Anthony Nocentino's Blog

SQL Server 2025 CU1 Fixes the Docker Desktop AVX Issue on macOS

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft fixed the AVX instruction issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now runs successfully on Docker Desktop for macOS without needing OrbStack.

NVMe vs PVSCSI: Real-World Performance Testing for SQL Server Workloads on VMware

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

End-to-end NVMe vs PVSCSI testing over NVMe/TCP to a Pure Storage FlashArray: TPC-C and DiskSpd results and analysis.

Getting SQL Server 2025 RTM Running in Containers on macOS

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 15:00:00 +0000

Update (February 2, 2026): Microsoft has fixed this issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now runs successfully on Docker Desktop for macOS without needing OrbStack. See my follow-up post for details.

SQL Server 2025 RTM is here, and if you’re running Docker on macOS Tahoe 26, you might have hit a wall trying to get it running. Here’s what happened when I tried spinning up the latest container image and how I worked around it.

App-Consistent MongoDB Snapshots Across Multiple Pure Storage FlashArrays

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Automated snapshot and recovery solution for sharded MongoDB clusters running across multiple Pure Storage FlashArrays using fsyncLock and protection group snapshots.

Build a Snapshot Backup Catalog in Pure Storage - The SQL Server 2022 Edition

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0500

In my previous post, I showed you how to build a snapshot backup catalog using SQL Server 2025’s new native REST API integration. But what if you’re still running SQL Server 2022? Should you miss out on this powerful capability that SQL Server and Pure Storage provide? Absolutely not.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to build the same snapshot backup catalog functionality using PowerShell with SQL Server 2022’s T-SQL Snapshot Backup feature. While we don’t have the native REST integration yet, we can still leverage the power of FlashArray’s Protection Group Tags to build a queryable snapshot catalog that bridges the gap between database administration and storage management.

Setting up SQL Server S3 Object Storage Integration using MinIO with Docker Compose (Updated for SQL Server 2025)

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Update for SQL Server 2025:
This post and the GitHub repo have been updated for SQL Server 2025 RC1 and Ubuntu 24.04.
New in SQL Server 2025: You no longer need to install the PolyBase service to interact with Parquet files in S3. Previously, with SQL Server 2022, you had to build a custom container or manually install PolyBase. Now, S3 object integration and Parquet support work out-of-the-box!

In this blog post, I’ve implemented two example environments for using SQL Server’s S3 object integration. One for backup and restore to S3-compatible object storage and the other for data virtualization using PolyBase connectivity to S3-compatible object storage. This work aims to get you up and running as quickly as possible to work with these new features. I implemented this in Docker Compose since that handles all the implementation and configuration steps for you. The complete code for this is available on my GitHub repo. I’m walking you through the implementation here in this post.

Scaling SQL Server 2025 Vector Search with Load-Balanced Ollama Embeddings

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0500

Load balancing Ollama instances with Nginx to scale embedding generation for SQL Server 2025 vector search, achieving 6x performance improvement.

Automated SQL Server Benchmarking with HammerDB and Docker: A Complete Testing Framework

Sat, 06 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0500

I’m excited to announce the release of a new open-source project that fully automates HammerDB benchmarking for SQL Server using Docker. If you’ve ever needed to run TPC-C or TPC-H benchmarks multiple times, you know how time-consuming the manual setup can be. This project removes the hassle and gets you up and running a single command: ./loadtest.sh.

Why I Built This

In my work, I frequently benchmark SQL Server configurations, whether I’m comparing versions, testing new hardware, or validating performance tuning changes. Setting up HammerDB manually each time became a significant time bottleneck (see what I did there! ;). I needed an automated solution that would work consistently across different environments and reduce the time required to get test results.

Managing Enterprise Storage with Pure Storage Fusion in PowerShell - Building Storage Tiers

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 05:00:00 +0000

In modern IT environments, not all workloads require the same level of storage performance, protection, or cost. Some applications need high performance with aggressive data protection, while others are perfectly fine with lower performance in exchange for cost savings. This tiered approach to storage service delivery is fundamental to efficient infrastructure management.

In my previous post on Fusion, I took an application-centric approach, showing how to deploy SQL Servers using Fusion. Let’s switch gears now and learn how to define a storage service catalog. In this post, I’ll demonstrate how to build a complete storage service catalog using Pure Storage Fusion Presets, offering Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers with optional replication. We’ll see how to leverage different array types (FlashArray //X and FlashArray //C) to optimize both performance and cost across your fleet.

Getting Started with Vector Search in SQL Server 2025 Using Ollama

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 05:00:00 -0501

Ollama SQL FastStart streamlines the deployment of SQL Server 2025 with integrated AI capabilities through a comprehensive Docker-based solution. This project delivers a production-ready environment combining SQL Server 2025, Ollama’s large language model services, and NGINX with full SSL support—all preconfigured to work together seamlessly.

I built this project to eliminate the complex configuration hurdles that typically slow down AI integration projects. Whether you’re a database professional wanting to explore SQL Server 2025’s new vector search capabilities or a developer looking to build AI-powered applications on familiar infrastructure, this solution provides everything you need in a single docker-compose file. The entire stack—including the complex certificate trust chain between SQL Server and the Ollama API—is automatically configured, allowing you to focus on building data driven AI applications rather than infrastructure setup.

Managing Enterprise Storage with Pure Storage Fusion in PowerShell

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 05:00:00 +0000

When managing storage infrastructure at scale, one of the most powerful approaches is treating related storage resources as cohesive Workloads rather than individual components. This becomes especially important when dealing with applications like SQL Server that have specific storage patterns and requirements and are often deployed at scale in a datacenter or cloud.

In this post, I’ll walk through a complete workflow for creating and managing application-specific storage Workloads using Pure Storage’s Fusion Fleet capability with PowerShell. We’ll see how we can define storage templates, called Presets, once and deploy them consistently across our entire Fleet of storage arrays.

Microsoft MVP 2025: Continuing the Data Platform Journey

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 05:00:00 +0000

I am honored to announce that I have been renewed as a Microsoft MVP for the ninth consecutive year, recognized in the Azure SQL and SQL Server technical areas under Data Platform. Thanks for this incredible journey that began in 2017.

Thank You

I want to thank Microsoft for this continued recognition. The MVP program has provided me with numerous opportunities to connect with brilliant minds worldwide, gain early access to cutting-edge technologies, and collaborate with product teams and engineering teams that contribute to the evolution of the data platforms we all rely on to maintain our customers’ most critical asset, data.

Build a Snapshot Backup Catalog in Pure Storage with SQL Server 2025’s Native REST API

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 05:00:00 -0500

I’m really excited to share some new functionality in SQL Server 2025 combined with some innovations in FlashArray’s REST API.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to build a snapshot backup catalog using FlashArray Protection Group Tags and orchestrating the work using SQL Server 2025’s new native REST integration.

With this solution, you will have the ability to query your snapshots by database name, creation time, instance name, or really any other interesting metadata that you want to add. Bridging the gap between snapshotting volumes and databases. And the best part? You can do this all without external tools or databases - just SQL Server and FlashArray.

Monitoring SQL Server Performance with the Pure Storage FlashArray OpenMetrics Exporter

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 05:00:00 -0500

I’m excited to share a new open-source project I’ve been working on that combines two of my favorite areas: SQL Server and Pure Storage FlashArray performance monitoring. If you’ve been following my blog, you know I am passionate about creating tools that bridge the gap between database platforms and storage infrastructure.

SQL Server performance troubleshooting has always been a unique challenge, especially when it comes to understanding the complete I/O path from the database to storage. Traditionally, database administrators (DBAs) and storage administrators have used separate monitoring tools, which makes it difficult to correlate performance issues across the entire stack. Literally two different perspectives of their performance worlds.

SQL Server 2025: Using ZSTD Compression for SQL Server Backups

Tue, 27 May 2025 05:00:00 -0500

SQL Server 2025 introduces a new compression algorithm called ZSTD (Zstandard), which can enhance database backup performance. Using ZSTD allows for greater control over backup performance, particularly concerning CPU usage and backup duration. I recently conducted some preliminary benchmarks comparing ZSTD at its three compression levels with the existing MS_XPRESS algorithm. The results are compelling and provide additional options for managing database backup performance effectively.

The Test Setup

I set up two types of tests on a 389.37GB database to highlight the performance characteristics of the backup compression algorithms:

T-SQL REST API Integration in SQL Server 2025: Streamlining T-SQL Snapshot Backups

Mon, 19 May 2025 05:00:00 -0502

In this post, I’ll walk you through a T-SQL script that creates application-consistent snapshots on Pure Storage FlashArray, all from within SQL Server, no external tooling. SQL Server 2025 introduces a powerful new feature: the sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint stored procedure. This enhancement makes calling REST APIs directly from T-SQL easier than ever. Combining this new capability with Pure Storage’s API allows us to orchestrate snapshot operations seamlessly, with no external tools or scripts required.

SQL Server 2025: Enterprise AI Without the Learning Curve

Mon, 19 May 2025 05:00:00 -0500

With the release of SQL Server 2025, Microsoft is firmly positioning its flagship database platform as an enterprise-ready AI solution. Having spent time with the preview builds and working with the feature set, I believe this release represents a significant opportunity for organizations to leverage AI capabilities and their existing investments in SQL Server infrastructure, skills, and processes.

While many cloud-native and niche vector databases have emerged to support AI workloads, SQL Server 2025 brings these capabilities to your existing operational data platform. This integration offers unique advantages that standalone AI solutions can’t match without significant integration efforts and security considerations.

Using a Local Large Language Model (LLM): Interacting with Local LLMs Using PowerShell

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 05:00:00 -0500

As AI continues to evolve, many of us are looking for ways to leverage large language models (LLMs) without relying on cloud services. As we learned in my previous post “Using a Local Large Language Model (LLM): Running Ollama on Your Laptop”, running models locally gives you complete control over your data, eliminates API costs, and can be integrated seamlessly into your existing workflows. Today, I’d like to share how you can interact with local LLMs using PowerShell through the Ollama API. I’m choosing PowerShell for this implementation to showcase the accessibility and simplicity of building a chatbot through the command line, allowing you to get started with this experience quickly and smoothly.

Using a Local Large Language Model (LLM): Running Ollama on Your Laptop

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 05:00:00 -0500

You can now run powerful LLMs like Llama 3.1 directly on your laptop using Ollama. There is no cloud, and there is no cost. Just install, pull a model, and start chatting, all in a local shell.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized how we interact with data and systems, but many assume you need significant cloud resources or specialized hardware to run them. Today, I want to walk you through getting started with Ollama, an approachable tool that lets you run large language models locally on your laptop.

Using T-SQL Snapshot Backup - Seeding Availability Groups

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 05:00:00 -0500

In this post, the fifth in our series, I want to illustrate an example of using the T-SQL Snapshot Backup feature in SQL Server 2022 to seed Availability Groups (AGs) with storage-based snapshots. Efficiently seeding an Availability Group is essential for maintaining high availability and ensuring effective disaster recovery. With the introduction of T-SQL Snapshot Backup in SQL Server 2022, snapshots can now be created at the storage layer. This advancement significantly speeds up the initialization of secondary replicas, particularly in environments that handle large databases.

Monitoring with the Pure Storage FlashArray OpenMetrics Exporter

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Update (February 2026): This post has been updated to reflect the current best practices for monitoring FlashArray using OpenMetrics. Starting with Purity//FA 6.7.x, FlashArray includes a native OpenMetrics exporter, eliminating the need for a separate exporter service/container. The configuration examples below now demonstrate direct-to-array scraping.

