Updated Solutions to Classic Challenges
A personal website dedicated to helping IT professionals review where we've been, where we are, and maybe where we are headed.
I recently read through Nick Triantafillou’s excellent review of AWS re:Invent 2018 SWAG and feel there needs to be a bit of a level set for people who didn’t attend. This is especially true if you are considering attending next year, and you expect to take home a massive haul of free stuff. Not everyone who attends walks away with all of the items. Know that the best way to get swag at re:Invent is to have a plan.
Read MoreKnowing I’d have a bit of a vacation this winter, I wanted to get in a bit of reading. I decided to pick my books differently this year. Instead of just seeing whatever was at the top of the NYT list, or some cool looking sci-fi, I decided to let the Silicon Valley folks pick out my books. The list is a mixture of texts found on the lists of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and others from a Business Insider article that gathered recommendations from many in the tech industry.
Read MoreHow to connect to an Azure SQL DB is a question that comes up for a lot of admins used to administering on-premises SQL Server. Connecting to the cloud managed version of SQL Server is very similar to the local datacenter version and uses the same tools. Both SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and SQL Server Data Studio can be used to connect to Azure SQL Database.
Read MoreI’ve created a new GitHub repository to track various Azure DB projects I’m working on in my spare time. Azure DB’s fully managed nature makes it somewhat different than traditional Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) installs. There are some features (like ETL) which are not available to end users which means customers may need to reconsider some architectural decisions. My plan is to work on the basics in addition to more advanced topics related to the architectural changes. Like any side project, I can’t quite commit to timelines, but as long as I keep coming up with questions I’d like to answer, I’ll keep adding. The first project is to build a SQL DB via code. The beauty of doing this in the public via GitHub is that anyone can fork the code, or contribute.
Read MoreMicrosoft Azure provides the capability to use command line tools such as PowerShell without having it installed on your computer. This is accomplished via Azure Cloud Shell. Azure Cloud Shell can help you get working in Azure quickly on different platforms, or even from a loaner machine. There are many situations where you might not have your normally loaded computer, but you still need to work in Azure. Azure Cloud Shell can be quite handy.
Read MoreI thought I knew ahead of time what some of the stories coming out of re:invent would be. I expected some new instance types, some price changes, and maybe some announcements around serverless compute workloads. That plan changed when Amazon’s Andy Jassay spoke out against Oracle and SQL Server during his AWS re:invent keynote. His statements made me take another look at the updates to Amazon’s database that allowed him to speak in such a manner.
Read MoreAWS is the clear leader in cloud, Microsoft, Google, and even Oracle have recently made attempts to cut into Amazon’s market share. Microsoft has done an admirable job of leveraging enterprise connections coupled with some very nice cloud products to emerge has a worthy challenger. Google recently made some leadership changes at the top which observers of the space find intriguing. Finally, Oracle keeps pushing in terms of price to performance ratios. AWS has to keep the pedal to medal in terms of innovation to keep their lead position.
Read MoreMeeting government security mandates can be challenging to say the least. It’s often a laborious and confusing process. A myriad of controls all need to be addressed and proven to assessors. Microsoft has assembled a collection of documents that assists Federal customers in understanding which security controls are inherited from Azure and which remain the responsibility of the customer.
Read MoreEarlier in the week I decided to try out the new dashcam feature the Model 3. I’ve never had a dashcam before, though I’ve often considered buying one in the past. They just seem like a fun way to capture the joy of driving. So when the Tesla software update added the feature for free, I thought I’d give it a look.
Read MoreLast week I was honored to be a guest on the Datanauts Podcast. Episode 149 is titled “Entering The DevOps World With Azure DevOps.“ It is, as you can probably guess, about VSTS / Azure DevOps.
Read MoreA few new images showed up on Azure. Looking through the images, one can now find images for both SQL Server 2019 and SQL Server 2019 CTP. This is an excellent way to test the new software before going live with it in production. One note is that at the time of this writing, the only version of Windows Server 2019 that’s available is datacenter.
Read MoreIn a previous post, I wrote about setting up SQL Server 2019 via Docker container on Windows 10. Microsoft has championed the fact that they support more than just Windows. I decided to put that to the test and try running SQL Server 2019 on on Mac OS X using Docker. I figure Docker is Docker on pretty much everywhere it’s running, so this should be a piece of cake.
Read MoreOne of the big announcements from the Microsoft Ignite Conference was SQL Server 2019 being made available for public preview. Public preview means the software isn’t very far from being made generally available (GA) to everyone as a finished product. IT Pros who support SQL Server typically take a look at the new version to investigate features and understand how the software might fit into their environment. In this post I show an easy way for IT pros to try using SQL Server 2019 on a Windows 10 computer running Docker.
Read MoreMicrosoft announced on Sept 10th that Visual Studio Team Services would soon become Azure DevOps. Along with the name change are a few alterations to the service names. VSTS users shouldn't feel too out of place. It feels like the same house with the furniture slightly rearranged. So far, I only see upside to the changes.
Read MoreThe wait is now over as VMware recently released the session videos online for all to see. From what I could tell, the videos are available without any form of paywall or barrier to entry.
Read MoreThere were a number of interesting announcements at Day 1 of VMworld 2018. Here are my brief thoughts.
Read MoreHere are a list of links to stories I found interesting that are related Cloud and Virtualization.
Read MoreThe Dashboard theme in Azure can be changed. I didn't know this was possible until I came across a tweet by @msdev. I figured I'd pass this along and try to help spread the word for those who like to customize their experiences.
Read MoreIn my past, I've worked with NetApp, Equallogic, EMC, and various other NAS/SAN devices. After working briefly with SoftNAS, I can say that anyone familiar with those types of systems will feel right at home. Think of the SoftNAS vm as a "controller" and the local cloud storage as "shelves." The layout and terminology should make sense to anyone with a storage background. That level of knowledge could be comforting to an organization making a transition to the public cloud.
Read MoreI recently decided to try out the SoftNAS virtual appliance in my Azure account. The installation went as smoothly as any other Azure template install. All was good until I tried to login to the web interface. No matter what userid / password combination I tried, I could not get into the web admin GUI. Frustrated by this, I decided to do some digging.
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