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Relational databases vs Non-relational databases
I see a lot of confusion about the place and purpose of the many new database solutions (“NoSQL databases”) compared to the relational databases solutions that have been around for many years. So let...
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Getting data into Azure Blob Storage
If you have on-prem data and want to copy it to Azure Blob Storage in the cloud, what are all the possible ways to do it? There are many, and here is a quick review of them: AzCopy: A popular...
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Azure Data Lake enhancements
I first blogged about Microsoft’s new product, the Azure Data Lake, a few months back (here). There are already enhancements, as announced at Stata + Hadoop World. Here they are in brief: The Azure...
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Copying data from Azure Blob Storage
In a previous blog I talked about copying on-prem data to Azure Blob Storage (Getting data into Azure Blob Storage). Let’s say you have copied the data and it is sitting in Azure Blob Storage (or an...
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Redundancy Options in Azure Blob Storage
So you have data in Azure Blob Storage and are concerned about reliability. Have no fear! There are three replication options for redundancy: 1. Locally Redundant Storage (LRS): All data in the...
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Storage options on Azure
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure, created by Microsoft, for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed and...
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Why use a data lake?
Previously I covered what a data lake is (including the Azure Data Lake and enhancements), and now I wanted to touch on the main reason why you might want to incorporate a data lake into your overall...
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HA/DR for Azure SQL Database
Azure SQL Database is a relational database-as-a-service in the cloud. It uses a special version of Microsoft SQL Server as its backend that is nearly identical to SQL Server (see Azure SQL Database...
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Migrate from on-prem SQL server to SQL Database
This blog describes the various approaches you can use to migrate an on-premises SQL Server database to Azure SQL Database. In this migration process you migrate both your schema and your data from the...
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Microsoft Azure Stack in Preview!
Microsoft made available the first technical preview of its new Microsoft Azure Stack offering today. It was announced last week. Azure Stack brings the cloud model of computing to every datacenter –...
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Scaling Azure SQL Database
One of the advantages Azure SQL Database has over on-prem SQL Server is the ease in which it can scale. I’ll discuss the various options for horizontal scaling, vertical scaling, and other similar...
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Azure SQL Database monitoring
Even though an Azure SQL Database stores all data on the Azure cloud, it does not mean that your options for managing and monitoring the databases are limited compared to on-prem databases. In fact,...
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Azure SQL Database security
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 has many security features to make you sleep well at night:...
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HP Superdome X for high-end OLTP/DW
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. It can...
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Cross-database queries in Azure SQL Database
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...
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SQL Server on Linux!
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...
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Microsoft Azure Government
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...
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Data loading into Azure SQL Data Warehouse
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...
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My latest presentations
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...
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Scaling Azure VM’s
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...
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