This post introduces you to monitoring your Pure Storage FlashArray using OpenMetrics. It shows you how to get started quickly using Docker Compose to monitor your Pure Storage FlashArray environment.

Using T-SQL Snapshot Backup - Multi-Array Database Snapshots

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 05:00:00 -0500

In this post, the fourth in our series, I want to share an example demonstrating SQL Server 2022’s T-SQL Snapshot Backup feature in a scenario where a database spans multiple storage arrays. If you’re dealing with multi-array environments, you’ll appreciate how this technique freezes database write I/O to take coordinated snapshots across volumes on two FlashArrays. In this post, I’ll walk you through the process, point out some of the script’s key elements, and show you how long the write I/O pause takes.

Introducing SQL Server 2025 - Enterprise Ready AI

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 05:00:00 -0500

SQL Server 2025 is an upcoming release focused on AI, analytics, and modern database development, backed by innovations in mission-critical engine features for security, performance, and high availability.

Let’s dive into what this means for your AI and data-driven applications. We’ll walk through some of the new features announced by Azure Data Principal Architect Bob Ward in his post Announcing SQL Server 2025, and I’ll give some thoughts on these innovations and where they will fit in the enterprise.

Talks

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 05:00:00 -0500

I’ve migrated all presentations content over to GitHub…check it out here!

Using T-SQL Snapshot Backup - Point in Time Recovery - Azure Edition

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 05:00:00 -0500

In this post, the third in our series on using T-SQL Snapshot Backup, I will guide you through using the new T-SQL Snapshot Backup feature in SQL Server 2022 to take a snapshot backup and then perform point-in-time database restores using that snapshot backup as the base, but this time using an Azure Virtual Machine. We will explore how to manage Azure storage-level operations, such as taking snapshots, cloning snapshots, and executing an instantaneous point-in-time database restore from the snapshot with minimal impact on your infrastructure. Additionally, I will demonstrate a PowerShell script that utilizes dbatools and Azure Az modules to automate the process.

Using T-SQL Snapshot Backup - Point in Time Recovery

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 05:00:00 -0500

In this post, the second in our series, I will guide you through using the new T-SQL Snapshot Backup feature in SQL Server 2022 to take a snapshot backup and perform point-in-time database restores using a snapshot backup as the base of the restore. We will explore how to manage storage-level operations, such as cloning snapshots and executing an instantaneous point-in-time restore of a database from the snapshot with minimal impact on your infrastructure. Additionally, I will demonstrate a PowerShell script that utilizes dbatools and the PureStoragePowerShellSDK2 modules to automate the process.

Using T-SQL Snapshot Backup - Are Snapshots Backups?

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 05:00:00 -0500

Traditional SQL Server backups can struggle with large databases, resulting in longer backup times and resource contention. T-SQL Snapshot Backup, a new feature in SQL Server 2022, addresses these challenges by allowing storage-based snapshots to be coordinated through T-SQL. This feature delivers faster, more efficient backups, especially for large-scale environments with the most aggressive of recovery objectives.

Anatomy of a Full Backup

Before we start learning about T-SQL Snapshot backup, let’s establish what a backup in SQL Server is. When a backup is initiated in SQL Server, several things occur. Follow along in Figure 1 below; here, you see a database with database files on Disk A and a transaction log file on Disk B.

Using the Pure Storage PowerShellSDK2 - Part 5 - Checking Replication Status

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 05:00:00 -0500

Welcome back to the fifth installment of our blog series on using the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2. In this post, we’re diving into a hands-on demonstration of using the Pure Storage FlashArray API to track replication performance between two arrays. This is especially useful for DBAs and storage admins, who must ensure their data replication processes run smoothly and efficiently. A typical scenario here is ensuring a snapshot is entirely replicated between sites before kicking off some other process. Following this demo, you’ll learn how to monitor replication status and verify the completion of snapshot transfers between arrays.

New Pluralsight Course - Certified Kubernetes Administrator - Performing Cluster Version Upgrades

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We’re working through the major refresh of my Certified Kubernetes Administrator series at Pluralsight!

The next course “Certified Kubernetes Administrator: Performing Cluster Version Upgrades” in the updated series is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here! This course will teach you the how to perform worker node maintenance and upgrading a Kubernetes cluster using kubeadm.

Installing and Configuring containerd as a Kubernetes Container Runtime

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This post shows you how to install containerd as the container runtime in a Kubernetes cluster. I will also cover setting the cgroup driver for containerd to systemd, which is the preferred cgroup driver for Kubernetes.

In Kubernetes version 1.20 Docker was deprecated as a container runtime in a Kubernetes cluster and support was removed in 1.22. Kubernetes 1.26 requires that you use a runtime that conforms with the Container Runtime Interface (CRI). containerd is a CRI-compatible container runtime and is one of the supported options you have as a container runtime in this post-Docker/Kubernetes world. To be clear, you use container images created with Docker in containerd. containerd will start and run the container in your Kubernetes cluster. This post was previously published in February 2021. This is an updated version with the latest installation and configuration steps.

New Pluralsight Course - Certified Kubernetes Administrator - Working With Your Cluster

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We’re working through the major refresh of my Certified Kubernetes Administrator series at Pluralsight!

The next course “Certified Kubernetes Administrator: Working With Your Cluster” in the updated series is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here! This course will teach you the first steps in interacting with a Kubernetes cluster using kubectl.

New Pluralsight Course - Certified Kubernetes Administrator - Using kubeadm to Install a Basic Cluster

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We’re kicking off a major refresh of my Certified Kubernetes Administrator series at Pluralsight!

The second course “Certified Kubernetes Administrator: Using kubeadm to Install a Basic Cluster” in the updated series is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here! This course will teach you the fundamentals needed to get using kubeadm to install a basic Kubernetes cluster!

New Pluralsight Course - Certified Kubernetes Administrator - Kubernetes Foundations

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We’re kicking off a major refresh of my Certified Kubernetes Administrator series at Pluralsight!

The first course “Certified Kubernetes Administrator: Kubernetes Foundations” in the updated series is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here! This course will teach you the fundamentals needed to get started with Kubernetes!

This course targets IT professionals who design and maintain Kubernetes and container-based solutions. The course can be used by the IT pro learning new skills and the system administrator or developer preparing to use Kubernetes both on-premises and in the Cloud.

Using the Pure Storage PowerShellSDK2 - Part 4 - Classifying Workloads With FlashArray Tags

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 03:00:00 -0500

Welcome back to the fourth installment of our blog series on using the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2. In this post, you’ll learn how to use Purity Tags to classify workloads, giving you the ability to search and manage resources in FlashArray and Cloud Block Store based on the types of workloads you’re running. Using the techniques in this post, combined with those learned in our last post, Using the Pure Storage PowerShellSDK2 - Part 3 - Getting Performance Data from FlashArray you can retrieve information about subsets of objects in your FlashArray or Cloud Block Store across several performance dimensions.

Understanding I/O Freeze in SQL Server 2022's TSQL Snapshot Backups

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 02:00:00 -0500

SQL Server 2022 introduces a new feature to enable application-consistent snapshot backups. TSQL Snapshot Backups enable the SQL Server to control the database quiesce without external tools. Using TSQL Snapshot backups enables instantaneous restores, independent of the size of data, for a database, group, or server backups, including point-in-time recovery.

When you use this feature, it freezes I/O. You’ll see a record like this in your error log when you execute the command ALTER DATABASE TestDB1 SET SUSPEND_FOR_SNAPSHOT_BACKUP = ON. This blog post will show you that the I/O freeze is just for write operations. You can continue to read from the database during this frozen state.

Using the Pure Storage PowerShellSDK2 - Part 3 - Getting Performance Data from FlashArray

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 02:00:00 -0500

Welcome back to the third installment of our blog series on using the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2. In this post, we’ll learn how to retrieve performance data from FlashArray and Cloud Block Store. Here, you’ll uncover the intricacies of extracting performance data across several object types, including Volumes and Hosts. We will dig into the object model that exposes crucial performance insights. Moreover, we’ll delve into the realm of performance analysis, addressing common customer questions such as:

Using the Pure Storage PowerShellSDK2 - Part 2 - Working With Data

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 01:00:00 -0500

Welcome back to the second installment of our series on using the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2. In this post, we’ll dive into working with object data using Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2.

When it comes to manipulating data in PowerShell, the ability to effortlessly pipe objects and their associated data between cmdlets is a game-changer. However, when it comes to Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2, there’s an even more efficient way to handle this. By tapping into the REST API of your FlashArray and Cloud Block Store, you can significantly reduce the runtime of your cmdlet executions. This can be achieved by leveraging key functions such as sort, limit, and filter.

Using the Pure Storage PowerShellSDK2 - Part 1 - Connecting to FlashArray

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to our blog series on using the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2. In this series, we will provide you with practical insights and examples on how to harness the power of the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2 to enhance your storage management capabilities.

Throughout this series, we will cover a wide range of topics, including performance data gathering, snapshot management, performance bottleneck identification, and resource management within your FlashArray and Cloud Block Store. I will guide you step by step, making complex tasks easier to understand and execute.

About

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Anthony Nocentino is a highly accomplished technology professional, author, and speaker with over 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He currently is as a Senior Principal Field Solution Architect at Pure Storage.

Recognized globally for his expertise in SQL Server, Kubernetes, and public cloud infrastructure, Anthony is a Microsoft Data Platform expert. He has authored several technical books and created dozens of PPluralsight courses, including “SQL Server on Kubernetes” and “Azure Arc-enabled Data Services Revealed.”

Pure Storage Links

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

SQL Server - Best Practices and Architecture

SQL Server - Snapshots

SQL Server - Availability and Disaster Recovery

Microsoft

Microsoft Support Matrix

FlashBlade

VMware

Automation

FlashArray

Cloud Block Store

Video Demos

Writing a Hello World Go Container Web Application

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this blog post, I will show you how to build a hello world container-based web application in the go programming language. The reason I want to do this is because I need a very small container image to do some testing in Kubernetes. I’ll also highlight some of the pitfalls I ran into to hopefully have you some time in your learnings.

Let’s build and test it locally first

Before you build a container-based application, you need an application. So let’s go ahead and build a simple hello world app in go, but running on our local system as a traditionally compiled program. I want to make sure my application works before I move onto the container build process. You’ll need to install the go programming language development tools. On a Mac, you can do that with brew install go. For other operating systems, check out the install page.

Training

Sun, 05 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I provide online training though Pluralsight. Access our resources anytime and from anywhere. Pluralsight offers the highest quality online training available with very affordable options. Check it out here.

Here is a list of our current online training offerings:

Kubernetes

Kubernetes Administration Learning Path

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Managing and Orchestrating Containers with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Learning Path - co-authored with Ben Weissman

Linux Foundation Certified Engineer

Linux Foundation Certified Engineer Series

Microsoft Azure

Other Courses

Community Sessions - Containers and Kubernetes Learning Path

This learning path will introduce you to containers and Kubernetes and some advanced topics you need to know about deploying SQL Server in Kubernetes.

New Pluralsight Course – Securing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Clusters

Sat, 28 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My new course “Securing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Clusters”, co-authored with my good friend and colleague Ben E. Weissman, is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here!

This course completes the learning path, Managing and Orchestrating Containers with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), that Ben and I built together.

Azure Kubernetes Service is a platform-as-a-service that provides Kubernetes Services in the Azure Cloud. This course will teach you to design, configure, and manage cluster security in Azure Kubernetes Service. Focusing on API Server access, authentication, authorization, and network policies.

