I want to start by saying thank you to all who submitted, and an amazing collection of people submitted some fantastic content. Also, thanks to Steve for asking me to host and being patient with me for mixing up the dates and the hashtag. It’s #tsql2sday and it’s on Tuesday not Wednesday :P Now, onto the posts in submission order. Rob Farley – On containers Rob discusses how he uses containers to quickly spin up SQL Server instances without installing them on his local OS, replacing the virtual machine-based environments he used in the past.

In recent years containers have come into the data platform world, exposing new technologies to data professionals. Microsoft put SQL Server in Linux, and shortly after that, SQL Server made its way into containers. SQL Server in Containers has become the foundation for things like Big Data Clusters and Azure Arc-enabled Data Services My invitation to you for this month’s #tsql2sday is… I want to invite you to share your experiences using containers and not just SQL Server in containers…

Where I’ve Been Since January 1, 2012 I’ve been the principal consultant at Centino Systems. Jokingly, I refer to myself as The Centino of Systems. I learned a lot of lessons running my own business. Such as how to be a consultant and also how to scale the business even as the only employee/consultant. There’s been ups and downs, successes and failures and I couldn’t be more happy with how things went.

Ever need to set your web server a specific protocol version of TLS for web servers and need a quick way to test that out to confirm? Let’s check out how to use curl to go just that. This code here uses curl with the parameters --tlsv1.1 --tls-max 1.1, which will force the max TLS protocol version to 1.1. Using the --verbose parameter gives you the ability to see the TLS handshake and get the output sent to standard out.

My updated course “Managing the Kubernetes API Server and Pods” is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here or if you want to dive right in check it out here! This course targets IT professionals that design and maintain Kubernetes and container based solutions. The course can be used by both the IT pro learning new skills and the system administrator or developer preparing for using Kubernetes both on premises and in the Cloud.

My updated course “Kubernetes Installation and Configuration Fundamentals” is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here or if you want to dive right in check it out here! This course targets IT professionals that design and maintain Kubernetes and container based solutions. The course can be used by both the IT pro learning new skills and the system administrator or developer preparing for using Kubernetes both on premises and in the Cloud.

I’m super proud to announce that Ben E. Weissman and I have published Azure Arc-Enabled Data Services Revealed available now at Apress and your favorite online booksellers! Buy the book now; or keep reading below if you need to be more convinced :) A couple of notes about the book first, I enjoyed working with this bleeding-edge tech and collaborating with the SQL Server Engineering Team at Microsoft on this. I want to call out the support from our tech reviewer, and Program Managed for Azure Arc Enabled Data Services, Travis Wright.

Recently I needed to take a look at all of the SQL Server Agent Jobs and their Jobs Steps for a customer. Specifically, I needed to review all of the Jobs and Job Steps for Ola Hallengren’s Maintenance Solution and look at the Backup, Index Maintenance and Integrity Jobs to ensure they’re configured properly and also account for any customizations and one-offs in the Job definitions. This customer has dozens of SQL Server instances and well, I wasn’t about to click through everything in SSMS…and writing this in TSQL would have been a good candidate for a Ph.

Pre-conference Workshop at Data Platform Virtual Summit 2020 I’m proud to announce that I will be be presenting pre-conference workshop at Data Platform Virtual Summit 2020 split into Two four hour sessions on 30 November and 1 December! This one won’t let you down! Here is the start and stop times in various time zones: Time Zone Start Stop EST 5.00 PM 9 PM CET 11.00 PM 3.00 AM (+1) IST 3.

The first EightKB back in July was a real blast. Five expert speakers delivered mind-melting content to over 1,000 attendees! We were honestly blown away by how successful the first event was and we had so much fun putting it on, we thought we’d do it again 🙂 The next EightKB is going to be on January 27th 2021 and the schedule has just been announced! Once again we have five top-notch speakers delivering the highest quality sessions you can get!