the PASS Summit, and this year was no exception. I’m writing a set of blogs covering the major announcements. Next up is the technical Preview for Power BI reports on-prem in SSRS. The … Continue reading →
Microsoft usually has some interesting announcements at the PASS Summit, and this year was no exception. I’m writing a set of blogs covering the major announcements. Perhaps the biggest one is the introduction of the Azure Analysis Services Public Preview (OLAP). … Continue reading →
Microsoft usually has some interesting announcements at the PASS Summit, and this year was no exception. My next few blogs will cover the major announcements. This first one is about the Data Migration Assistant (DMA) tool v 2.0 general availability and … Continue reading →
Microsoft Data Warehouse Fast Track for SQL Server 2016 is 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 Enterprise Edition. The Data … Continue reading →
A recent Microsoft blog post announced that they are releasing five new Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) and Developer (MCSD) specialties. These credentials are aligned to Centers of Excellence, used by the Microsoft Partner Network to identify technical competencies that are … Continue reading →
Cortana Intelligence Solutions is a new tool just released in public preview that enables users to rapidly discover, easily provision, quickly experiment with, and jumpstart production grade analytical solutions using the Cortana Intelligence Suite (CIS). It does so using preconfigured solutions, reference … Continue reading →
In my role as a Data Platform Solution Architect (DPSA) at Microsoft, part of my responsibility is to keep up with all the Microsoft on-prem and cloud data-related technology and trends, as well as non-Microsoft technology and trends in areas such … Continue reading →
One thing I try to do in my role with Microsoft is to get clients to think of possible use cases for building solutions in the Azure cloud. To set off light bulbs in their heads. Sometimes this is accomplished … Continue reading →
SQL Server 2016 introduces a very cool new feature called real-time operational analytics, which is the ability to run both analytics (OLAP) and OLTP workloads on the same database tables at the same time. This allows you to eliminate the need … Continue reading →
A new performance level for Azure SQL Database was recently announced, called P15. This new offering is more than two times more powerful than the next best offering, P11. P15 offers 4000 database transaction units (DTU) where P11 offered 1750 … Continue reading →
(updated 8/15/2019) I am sometimes asked to compare Azure SQL Database (SQL DB) to Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW). The most important thing to remember is SQL DB is for OLTP (i.e. applications with individual updates, inserts, and deletes) and … Continue reading →
Lambda architecture is a data-processing architecture designed to handle massive quantities of data (i.e. “Big Data”) by using both batch-processing and stream-processing methods. This idea is to balance latency, throughput, scaling, and fault-tolerance by using batch processing to provide comprehensive and accurate … Continue reading →
For companies that sell an on-prem software solution and are looking to move that solution to the cloud, a challenge arises on how to architect that solution in the cloud. For example, say you have a software solution that stores … Continue reading →
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 →