Working With Tags in FlashArray using PowerShell

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Purity is the operating environment that runs Pure Storage products like FlashArray and Cloud Block Store. Starting in Purity 6.0, you can assign tags to objects. This post shows you how to perform some basic tagging operations for volumes.

What’s a Tag and Why Do I Care?

A tag is a key/value pair that can be attached to an object in FlashArray, like a volume or a snapshot. Using tags enables you to attach additional metadata to objects for classification, sorting, and searching. For example, you can assign a tag to a collection of volumes and then come along later and retrieve a listing of volumes that match a particular key or value. You can use tags to add application context to resources inside FlashArray. Specifically, in the examples in this blog post, I want to tag volumes with the names SQL Server Instances.

Running SQL Server on Apple Silicon - Updated

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I purchased a shiny new MacBook Air with an M2 processor. After I got all the standard stuff up and running, I set out to learn how to run SQL Server containers on this new hardware. This post shows you how to run SQL Server on Apple Silicon using colima.

Colima is a container runtime that runs a Linux VM on your Mac. This Linux VM runs using the Virtualization framework hypervisor native in MacOS. Your containers will run inside this virtual machine.

Pre-Conference Workshop and Sessions at PASS Summit

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 14:13:18 +0000

I’m pleased to announce that I will be presenting at this year’s PASS Summit. PASS Data Community Summit 2022 is the year’s largest gathering of data platform professionals in the US. This year I have a pre-conference workshop, a regular session, and a Learning Path session. Let’s dive into each.

Pre-Conference Workshop: Become a Hybrid Architect

My good friend Ben E. Weissman and I will teach a pre-conference workshop called “Become a Hybrid Architect” in this workshop we will cover the foundations needed to design and build a hybrid cloud strategy for your organization.

Setting up MinIO for SQL Server 2022 s3 Object Storage Integration

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

In this post, I will walk you through how to set up MinIO, so you can use it to work with SQL Server 2022’s s3 object integrations. Working with s3 and SQL Server requires a valid and trusted TLS certificate. This can be a pain for some users and environments. So I’m writing this post so you can get off the ground running with this new feature set in SQL Server 2022. The certificate we’re working with here is self-signed. You could get a real certificate for your environment, and that’s encouraged. But this walk-through intends to get you up and running fast so that you can test out SQL Server’s s3 object integrations. We’re using MinIO’s free GNU AGPL v3 edition and running it in a docker container for our s3 compatible object storage and SQL Server 2022 CTP 2.0, which is also running in a container.

Backing up to s3 Compatible Object Storage with SQL Server

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing S3 in SQL Server 2022

S3 compatible object storage integration is a new feature introduced in SQL Server 2022. There are two significant areas where SQL Server leverages this: backup and restore and data virtualization. This article will focus on getting started with using S3 compatible object storage for backups. Now let’s unpack that phrase ‘S3 compatible object storage’ a bit. AWS Simple Cloud Storage Service (S3) is a storage service AWS provides in their cloud. That platform’s REST API is available for others, including my company, Pure Storage, to build their own s3 compatible object storage platforms. And on at Pure Storage we have s3 available on our scale-out File and Object Platform FlashBlade. This means you can take advantage of s3 object storage anywhere you like, outside AWS’s cloud infrastructure.

New Pluralsight Course – Deploying and Managing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Networking

Tue, 31 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My new course “Deploying and Managing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Networking” is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here!

Azure Kubernetes Service is a platform-as-a-service that provides Kubernetes Services in the Azure Cloud. This course will teach you to design, configure, and manage networking, services, and disaster recovery in Azure Kubernetes Service.

Seeding an Availability Group Replica from Snapshot

Thu, 26 May 2022 07:23:15 -0500

Background

If you’ve been using Availability Groups, you’re familiar with the replica seeding (sometimes called initializing, preparing or data sychronization) process. Seeding is a size of data operation, copying data from a primary replica to one or more secondary replicas. This is required before joining a database to an Availability Group. You can seed a replica with backup and restore or automatic seeding, each with its own challenges. Regardless of which method you use, the seeding operation can take a long amount of time. The time it takes to seed a replica is based on the size of the database, the speed of the network, and storage. If you have multiple replicas seeding all of them is N times the fun!

Updated Pluralsight Course – Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Security

Mon, 09 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My updated course “Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Security” is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here!

This course will teach you the fundamentals needed to configure and manage security in Kubernetes clusters.

Updated Pluralsight Course – Maintaining, Monitoring and Troubleshooting Kubernetes

Mon, 09 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My updated course “Maintaining, Monitoring and Troubleshooting Kubernetes” is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here!

This course will teach you to maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot production Kubernetes clusters.

Published Azure Arc-Enabled Data Services Revealed - Second Edition

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I’m super proud to announce that Ben E. Weissman and I have published Azure Arc-Enabled Data Services Revealed - Second Edition 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 the Azure Arc Enabled Data Services Program Manager at Microsoft, Jes Schultz. Thanks for your support and a fantastic forward. I also want to call out my co-author and friend, Ben; you are an excellent writer. Thank you for including me in this adventure!

s5cmd Authentication Using Enviroment Variables

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 12:41:58 -0600

At work, I get to work with some fantastic tech that pushes the boundaries of performance. I needed to do some performance testing from a Windows server into a FlashBlade using s3. I reached out to a colleague of mine, Joshua Robinson, who told me about s5cmd. s5cmd is a very fast, parallel s3 compatible command-line client.

Check out Joshua’s post for some performance numbers. Here’s a direct quote from his post.

I'm Speaking at SQLBits 2022!

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 09:40:27 -0600

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQLBits! I had the absolute pleasure of speaking at SQLBits in the past, both in person and virtual, and experienced first hand how great this event is and cannot wait to get back and speak again (in person)! And this year, I have several sessions with some of my best friends on our data community!!! One on building and deploying container based applications in Kubernetes and the other on deploying SQL Server in Kubernetes

Updated Pluralsight Course – Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Storage and Scheduling

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My updated course “Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Storage and Scheduling” is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here!

This course teaches you how to decouple state and configuration from your Pod’s lifecycle using persistent storage and configuration as data and how to schedule Pods to Nodes in your Kubernetes cluster.

Understanding SQL Server IO Size

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 07:12:13 -0800

This blog post shows you how NTFS stores data, what the NTFS Allocation Unit means, and how SQL Server performs IOs of variable size.

How NTFS Stores Data on Disk

A Master File Table (MFT) is the data structure that describes files and directories on NTFS. In Figure 1, you can see an MTF record has several sections describing the metadata about the file and pointers to blocks that make up the file. A block, also referred to as a cluster in Windows, is an abstraction over one or more physical structures (sectors or pages depending on the media) presented by the underlying disk. A block/cluster is also the atomic allocation unit from a file system and has a configurable size. On NTFS, this is referred to as the NTFS Allocation Unit Size and is a configurable attribute of the file system. By default, it is 4KB and can be as large as 2MB. Since a block is a unit of allocation, if a file is between 1 byte and the file system’s allocation unit size, it will take up exactly one block/cluster on the file system. As the file grows, more blocks/clusters are allocated to represent the file. The MFT data structure tracks which blocks make up a file. The block allocator of the file system will try to ensure blocks are physically adjacent on the disk and groups them together in runs.

Configure SQL Server on Linux for Active Directory Authentication

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 09:15:54 -0600

In this post, we’re going to walk through configuring Active Directory authentication for SQL Server on Linux. We will start by joining the Linux server to the domain, configuring SQL Server on Linux to communicate to the domain, and then use adutil to create our AD users and set up Kerberos for SQL Server login authentication.

Before getting started

First, let’s get some environment requirements set. We’ll need an Active Directory domain, a Linux host to install SQL Server on, some DNS records for that host, and the DNS client on that host configured for our environment. Here are the settings I used in this walk-through.

Updated Pluralsight Course – Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Networking, Services, and Ingress

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

My updated course “Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Networking, Services, and Ingress” is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here!

It’s time to dig deeper into Kubernetes networking! You will learn Kubernetes cluster networking fundamentals and configuring and accessing applications in a Kubernetes Cluster with Services and Ingress.

This course targets IT professionals that design and maintain Kubernetes and container-based solutions. The course can be used by the IT pro learning new skills and the system administrator or developer preparing for using Kubernetes both on-premises and in the Cloud.

SQL Server on Physical Machine Best Practices

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 13:43:22 -0500

The intent of this post is a quick reference guide based on the recommendations made on Pure Storage Support page in the Microsoft Platform Guide. The target audience for this blog post is for SQL Server DBAs introducing them to the most impactful configurations and settings for running SQL Server on physical machines on Pure Storage.

Physical Host Configuration

Check with your hardware vendor to see if they publish a guide for SQL Server-specific configurations for their server platforms. Here are my thoughts on general guidance around CPU configuration and power management.

Measuring SQL Server File Latency

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 12:51:09 -0500

This post is a reference post for retrieving IO statistics for data and log files in SQL Server. We’ll look at where we can find IO statistics in SQL Server, query it to produce meaningful metrics, and discuss some key points when interpreting this data.

The Source DMF

The primary source for file latency data is the dynamic management function sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats. The data in this DMF is per file. The query below joins with sys.master_files.

Best Practices for SQL Server on VMware - Distilled

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The intent of this post is a quick reference guide based on the recommendation made in “Architecting Microsoft SQL Server on VMware vSphere” April 2019 version. The target audience for this blog post is for SQL Server DBAs introducing them to the most impactful configurations and settings for running SQL Server in VMware.

For the explanations for each of these settings and how to configure the base VMware infrastructure, please read the “Architecting Microsoft SQL Server on VMware vSphere” guide and consult with your VMware administrators and experts.

Setting Permissions on Files Inside a Container for SQL Server

Sat, 25 Sep 2021 06:19:50 -0500

This post will walk you through setting file permissions on database files copied into a container. The SQL Server process sqlservr running in containers runs as the non-privileged user mssql. The appropriate permissions on files are needed, so the SQL Server process has the proper access to any database files, log files, and backup files.

Start up a container

First up, let’s start up a container. Here’s we’re starting up SQL Server 2019 CU11 and attaching a Docker data volume for our persistent data.

My Desktop Setup - Updated

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Every once in a while when I’m recording a Pluralsight course, I’ll take a photo of my desk to let people see the behind the scenes of the process. Well, my friend Steve Jones (@way0utwest) encouraged me to write a desk setup post…so here we go!

Desk

Autonomous SmartDesk 2 - Home Office

Most standup desks come at a much higher price point, and this one lands somewhere between $379-$500 depending on the features. While it’s pretty minimalist, it gets the job done. I have several presets for various heights depending on the current task I’m performing. One tip for those who record audio, I always stand when recording. It helps me with enunciation and also controls the tone of my voice better. A standing desk is a must if you’re going to be recording production quality audio. I think there are some health benefits too to standing desks. :)

Pure Storage Flasharray SQL Server Snapshot Torture...You Kinda Asked for This

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 15:33:46 -0500

By Argenis Fernandez

This post is archived here. Pleae reach out to me, Anthony Nocentino if you have any questions.

I gotta admit, some of you are really hard to convince. I’ve been saying for years that given a large enough database size (or a really small RTO storage based snapshots should be Plan A for recovering the database in the event of a disaster. Yes, you will have a Plan B, likely native backups. And Plan C. Maybe you’ll run out of letters because you’re so paranoid.

Updated Pluralsight Course – Managing Kubernetes Controllers and Deployments

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

My updated course “Managing Kubernetes Controllers and Deployments” 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!

Learn how to deploy and maintain applications using Kubernetes Controllers. In this course you’ll learn how to select a Controller for your workload, deploy it, and maintain your container-based applications in your Kubernetes cluster.

Setting Trace Flags and Configuring SQL Server in Kubernetes

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 07:24:45 -0500

In this blog post, we will walk through a few examples of configuring SQL Server in Kubernetes. First, we will create a Deployment for SQL Server, override the container’s command, and specify a Database Engine Service Startup Option. Second, we will create a Deployment for SQL Server using a ConfigMap to inject an mssql.conf configuration file.

Creating a SQL Server Deployment and Overriding the Container’s Command and Arguments

First up, let’s create a Deployment for SQL Server and override the container’s command specify a Database Engine Service Startup Option.

Setting Trace Flags and Configuring SQL Server Containers

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 06:24:45 -0500

In this blog post, we will walk through a few examples of how to configure SQL Server in Docker Containers. First, we will configure a container at runtime by overriding the default docker command for the container and setting Database Engine Service Startup Options. Second, we’re going to inject a configuration file into our container to configure SQL Server. Let’s go!

Starting a Container with a Trace Flag

First up, let’s configure a container at runtime using Database Engine Service Startup Options. In Docker you can override the command of a container at the command line so we can start up a container with the correct executable and parameters. I’m configuring a trace flag by setting the correct parameters for the sqlservr executable. So when this container starts up it will start the sqlservr executable with the -T 3226 parameter. Let’s check out the code for this…

Publications

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

SQL Server on Kubernetes - Designing and Building a Modern Data Platform

Build a modern data platform by deploying SQL Server in Kubernetes. Modern application deployment needs to be fast and consistent to keep up with business objectives and Kubernetes is quickly becoming the standard for deploying container-based applications, fast. This book introduces Kubernetes and its core concepts. Then it shows you how to build and interact with a Kubernetes cluster. Next, it goes deep into deploying and operationalizing SQL Server in Kubernetes, both on premises and in cloud environments such as the Azure Cloud.

SQL Server on Kubernetes Book Published!

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 16:01:08 +0000

I’m super proud to announce that Ben E. Weissman and I have published SQL Server on Kubernetes – Designing and Building a Modern Data Platform available now at Apress and your favorite online book sellers! Buy the book now…or keep reading below if you need to be more convinced :)

A couple of notes about the book, I saw Kubernetes showcased at a Microsoft event a few years back. I immediately saw the value and dedicated time to learning how Kubernetes and SQL Server on Kubernetes works. (Literally on the flight home I started watching training videos and researching books to read :) Since then, I have been sharing those learnings with the data and Kubernetes communities. This book is the intersection of all of that content. I genuinely believe that this will be how you will be building systems in the near future (or right now)! SQL Server on Kubernetes is the foundation for Big Data Clusters and now Azure Arc-enabled Data Services. I also want to call out my co-author and friend, Ben; you are an incredible writer and thank you for driving this book to completion!

Container Limits and SQL Server

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 16:24:13 +0000

Limits in Containers

Docker gives you the ability to control a container’s access to CPU, Memory, and network and disk IO using resource constraints, sometimes called Limits. You define limits as parameters when creating containers. In its default configuration, a container will have no resource constraints for accessing resources of the host operating system. This post will look at how to configure resource constraints in Docker and look at how SQL Server sees the resources when CPU and Memory resource constraints are in place.

T-SQL Tuesday #140 Wrap up: What have you been up to with containers?

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 14:20:20 +0000

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

T-SQL Tuesday #140: What have you been up to with containers?

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 13:45:19 +0000

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…

A New Road Ahead…

Sat, 22 May 2021 12:57:41 +0000

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. The first phase of Centino Systems I learned how to build a consulting practice. Then in the second phase I learned how to scale Centino Systems by focusing on training. I blogged a bunch, produced 21 courses at Pluralsight, co-authored three books (with one more on the way), and numerous corporate and conference sessions and workshops focusing on Linux, SQL Server and of course Kubernetes.

Testing for Specific Versions of TLS Protocols Using curl

Thu, 20 May 2021 14:13:54 +0000

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.

Updated Pluralsight Course – Managing the Kubernetes API Server and Pods

Tue, 11 May 2021 13:59:22 +0000

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.

Updated Pluralsight Course – Kubernetes Installation and Configuration Fundamentals

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 19:10:41 +0000

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!

Published Azure Arc-Enabled Data Services Revealed

Fri, 05 Feb 2021 14:31:51 +0000

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. Thanks for your help and support. Be sure to read the forward from Travis; it tells the story of why and how. From getting SQL Server on Linux, into containers, into Kubernetes, Big Data Clusters, and now Arc Enabled Data Services. Awesome stuff. I also want to call out my co-author and friend, Ben. You are an excellent writer. Thank you for including me in this adventure!

Getting SQL Agent Jobs and Job Steps Configuration

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 14:25:13 +0000

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.D. dissertation. So let’s check out how I solved this problem using dbatools.

Kubernetes Precon at DPS

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 15:53:27 +0000

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	3.30 AM (+1)	7.30 AM (+1)
AEDT	9.00 AM (+1)	1.00 PM (+1)

The workshop is “Kubernetes Zero to Hero – Installation, Configuration, and Application Deployment”

Announcing EightKB 2021

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 17:49:50 +0000

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!

Persistent Server Name Metadata When Deploying SQL Server in Kubernetes

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 13:52:43 +0000

In this post, we will explore how a Pod name is generated, Pod Name lifecycle, how it’s used inside a Pod to set the system hostname, and how the system hostname is used by SQL Server to set its server name metadata.

Pod Naming in Deployments

When deploying SQL Server in Kubernetes using a Deployment, the Pod created by the Deployment Controller will have a name with a structure of <DeploymentName>-<PodTemplateHash>-<PodID> for example, mssql-deployment-8cbdc8ddd-9n7jh.

Pre-Conference Workshop and Sessions at PASS Summit

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 14:13:18 +0000

I’m pleased to announce that I will be presenting at PASS Summit. This year I have a pre-conference workshop and a regular session. Let’s dive into each.

Pre-Conference Workshop: The Future of Deployment for Modern Data Platform Applications

Ben Weissman and I teach a pre-conference workshop called “The Future of Deployment for Modern Data Platform Applications” in this workshop. We’re going to cover how you will be deploying data platform applications in the near future. Here’s a listing of the topics we’re going to cover.

New Pluralsight Course – Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Security

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 18:48:13 +0000

My new course “Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Security” is now available on Pluralsight here! Check out the trailer here or if you want to dive right in head over to Pluralsight!

This course will teach you to configure and manage security in Kubernetes clusters.

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.

New Pluralsight Course – Maintaining, Monitoring and Troubleshooting Kubernetes

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 11:42:29 +0000

My new course “Maintaining, Monitoring, and Troubleshooting Kubernetes” is now available on Pluralsight here! Check out the trailer here or if you want to dive right in head over to Pluralsight!

This course will teach you to maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot production Kubernetes clusters.

New Pluralsight Course – Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Networking, Services, and Ingress

Wed, 27 May 2020 11:54:50 +0000

My new course “Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Networking, Services, and Ingress” is now available on Pluralsight here! Check out the trailer here or if you want to dive right in go here!

In this course you will learn Kubernetes cluster networking fundamentals and configuring and accessing applications in a Kubernetes Cluster with Services and Ingress.

New Pluralsight Course – Designing a Site Recovery Strategy on Microsoft Azure

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 12:55:37 +0000

My new course “Designing a Site Recovery Strategy on Microsoft Azure” in now available on Pluralsight here! Check out the trailer here or if you want to dive right in go here!

This course targets IT professionals that design and maintain business continuity and disaster recovery solution, on premises or in the cloud.The course can be used by both the IT pro learning new skills and the system administrator or architect preparing for Microsoft Azure Architect Design (AZ-301) and upcoming AZ-304 certifications.

Let’s take your Microsoft Azure Design and implementations skills to the next level and get you started now!

Speaking at PSConf EU 2020

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 13:50:42 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at PSConf EU 2020 in Hannover, Germany. The conference runs from 2 June 2020 to 5 June 2020 and brings together some of the titans of the PowerShell community and members of the PowerShell team from Microsoft.

<p>
  This is an incredible event packed with fantastic, deep dive content. <a href="https://psconf.eu/schedule">Check out the amazing schedule</a>! Head on over to the site and <a href="https://psconf.eu/"><strong>register now</strong></a>!
</p>

<p>
  This year I have two sessions!
</p>

<p>
  On Thursday<strong>, 2 June at 13:00</strong> &#8211; I’m presenting “<strong>Linux OS Fundamentals for the PowerShell Pro</strong>”
</p>

<p>
  Here’s the abstract
</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>
    PowerShell and SQL Server are now available on Linux and management wants you to leverage this shift in technology to more effectively manage your systems, but you’re a Windows admin, Don’t fear! It’s just an operating system. It has all the same components Windows has and in this session, we’ll show you that. We will look at the Linux operating system architecture and show you how to interact with and manage a Linux system. By the end of this session, you’ll be ready to go back to the office and get started working with Linux.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    In this session, we’ll cover the following <br /> &#8211; Service control<br /> &#8211; Package installation<br /> &#8211; System resource management (CPU, disk and memory)<br /> &#8211; Using PowerShell to interact with Linux systems 
  </p>
</blockquote>

<p>
  On Friday<strong>, 3 June at 11:00</strong> &#8211; I’m presenting “<strong>Using PowerShell Core Remoting in Cross-Platform Environments</strong>”
</p>

<p>
  Here’s the abstract
</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>
    PowerShell Core is about choice and the transport layer for Remoting is one of those choices. In this session, we’ll look at Remoting in cross-platform environments, installing and configuring OpenSSH and how we can leverage Remoting to really scale up our administrative capabilities.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    In this session, we’ll cover the following<br /> &#8211; Cross-platform Remoting use cases<br /> &#8211; Configuring SSH based Remoting<br /> &#8211; Troubleshooting Remoting
  </p>
</blockquote>

<p>
   <a href="https://psconf.eu/"><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://psconf.eu/assets/svg/psconfeu-logo-blue.svg" alt="PS Conf EU logo" width="150" /></a>
</p>

Speaking at Data Grillen 2020

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 13:41:13 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at Data Grillen 2020 the conference runs from 28 May 2020 through 29 May 2020.

This is an incredible event packed with fantastic content, speakers, bratwurst and Beer!

**Check out the amazing schedule (**and when I say check out the amazing schedule, I really mean it. Some of the world’s best Data Platform speakers are going to be there)

On Thursday**, May 28th at 15:00** – I’m presenting “Containers – Day 2” in the Handschuh room.

Speaking at PowerShell Summit 2020!

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 16:26:56 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2020 the conference runs from April 27th through April 30. This is an incredible event packed with fantastic content and speakers. Check out the amazing schedule! All the data you need on going is in this excellent brochure right here!

<p>
  This year I have two sessions!
</p>

<p>
  On Wednesday<strong>, April 29th at 09:00AM</strong> &#8211; I’m presenting “<a href="https://sessions.eventraft.com/PowerShell2020"><strong>Inside Kubernetes &#8211; An Architectural Deep Dive</strong></a>”
</p>

<p>
  Here’s the abstract
</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>
    In this session we will introduce Kubernetes, we’ll deep dive into cluster architecture and higher-level abstractions such as Services, Controllers, and Deployments and how they can be used to ensure the desired state of an application deployed in Kubernetes. In this session we will introduce Kubernetes, we’ll deep dive into each component and its responsibility in a cluster. We will also look at and demonstrate higher-level abstractions such as Services, Controllers, Deployments and Jobs and how they can be used to ensure the desired state of an application deployed in Kubernetes. By the end of this session, you will understand what’s needed to put your applications in production in a Kubernetes cluster
  </p>
  
  <p>
    Session Objectives
  </p>
  
  <ul>
    <li>
      Understand Kubernetes cluster architecture
    </li>
    <li>
      Understand Services, Controllers, and Deployments
    </li>
    <li>
      Designing Production-Ready Kubernetes Clusters
    </li>
    <li>
      Learn to run PowerShell in Kubernetes Jobs.
    </li>
  </ul>
</blockquote>

Speaking at SQLBits 2020

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 16:00:28 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQLBits! I had the absolute pleasure of speaking at SQLBits last year for the first time and saw first hand how great this event is and cannot wait to get back and speak again! And this year, I have two sessions!!! One on building and deploying container based applications in Kubernetes and the other on deploying SQL Server in Kubernetes

If you haven’t been to SQLBits before, what are you waiting for! Sign up now!

Speaking at SQLIntersection Orlando 2020

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 15:36:47 +0000

I’m very pleased to announce that I will be speaking at SQL Intersection April 2020! This is my first time speaking at SQL Intersection and I’m very excited to be doing so!

<p>
  Speaking at SQL Intersection means so much to me because in 2014 I got my first exposure to the SQL Server community via <a href="https://www.sqlskills.com/">SQLskills</a> and their training. Then to follow up on their training workshops I attended my very first IT conference, SQL Intersection and now I get to come back as a speaker. Let’s just say, I’m a little excited!!!
</p>

<p>
  Now as for the sessions…lots of content here on SQL Server on Linux, Containers and Kubernetes…check them out! <a href="https://www.sqlintersection.com/#!/?track=sql">Click here to register!</a>
</p>

<p>
  <strong>Full Day Workshop</strong>
</p>

<p>
  <a href="https://www.sqlintersection.com/#!/workshop/Kubernetes%20Zero%20to%20Hero:%20Installation,%20Configuration,%20and%20Application%20Deployment/4175"><strong>Kubernetes Zero to Here: Installation, Configuration and Application Deployment</strong></a>
</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>
    Modern application deployment needs to be fast and consistent to keep up with business objectives and Kubernetes is quickly becoming the standard for deploying container-based applications, fast. In this day-long session, we will start with an architectural overview of a Kubernetes cluster and how it manages application state. Then we will learn how to build a production-ready cluster. With our cluster up and running, will learn how to interact with our cluster, common administrative tasks, then wrap up with how to deploy applications and SQL Server. At the end of the session, you will know how to set up a Kubernetes cluster, manage a cluster, deploy applications and databases, and how to keep everything up and running.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    Workshop Objectives:
  </p>
  
  <ul>
    <li>
      Introduce Kuberentes Cluster Components
    </li>
    <li>
      Introduce Kubernetes API Objects and Controllers
    </li>
    <li>
      Installing <span style="background-color: #ffffff;">Kubernetes</span>
    </li>
    <li>
      Interacting with your cluster
    </li>
    <li>
      Storing persistent data in Kubernetes
    </li>
    <li>
      Deploying Applications in Kubernetes
    </li>
    <li>
      Deploying SQL Server in Kubernetes
    </li>
    <li>
      High Availability SQL Server scenarios in Kubernetes
    </li>
  </ul>
</blockquote>

<p>
  <strong>General Sessions</strong>
</p>

<p>
  <a href="https://www.sqlintersection.com/#!/session/Containers%20%E2%80%93%20It's%20Time%20to%20Get%20On%20Board/4365"><strong>Containers &#8211; It’s Time to Get on Board</strong></a>
</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>
    Containers are taking over, changing the way systems are developed and deployed…and that’s not hyperbole. Just imagine if you could deploy SQL Server or even your whole application stack in just minutes? You can do that, leveraging containers! In this session, we’ll get your started on your container journey, learn some common container scenarios and introduce container orchestration with Kubernetes.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    In this session we&#8217;ll look at
  </p>
  
  <ul>
    <li>
      Container Fundamentals
    </li>
    <li>
      Common Container Scenarios
    </li>
    <li>
      Running SQL Server in a Container
    </li>
    <li>
      Container Orchestration with Kubernetes
    </li>
  </ul>
</blockquote>

<p>
  <a href="https://www.sqlintersection.com/#!/session/Containers%20%E2%80%93%20Continued!/4366"><strong>Containers &#8211; Continued!</strong></a>
</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>
    You’ve been working with containers in development for a while, benefiting from the ease and speed of the deployments. Now it&#8217;s time to extend your container-based data platform’s capabilities for your production scenarios.<br />In this session, we’ll look at how to build custom containers, enabling you to craft a container image for your production system’s needs. We’ll also dive deeper into operationalizing your container-based data platform and learn how to provision advanced disk topologies, seed larger databases, implement resource control and understand performance concepts.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    By the end of this session, you will learn what it takes to build containers and make them production ready for your environment.
  </p>
  
  <ul>
    <li>
      Custom container builds with Features
    </li>
    <li>
      Advanced disk configurations
    </li>
    <li>
      Backups/restores
    </li>
    <li>
      Seeding larger databases
    </li>
    <li>
      Backup restore into the container from a mounted volume
    </li>
    <li>
      Resource control
    </li>
    <li>
      Container Restart Policy
    </li>
    <li>
      Container based performance concepts
    </li>
  </ul>
</blockquote>

<p>
  <a href="https://www.sqlintersection.com/#!/session/Linux%20OS%20Fundamentals%20for%20the%20SQL%20Admin/4364"><strong>Linux OS Fundamentals for the SQL Admin</strong></a>
</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>
    Do you manage SQL Server but have developers using Linux? It’s time to take the leap to understand and communicate better with your Linux peers! You might be a Windows / SQL Server Admin but both SQL Server and PowerShell are now available on Linux. You can manage ALL of these technologies more effectively now. Don&#8217;t fear! Linux is just an operating system! While it feels different, it still has all the same components as Windows! In this session, I’ll show you that. We will look at the Linux operating system architecture and show you how to interact with and manage a Linux system. By the end of this session, you&#8217;ll be ready to go back to the office and get started working with Linux with a fundamental understanding of how it works.
  </p>
</blockquote>

<p>
  <a href="https://www.sqlintersection.com/#!/session/Monitoring%20Linux%20Performance%20for%20the%20SQL%20Server%20Admin/4403"><strong>Monitoring Linux Performance for the SQL Server Admin</strong></a>
</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>
    Taking what you learned in our Fundamentals session one step further, we will continue and focus on the performance data you’re used to collecting on Windows! We&#8217;ll dive into SQLPAL and how the Linux architecture / internals enable high performance for your SQL Server. By the end of this session you’ll be ready to go back to the office and have a solid understanding of performance monitoring Linux systems and SQL on Linux. We’ll look at the core system components of CPU, Disk, Memory, and Networking monitoring techniques for each and look some of the new tools available from DMVs to DBFS.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    In this session we’ll cover the following
  </p>
  
  <ul>
    <li>
      System resource management concepts, CPU, disk, memory and networking
    </li>
    <li>
      Introduce SQLPAL architecture and internals and how its design enables high performance for SQL Server on Linux
    </li>
    <li>
      Baselining and benchmarking 
    </li>
  </ul>
</blockquote>

<p>
   
</p>

<p>
  <a href="https://www.sqlintersection.com/#!/?track=sql"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="SQLint20_1024x512_NOCENTINO.jpg" src="/images/2020/02/Recording-DeskSQLint20_1024x512_NOCENTINO.jpg" alt="SQLint20 1024x512 NOCENTINO" width="512" height="256" border="0" /></a>
</p>

New Pluralsight Course – Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Storage and Scheduling

Wed, 22 Jan 2020 12:36:49 +0000

My new course “Configuring and Managing Kubernetes Storage and Scheduling” in now available on Pluralsight here! Check out the trailer here or if you want to dive right in go here! This course offers practical tips from my experiences managing Kubernetes Clusters and workloads for Centino Systems clients.

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 and is the fourth course in my Kubernetes Administration Learning Path.

Let’s take your Kubernetes administration and configuration skills to the next level and get you started now!

Upgrading SQL Server 2017 Containers to 2019 non-root Containers with Data Volumes – Another Method

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 11:44:03 +0000

Yesterday in this post I described a method to correct permissions when upgrading a SQL Server 2017 container using Data Volumes to 2019’s non-root container on implementations that use the Moby or HyperKit VM. My friend Steve Jones’ on Twitter wondered if you could do this in one step by attaching a shell (bash) in the 2017 container prior to shutdown. Absolutely…let’s walk through that here in this post. I opted to use an intermediate container in the prior post out of an abundance of caution so that I was not changing permissions on the SQL Server instance directory and all of the data files while they were in use. Technically this is a-ok, but again…just being paranoid there.

Upgrading SQL Server 2017 Containers to 2019 non-root Containers with Data Volumes

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 14:16:38 +0000

Recently Microsoft released a Non-Root SQL Server 2019 container and that’s the default if you’re pulling a new container image. But what if you’re using a 2017 container running as root and want to upgrade your system the SQL Server 2019 container…well something’s going to break. As you can see here, my friend Grant Fritchey came across this issue recently and asked for some help on Twitter’s #sqlhelp. This article describe a solution to getting things sorted and running again. The scenario below is if you’re using a Linux based SQL Server container on Windows or Mac host where the container volumes are backed by a Docker Moby or HyperKit virtual machine. If you’re using Linux container on Linux, you’ll adjust the file system permissions directly.

Speaking at PASS Summit 2019!

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 15:21:05 +0000

I’m very pleased to announce that I will be speaking at PASS Summit 2019! This is my second time speaking at PASS Summit and I’m very excited to be doing so! What’s more, is I get to help blaze new ground with an emerging technology,** Kubernetes and how to run SQL Server in Kubernetes**!

My session is “Inside Kubernetes – An Architectural Deep Dive” if you’re a just getting started in the container space and want to learn how Kubernetes works and dive into how to deploy SQL Server in Kubernetes this is the session for you. I hope to see you there!

Updated: Getting Started with Installing Kubernetes

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 12:56:40 +0000

Let’s get you started on your Kubernetes journey with installing Kubernetes and creating a cluster in virtual machines.

Kubernetes is a distributed system, you will be creating a cluster which will have a master node that is in charge of all operations in your cluster. In this walkthrough we’ll create three workers which will run our applications. This cluster topology is, by no means, production ready. If you’re looking for production cluster builds check out Kubernetes documentation. [Here][1] and [here][2]. The primary components that need high availability in a Kubernetes cluster are the [API Server][3] which controls the state of the cluster and the [etcd][4] database which persists the state of the cluster. You can learn more about Kubernetes cluster components [here][5]. If you want to dive into Kubernetes more check out my Pluralsight Courses [here][6]! Where I have a dedicated course on [Installation and Configuration][7].

Memory Settings for Running SQL Server in Kubernetes

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 15:50:24 +0000

People often ask me what’s the number one thing to look out for when running SQL Server on Kubernetes…the answer is memory settings. In this post, we’re going to dig into why you need to configure resource limits in your SQL Server’s Pod Spec when running SQL Server workloads in Kubernetes. I’m running these demos in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), but these concepts apply to any SQL Server environment running in Kubernetes.

Restoring Backups from Azure Blob with dbatools

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 14:25:04 +0000

Recently I needed to write a PowerShell script that could build a backup set from a collection of backups stored in Azure Blob Storage without any backup history available from MSDB. And as with all things SQL Server and PowerShell related I went straight to dbatools.io to see if Restore-DbaDatabase was up to the task…and of course, it is…let’s talk about how I solved this challenge.

When restoring from Azure Blob, the main challenge you have is accessing the blobs and building a backup set. For this process, you’ll need access to the Storage Account via PowerShell and you’ll have to have define a Credential on your SQL Instance that has access to the Storage Account. Here’s the code I used to connect to my Storage Account in Azure.

Using kubectl logs to read the SQL Server Error Log in Kubernetes

Sat, 14 Sep 2019 14:56:52 +0000

When working with SQL Server running containers the Error Log is written to standard out. Kubernetes will expose that information to you via kubectl. Let’s check out how it works.

If we start up a Pod running SQL Server and grab the Pod name

kubectl get pods
NAME                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
mssql-deployment-56d8dbb7b7-hrqwj   1/1     Running   0          22m

We can usefollow flag and that will continuously write the error log to your console, similar to using tail with the -f option. If you remove the follow flag it will write the current log to your console. This can be useful in debugging failed startups or in the case below, monitoring the status of a database restore. When finished you can use CTRL+C to break out and return back to your prompt.

New Pluralsight Course – Managing Kubernetes Controllers and Deployments

Fri, 13 Sep 2019 11:15:13 +0000

      My new course **“Managing Kubernetes Controllers and Deployments”** in now available on Pluralsight <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/managing-kubernetes-controllers-deployments">here</a>! Check out the trailer <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/player?name=82f986e5-de18-4897-a461-f1215db691ae&mode=live&clip=0&course=managing-kubernetes-controllers-deployments&author=anthony-nocentino">here</a> or if you want to dive right in go <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/managing-kubernetes-controllers-deployments">here</a>! This course offers practical tips from my experiences managing Kubernetes Clusters and workloads for Centino Systems clients.

      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.

      Let’s take your Kubernetes administration and configuration skills to the next level and get you started <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/managing-kubernetes-controllers-deployments">now</a>!

      The modules of the course are:

    <ul>
      <li>
        **Using Controllers to Deploy Applications and Deployment Basics** – In this module we dive into what Controllers are and how they can be used to deploy applications in Kubernetes. We’ll introduce several core controller types and look at the fundamentals of using the `Deployment` Controller to deploy applications and take a deep dive into the Controller operations of `ReplicaSets`.
      </li>
      <li>
        **Maintaining Applications with Deployments** – In this demo-heavy module, we look closer at `Deployments` and learn how we can maintain our container based applications. We look at updating Deployments, controlling rollouts and using `u``pdateStrategy` and `readinessProbes` to ensure successful rollouts. We’ll also cover what to do when things go wrong and learn how to pause and rollback rollouts.
      </li>
      <li>
        **<a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/managing-kubernetes-controllers-deployments">Deploying and Maintaining Applications with DaemonSets and Jobs</a>** – In this module, we introduce the `DaemonSet` controller and how it’s used to deploy applications to all Nodes or a subset of Nodes in our cluster, we’ll also cover `DaemonSet` operations such as updating and controlling rollouts. We wrap up the course with a look at how we can use `Jobs` and `CronJobs` to ensure work completes in our cluster.
      </li>
    </ul>

      <img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="/images/2019/01/Availability-Group-StatusNewImage-3.png" alt="NewImage" width="565" height="128" border="0" />

      <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/managing-kubernetes-controllers-deployments">Check out the course at Pluralsight!</a>

Workshop – Kubernetes Zero to Hero at SQL Saturday Denver!

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 14:44:56 +0000

Pre-conference Workshop at SQLSaturday Denver

I’m proud to announce that I will be be presenting an all day pre-conference workshop at SQL Saturday Denver on October 11th 2019! This one won’t let you down!

The workshop is **“Kubernetes Zero to Hero – Installation, Configuration, and Application Deployment” **

    <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kubernetes-zero-to-hero-installation-configuration-and-application-deployment-tickets-70529350185"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="/images/2019/01/Availability-Group-StatusNewImage-1.png" alt="NewImage" width="129" height="126" border="0" /></a>

    **Here’s the abstract for the workshop**

  <blockquote>

      Modern application deployment needs to be fast and consistent to keep up with business objectives and Kubernetes is quickly becoming the standard for deploying container-based applications, fast. In this day-long session, we will start with an architectural overview of a Kubernetes cluster and how it manages application state. Then we will learn how to build a production-ready cluster. With our cluster up and running, we will learn how to interact with our cluster, common administrative tasks, then wrap up with how to deploy applications and SQL Server. At the end of the session, you will know how to set up a Kubernetes cluster, manage a cluster, deploy applications and databases, and how to keep everything up and running.

  </blockquote>

Session Objectives

Using strace inside a SQL Server Container

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 19:47:59 +0000

So, if you’ve been following my blog you know my love for internals. Well, I needed to find out exactly how something worked at the startup of a SQL Server process running inside a docker container and my primary tool for this is <a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/strace.1.html">strace</a>, well how do you run strace against processes running in a container? I hadn’t done this before and needed to figure this out…so let’s go through how I pulled this off.

Docker Image Tags are Case Sensitive

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 18:31:31 +0000

A quick post about pulling docker containers (this applies to docker run too)…when specifying the container image, the container image name and tag are case sensitive. We’re not going to discuss how much time troubleshooting it too me to figure this out…but let’s just say it’s more than I care to admit publicly.

In this code you can see I’m specifying the following image and tag server:2019-rc1-ubuntu (notice the lowercase rc in the tag)

Persisting SQL Server Data in Docker Containers – Part 3

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 14:00:18 +0000

In the first two posts in this series we discussed the need for data persistency in containers then we discussed where the data actually lives on our systems. Now let’s look at specifying the location of the data on the underlying file system of the base OS.

This is the third post in a three part series on Persisting SQL Server Data in Docker Containers. The first post introducing Docker Volumes is here. The second post on where Docker actually stores your data is here.

Persisting SQL Server Data in Docker Containers – Part 2

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:58:02 +0000

So in my previous post, we discussed Docker Volumes and how they have a lifecycle independent of the container enabling us to service the container image independent of the data inside the container. Now let’s dig into Volumes a little bit more and learn where Docker actually stores that data on the underlying operating system.

This is the second post in a three part series on Persisting SQL Server Data in Docker Containers. The first post introducing Docker Volumes is here. And the third post on mapping base OS directories directly into containers is here.

Persisting SQL Server Data in Docker Containers – Part 1

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 12:47:17 +0000

What’s the number one thing a data professional wants to do with their data…keep it around. Let’s talk about running SQL Server in Containers using Docker Volumes on a Mac

This is the first post in a three part series on Persisting SQL Server Data in Docker Containers. The second post on where Docker actually stores your data is here. And the third post on mapping base OS directories directly into containers is here.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional – Data Platform for 2019-2020

Wed, 03 Jul 2019 14:46:03 +0000

Today, I’m proud to announce that I have been renewed as an Microsoft MVP – Data Platform for the 2019-2020 award year, my third MVP award. This is an truly an honor and I’m humbled to be included in this group of exceptional data professionals. I really look forward to continuing to work with everyone in the MVP community and continuing to contribute to our unmatched Data Platform Community!

****

Speaking at SQL Saturday Dallas

Fri, 24 May 2019 13:26:29 +0000

Speaking at SQLSaturday Dallas!

  I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/841/eventhome.aspx">SQL Saturday Dallas</a> on May 17th 2018! This one won’t let you down! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/841/Sessions/Schedule.aspx">Check out the amazing schedule</a>!

  If you don’t know what SQLSaturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

  If you haven’t been to a SQLSaturday, what are you waiting for! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/841/registernow.aspx">Sign up now</a>!

  My presentation is **“<a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/841/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=92433">Practical Container Scenarios in Azure</a>” **

  <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/841/EventHome.aspx"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="/images/2019/05/SQLSATDALLASNewImage.png" alt="NewImage" width="127" height="20" border="0" /></a>

  Here’s the abstract for the talk

<blockquote>

    You’ve heard the buzz about containers and Kubernetes, now let’s start your journey towards rapidly deploying and scaling your container-based applications in Azure. In this session, we will introduce containers and the container orchestrator Kubernetes. Then we’ll dive into how to build a container image, push it into our Azure Container Registry and deploy it our Azure Kubernetes Services cluster. Once deployed, we’ll learn how to keep our applications available and how to scale them using Kubernetes.

    Key topics introduced<br />Building Container based applications<br />Publishing containers to Azure Container Registry<br />Deploying Azure Kubernetes Services Clusters<br />Scaling our container-based applications in Azure Kubernetes Services

</blockquote>

Workshop – Kubernetes Zero to Hero – Installation, Configuration, and Application Deployment

Tue, 21 May 2019 11:11:22 +0000

Pre-conference Workshop at SQLSaturday Baton Rouge

I’m proud to announce that I will be be presenting an all day pre-conference workshop at SQL Saturday Baton Rouge on August 16th 2019! This one won’t let you down!

The workshop is **“Kubernetes Zero to Hero – Installation, Configuration, and Application Deployment” **

    <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kubernetes-zero-to-hero-by-anthony-nocentino-tickets-61845012096"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="/images/2019/01/Availability-Group-StatusNewImage-1.png" alt="NewImage" width="129" height="126" border="0" /></a>

    **Here’s the abstract for the workshop**

  <blockquote>

      Modern application deployment needs to be fast and consistent to keep up with business objectives and Kubernetes is quickly becoming the standard for deploying container-based applications, fast. In this day-long session, we will start with an architectural overview of a Kubernetes cluster and how it manages application state. Then we will learn how to build a production-ready cluster. With our cluster up and running, we will learn how to interact with our cluster, common administrative tasks, then wrap up with how to deploy applications and SQL Server. At the end of the session, you will know how to set up a Kubernetes cluster, manage a cluster, deploy applications and databases, and how to keep everything up and running.

  </blockquote>

Session Objectives

New Pluralsight Course – Managing the Kubernetes API Server and Pods

Thu, 16 May 2019 11:11:14 +0000

New Pluralsight Course – Managing the Kubernetes API Server and Pods

  My new course&nbsp;**“Managing the Kubernetes API Server and Pods”**&nbsp;in now available on Pluralsight&nbsp;<a href="http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/managing-kubernetes-api-server-pods">here</a>! Check out the trailer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/player?course=managing-kubernetes-api-server-pods&author=anthony-nocentino&name=1db2671f-60d7-4221-ac1a-8797cfc3c350&clip=0&mode=live">here</a>&nbsp;or if you want to dive right in go&nbsp;<a href="http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/managing-kubernetes-api-server-pods">here</a>!&nbsp;This course offers practical tips from my experiences managing Kubernetes Clusters and workloads for Centino Systems clients.

  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.

  Let’s take your Kubernetes administration and configuration skills to the next level and get you started&nbsp;<a href="http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/managing-kubernetes-api-server-pods">now</a>!

  The modules of the course are:

<ul>
  <li>
    **Using the Kubernetes API**&nbsp;–&nbsp;In this module we will dive into the Kubernetes API, looking closely at the architecture of the API Server and how exposes and manages Kubernetes API Objects. Then we will learn about API versioning and object maturity. Next, we’ll look at anatomy of an API request, leading us up to debugging interactions with the API Server.
  </li>
  <li>
    **Managing Objects with Labels, Annotations and Namespaces**&nbsp;–&nbsp;In this demo-heavy module, we will learn out to organize and interact with resources in Kubernetes using Labels, Annotations, and Namespaces. We will also learn how to use labels to influence Kubernetes operations in Controllers and Pod scheduling.
  </li>
  <li>
    **Running and Managing Pods**&nbsp;–&nbsp;In this module, we will look at the fundamental unit of work in Kubernetes, the Pod, looking at why the Pod abstraction is needed and design principals for placing your applications in Pods and running those Pods in your cluster. &nbsp;We’ll examine Pod lifecycle and how its state impacts application health and availability. We wrap up with how Controllers interact with Pods and how Pods report their health status with readiness probes and liveness probes.&nbsp;
  </li>
</ul>

  <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/library/courses/managing-kubernetes-api-server-pods/table-of-contents"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="/images/2019/01/Availability-Group-StatusNewImage-3.png" alt="NewImage" width="565" height="128" border="0" /></a>

  <a href="http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/managing-kubernetes-api-server-pods">Check out the course at&nbsp;Pluralsight!</a>

  &nbsp;

Speaking at SQLSaturday Atlanta – 845

Tue, 14 May 2019 13:40:28 +0000

Speaking at SQLSaturday Atlanta!

  I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/845">SQL Saturday Atlanta</a> on May 17th 2018! This one won’t let you down! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/845/Sessions/Schedule.aspx">Check out the amazing schedule</a>!

  If you don’t know what SQLSaturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

  If you haven’t been to a SQLSaturday, what are you waiting for! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/845/RegisterNow.aspx">Sign up now</a>!

  My presentation is **“<a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/845/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=87539">Containers – You Better Get on Board!</a>” **

  <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/845/EventHome.aspx"><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://sqlsaturdayfiles.blob.core.windows.net/845/sqlsat845_header.png" alt="SQLSaturday #845 - Atlanta 2019" /></a>

  Here’s the abstract for the talk

<blockquote>

    Containers are taking over, changing the way systems are developed and deployed…and that’s NOT hyperbole. Just imagine if you could deploy SQL Server or even your whole application stack in just minutes. You can do that, leveraging containers! In this session, we’ll get you started on your container journey learning container fundamentals in Docker, then look at some common container scenarios and introduce deployment automation with Kubernetes.

    In this session we’ll look at<br />Container Fundamentals with Docker<br />Common Container Scenarios<br />Automation with Kubernetes

    Prerequisites: Operating system concepts such as command line use and basic networking skills.

</blockquote>

Data Persistency and Advanced SQL Server Disk Topologies in Kubernetes

Wed, 08 May 2019 15:09:33 +0000

When working with SQL Server in containers and Kubernetes storage is a key concept. In this post, we’re going to walk through how to deploy SQL Server in Kubernetes with Persistent Volumes for the system and user databases.

One of the key principals of Kubernetes is the ephemerality of Pods. No Pod is every redeployed, a completely new Pod is created. If a Pod dies, for whatever reason, a new Pod is created in its place there is no continuity in the state of that Pod. The newly created Pod will go back to the initial state of the container image defined in the Pod’s spec. This is very valuable for stateless workloads, not so much for stateful workloads like SQL Server.

OpenSSH Resources for Windows and PowerShell

Sat, 04 May 2019 12:05:34 +0000

Had a conversation with a good friend in the SQL Community about OpenSSH and how it fits as a transport layer for PowerShell Remoting. I pointed him towards several resources I have online. So here’s a post aggregating those resources.

If you’re looking to get started with OpenSSH on Linux and Windows Systems check out thisPowerShell Summit presentation I did in 2018. This covers OpenSSH in theory and practice.

Session: OpenSSH Internals for PowerShell Pros

Using PowerShell in Containers

Thu, 02 May 2019 21:34:48 +0000

The vision for PowerShell Core is to be able to run PowerShell anywhere. In this article, I’m going to discuss how you can use Docker Containers to enable just that. We’ll look at running PowerShell in a container, running cmdlets, running different versions of PowerShell at the same time, and also how to build our own “serverless” computing platform.

Let’s address a few reasons why you would want to run PowerShell in a container.

Speaking at PowerShell Summit 2019

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 21:36:02 +0000

Speaking at PowerShell Summit 2019!

  I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at <a href="https://app.socio.events/MjQ4Nw/Overview/14440">PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2019</a> the conference runs from April 29th 2018 through May 3rd 2019. This is an incredible event packed with fantastic content and speakers. <a href="https://powershelldevopsglobalsummit2018.sched.com/">Check out the amazing schedule</a>! All the data you need on going is in this excellent brochure <a href="https://powershell.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2018-Brochure.pdf">right here</a>!

  This year I have two sessions!

  On **Tuesday, April 30th at 11:00AM** – I’m presenting “<a href="https://app.socio.events/MjQ4Nw/agenda/14445/session/61468">**Firewall Evasion and Remote Access with OpenSSH**</a>”

  Here’s the abstract

<blockquote>

    OpenSSH is much more than just remote terminal access to servers, it provides a full suite of remote connectivity methods t you network and its services. In this session, we will look at how to use OpenSSH and its forwarding, tunneling and VPN capabilities so that we can securely reach network services that are behind firewalls and other security boundaries.

    Common use cases for these techniques are cloud jump boxes, secure access into segmented networks, and being able to get remove access and moving data around in poorly secured networks…these tips are are things that will likely get you some extra attention from your security team.

    We will look at the following techniques:<br />– Accessing remote services with SSH Tunneling<br />– Building SWSH connections for multi-hop remote access using ProxyHosts<br />– Proxying HTTP/HTTPS connections with a Sock Proxy<br />– Using aliases to store these advanced configurations for easy use<br />– Controlling and preventing TCP tunneling

</blockquote>

  On **Thursday, May 1st at 1:00PM** – I’m presenting **“<a href="https://app.socio.events/MjQ4Nw/agenda/14445/session/61467">Containers – You Better Get on Board!</a>”**

  Here’s the abstract

<blockquote>

    Containers are taking over, changing the way systems are developed and deployed…and that’s now hyperbole. Just imagine if you could deploy SQL Server or even your whole application stack in just minutes. You can do that, leveraging containers! In this session, we’ll get your started on your container journey, learn some common container scenarios and introduce deployment automation with Kubernetes.

    In this session we’ll look at<br />– Container Fundamentals<br />– Common Container Scenarios<br />– Automation with Kubernetes<br />– Using PowerShell Containers

</blockquote>

I look forward to seeing you there.

Presenting with VS Code and Running Commands on Remote Hosts

Sun, 17 Mar 2019 22:42:21 +0000

In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to use VS Code and Azure Data Studio for presentations where you need to execute local code on remote systems over SSH.

The Challenge

When using tools like VS Code and PowerShell ISE these tools give you the ability to highlight code and execute that highlighted code. This generally means the highlighted code you want to execute will execute against the local machine. When presenting, this technique is very useful and impactful for your audience because both the code being executed and its output will be on the screen at the same time as you step through your demos. I do a lot of presenting on topics like Linux, SQL Server on Linux, Kubernetes, and OpenSSH when I’m logged into remote hosts over SSH. I’d like to have the same functionality, so I can highlight the code in VS Code locally and execute that code on a remote host over SSH. Let’s explore how I do that.

Using Kubernetes Deployments for Updating SQL Server

Tue, 12 Mar 2019 02:41:16 +0000

In Kubernetes we can leverage Controllers to help manage our application state, keeping them in the desired state. In this blog post, we’re going to look at how to use a Deployment Controller to manage the application state of SQL Server in Kubernetes. We’ll look at deploying SQL Server in a Deployment and using that deployment to upgrade SQL Server and rollback our upgrade.

Deploying SQL Server in a Deployment

Let’s start off with deploying SQL Server in Kubernetes. We can do that with the following YAML file to describe our Deployment.

Speaking at SQLBits 2019

Fri, 25 Jan 2019 19:36:33 +0000

Speaking at SQLBits 2019!

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQLBits on March 2nd 2019! It’s been a goal of mine to speak at SQLBits for a few years now and I’m VERY excited for the opportunity! This year’s conference won’t let you down. Check out the amazing schedule of Experts and Microsoft MVPs! If you haven’t been to SQLBits before, what are you waiting for! Sign up now! Here’s the details on my session! Inside Kubernetes – An Architectural Deep Dive – March 2 2018 – 15:10 – Room 12

Awarded Friend of Redgate – 2019

Fri, 25 Jan 2019 19:17:59 +0000

Friend of Redgate – 2019

  I’m excited to announce that I have been named a <a href="https://www.red-gate.com/hub/events/friends-of-rg">Friend of Redgate</a> for 2019, my forth year in a row! The program targets influential people in their respective technical communities such as SQL,.NET and DevOps and enables us to participate in the conversation around product and community development.

  As a multi-year awardee in the program I get to see first hand the continuing dedication Redgate has to the SQL community and to making great software. I met a ton of really cool, very dedicated people along the way. Thanks for the recognition and I look forward to another great year!

  <a href="http://www.red-gate.com/">Redgate</a> makes outstanding products! While I focus mainly on the DBA side of things such as SQL Monitor, SQL Backup and SQL Prompt there are many <a href="http://www.red-gate.com/products/">more</a>. I’ve used these tools for years and let’s just say they’re awesome.

  Redgate isn’t just software, they’re committed to community and education. Here are some of the things they do to support technical communities:

<ul>
  <li>
    **Online resources** – <a href="http://www.simple-talk.com/">SimpleTalk</a>, <a href="http://www.sqlservercentral.com/">SQL Server Central</a>, and <a href="http://www.red-gate.com/community/books/index">books and Free eBooks</a>. These resources aren’t marketing fluff, it’s killer content written by real experts
  </li>
  <li>
    **Events** – hosting events, exhibiting at events and supporting user groups across the world. One word can describe this, engaged
  </li>
</ul>

  **Thank you to Redgate for this opportunity!** I look forward to participating in this program, sharing my thoughts and learning as much as I can from all involved.

  <a href="https://www.red-gate.com/hub/events/friends-of-rg"><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/305265/FORG%20logo%202019_small_2.png" alt="" /></a>

  **If you need you’d like to talk about Redgate’s products and where they fit into your SQL Server system please feel free to contact me.**

  ** **

  **Follow me on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/nocentino">@nocentino</a>**

  **Email: <a href="mailto:aen@centinosystems.com?subject=mentoring">aen@centinosystems.com</a>**

  **Web: <a href="http://www.centinosystems.com/">www.centinosystems.com</a>**

New Pluralsight Course – Kubernetes Installation and Configuration Fundamentals

Sat, 12 Jan 2019 12:30:21 +0000

New Pluralsight Course – Kubernetes Installation and Configuration Fundamentals

  My new course **“Kubernetes Installation and Configuration Fundamentals”** in now available on Pluralsight <a href="http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/kubernetes-installation-configuration-fundamentals">here</a>! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/player?course=kubernetes-installation-configuration-fundamentals&author=anthony-nocentino&name=c841b22a-35fa-4260-b592-e1a755760ace&clip=0&mode=live">here</a> or if you want to dive right in check it out <a href="http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/kubernetes-installation-configuration-fundamentals">here</a>! This course offers practical tips from my experiences building Kubernetes Clusters for Centino Systems clients.

  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.

  Let’s take your Kubernetes administration and configuration skills to the next level and get you started <a href="http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/kubernetes-installation-configuration-fundamentals">now</a>!

  The modules of the course are:

<ul>
  <li>
    **Exploring the Kubernetes Architecture** – In this module we introduce Kubernetes, deep dive into each component and its responsibility in a cluster. We also look at higher level abstractions such as Services, Controllers, and Deployments and how they can be used to ensure the desired state of an application deployed in Kubernetes
  </li>
  <li>
    **Installing and Configuring Kubernetes** – In this module, we learn several ways to install a Kubernetes cluster. We start off simple with an installation using `kubeadm`. Then we head off to the Cloud, we look at the current state of the cloud managed Kubernetes services and installation methods for each of the major cloud providers (Google, AWS, and Azure) and perform an installation using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).
  </li>
  <li>
    **Working with Your Kubernetes Cluster** – In this module, we learn how to interact with our cluster. We learn how to use and configure the primary tool for communicating with Kubernetes clusters, `kubectl`. We then learn how to perform a simple application (pod) deployment both imperatively and declaratively in our Kubernetes cluster. With our cluster up and running and our first application (pod) deployed in our cluster, we will then explore the internals of our cluster, its components and resources.
  </li>
</ul>

  <img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="/images/2019/01/Availability-Group-StatusNewImage-3.png" alt="NewImage" width="565" height="128" border="0" />

  <a href="http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/kubernetes-installation-configuration-fundamentals">Check out the course at Pluralsight!</a>

Speaking at SQLSaturday Nashville – 815!

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 18:27:43 +0000

Speaking at SQLSaturday Nashville – 815!

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Nashville on January 12th 2019! And wow, 815 SQL Saturdays! This one won’t let you down. Check out the amazing schedule!

If you don’t know what SQLSaturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

If you haven’t been to a SQLSaturday, what are you waiting for! Sign up now!

Workshop – Kubernetes Zero to Hero – Installation, Configuration, and Application Deployment

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 01:37:41 +0000

Pre-conference Workshop at SQLSaturday Chicago – 825

I’m proud to announce that I will be be presenting an all day pre-conference workshop at SQL Saturday Chicago on March 23rd 2018! This one won’t let you down!

The workshop is **“Kubernetes Zero to Hero – Installation, Configuration, and Application Deployment” **

    <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kubernetes-zero-to-hero-installation-configuration-and-application-deployment-tickets-54316807032?aff=BLOG"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="/images/2019/01/Availability-Group-StatusNewImage-1.png" alt="NewImage" width="129" height="126" border="0" /></a>

    **Here’s the abstract for the workshop**

  <blockquote>

      Modern application deployment needs to be fast and consistent to keep up with business objectives and Kubernetes is quickly becoming the standard for deploying container-based applications, fast. In this day-long session, we will start with an architectural overview of a Kubernetes cluster and how it manages application state. Then we will learn how to build a production-ready cluster. With our cluster up and running, we will learn how to interact with our cluster, common administrative tasks, then wrap up with how to deploy applications and SQL Server. At the end of the session, you will know how to set up a Kubernetes cluster, manage a cluster, deploy applications and databases, and how to keep everything up and running.

  </blockquote>

Session Objectives

We Speak Linux – OpenSSH For Windows Pros

Sun, 02 Dec 2018 23:20:59 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at this months We Speak Linux Webinar. Each month We Speak Linux brings cross platform training to the Windows world. Sign up now here!

On Thursday, December 2 at 11:00 Central I’m presenting:

OpenSSH for Windows Pros

Here’s the abstract:

In PowerShell Core we can use OpenSSH as the transport layer to carry our remoting sessions between our systems. In this session we’ll look at OpenSSH architecture, Authentication methods, including key authentication, sshd configuration, and troubleshooting methods when things go wrong!

Testing if a Port is Open With PowerShell

Tue, 20 Nov 2018 16:50:45 +0000

Ever want to confirm that a port is accessible from one computer to another? There’s a PowerShell cmdlet for that, Test-NetConnection. With the -Port option, this cmdlet will do a quick TCP three-way handshake on the remote system to confirm that the service is available and reports back if it succeeded or not. Check out that last line of output TcpTestSucceeded: False. That indicates that this port is not accessible. You can see, however, that the system is reachable via ICMP (Ping), PingSuceeded: True so we know that the remote system is alive, just not listening on the port we want to access.

My Current Training Courses on Pluralsight!

Sat, 13 Oct 2018 18:51:20 +0000

Here’s a run down of the Linux training that I have available on Pluralsight!

Just getting started!

Understanding and Using Essential Tools for Enterprise Linux 7 – If you heard what Linux is and want to get started this is the place to be. We’ll cover installation, command line basics, the file system, text editors and more! This is my most popular course.

SQL Server on Linux Administration Fundamentals – SQL Server is available for Linux and Docker! This course is targeted towards both the SQL Server DBA and the Linux professional to get you started using SQL Server on Linux. We cover architecture, administration basics, Tools and backup and recovery!

SQL Server on Linux – External Memory Pressure with 2019 CTP2

Sat, 13 Oct 2018 17:48:18 +0000

In this blog post we’re going to revisit how SQL Server on Linux responds to external memory pressure. This is a very long post, and it ends with me not knowing exactly what’s going on…but the journey is pretty fun…let’s go!

On Windows-based SQL Server systems we’ve become accustomed to the OS signaling to SQL Server that there’s a memory shortage. When signaled, SQL Server will kindly start shrinking it’s memory caches, including the buffer pool, to maintain overall system stability and usability. Well that story is a little different in SQL Server on Linux…last year I wrote a similar post for SQL Server 2017 RTM and how it reacted to external memory pressure, check that out here! That was quite a dramatic story, you can literally cause SQL Serve to swap nearly its entire process address space out to disk! Now, let’s look and see how SQL Server on Linux responds to external memory pressure in SQL Server 2019 CTP2.

Installing minikube on CentOS

Sat, 13 Oct 2018 11:02:33 +0000

In this blog post, I’ll show you how to install Minikube on CentOS. Minikube is a platform you can use to test kubernetes clusters on your local machine or in a virtual machine.

Let’s start off with a fresh Install of CentoOS 7 on a virtual machine using a minimal install. If you need some help getting a Linux VM us, check out my Pluralsight course here to help you with that. You will want to ensure this virtual machine has the resource you want to run the container/pods scenarios you’d like to worth with. My configuration is dual vCPU with 10GB of RAM.

My Experiences Tech Editing Pro SQL Server on Linux

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 13:02:01 +0000

The Opportunity

Earlier this year I received an email from Jonathan Gennick, an editor at Apress books. The subject of the email was “Tech edit a book” and he asked if I was familiar with SQL Server on Linux. I excitedly replied “yes…I think I’m your guy for this”. In 2017, I had the opportunity to tech edit another book on SQL Server on Linux and had to back out of that project and this was a fantastic second chance to still be able to work on a topic I really want to participate in and help move forward. I replied to Jonathan and asked who the author is…he replied…the author is Bob Ward.

New Pluralsight Course – Provisioning Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines

Sat, 15 Sep 2018 10:39:12 +0000

My new course “Provisioning Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines” in 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 offers practical tips from my experiences building Azure Virtual Machines for Centino Systems clients.

This course targets IT professionals that design and maintain Azure IaaS based solutions.The course can be used by both the IT pro learning new skills and the senior system administrator preparing for using IaaS Virtual Machine services in Microsoft Azure

I’m Speaking at SQLSaturday Cambridge!

Fri, 31 Aug 2018 10:49:22 +0000

Speaking at SQLSaturday Cambridge!

  I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/748/EventHome.aspx">SQL Saturday Cambridge</a> on September 8th 2018! And wow, 748 SQL Saturdays! This one won’t let you down. <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/748/Sessions/Schedule.aspx">Check out the amazing schedule</a> of International Experts and Microsoft MVPs!

  If you don’t know what SQLSaturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

  If you haven’t been to a SQLSaturday, what are you waiting for! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/748/registernow.aspx">Sign up now</a>!

  <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/748/EventHome.aspx"><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/images/sqlsat748_header.png" alt="SQLSaturday #748 - Cambridge 2018" /></a>

  **This year I have TWO sessions!**

  **1. **<a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/748/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=78607">**Monitoring Linux Performance for the SQL Server Admin**</a>

<blockquote>

    So you’re a SQL Server administrator and you just installed SQL Server on Linux. It’s a whole new world. Don’t fear, it’s just an operating system. It has all the same components Windows has and in this session we’ll show you that. We will look at the Linux operating system architecture and show you where to look for the performance data you’re used to! Further we'll dive into SQLPAL and how it architecture and internals enables high performance for your SQL Server. By the end of this session you’ll be ready to go back to the office and have a solid understanding of performance monitoring Linux systems and SQL on Linux. We’ll look at the core system components of CPU, Disk, and Memory and monitoring techniques for each.

</blockquote>

  **2. **<a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/757/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=78317">**Containers – You Better Get on Board**</a>

<blockquote>

    Containers are taking over, changing the way systems are developed and deployed…and that’s NOT hyperbole. Just imagine if you could deploy SQL Server or even your whole application stack in just minutes. You can do that, leveraging containers! In this session, we’ll get your started on your container journey learning container fundamentals in Docker, then look at some common container scenarios and introduce deployment automation with Kubernetes. In this session we’ll look at Container Fundamentals with Docker Common Container Scenarios Automation with Kubernetes.

</blockquote>

Questions from PASS Marathon Containers

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 15:20:52 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended the PASS Marathon Containers edition and to PASS for the opportunity to present. I received the Questions from the session and wanted to provide answers to the attendees and the community.

If you want to see the session again, check it out on YouTube. The decks are available online at http://www.centinosystems.com/blog/talks/

Here’s the list of questions from the session and my answers.

What do you mean it is not for production environment in Windows?

Speaking at SQLSaturday Sacramento – 757!

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 12:02:32 +0000

Speaking at SQLSaturday Sacramento!

  I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/757/eventhome.aspx">SQL Saturday Sacramento</a> on July 28th 2018! And wow, 757 SQL Saturdays! This one won’t let you down. <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/757/Sessions/Schedule.aspx">Check out the amazing schedule</a>!

  If you don’t know what SQLSaturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

  If you haven’t been to a SQLSaturday, what are you waiting for! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/757/registernow.aspx">Sign up now</a>!

  <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/757/registernow.aspx"><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/images/sqlsat757_header.png" alt="SQLSaturday #757 - Sacramento 2018" /></a>

  **This year I have TWO sessions!**

  **1. **<a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/757/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=78312">**Monitoring Linux Performance for the SQL Server Admin**</a>

<blockquote>

    So you’re a SQL Server administrator and you just installed SQL Server on Linux. It’s a whole new world. Don’t fear, it’s just an operating system. It has all the same components Windows has and in this session we’ll show you that. We will look at the Linux operating system architecture and show you where to look for the performance data you’re used to! Further we'll dive into SQLPAL and how it architecture and internals enables high performance for your SQL Server. By the end of this session you’ll be ready to go back to the office and have a solid understanding of performance monitoring Linux systems and SQL on Linux. We’ll look at the core system components of CPU, Disk, Memory and Networking monitoring techniques for each and look some of the new tools available.

</blockquote>

  **2. **<a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/757/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=78317">**Containers – You Better Get on Board**</a>

<blockquote>

    Containers are taking over, changing the way systems are developed and deployed…and that’s NOT hyperbole. Just imagine if you could deploy SQL Server or even your whole application stack in just minutes. You can do that, leveraging containers! In this session, we’ll get your started on your container journey learning container fundamentals in Docker, then look at some common container scenarios and introduce deployment automation with Kubernetes. In this session we’ll look at Container Fundamentals with Docker Common, Container Scenarios and Orchestration with Kubernetes

</blockquote>

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional – Data Platform for 2018-2019

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 15:06:56 +0000

Today, I’m proud to announce that I have been renewed as an Microsoft MVP – Data Platform for the 2018-2019 award year, my second MVP award. This is an truly an honor and I’m humbled to be included in this group of exceptional data professionals. I really look forward to continuing to work with everyone in the MVP community and continuing to contribute to our unmatched SQL Community!

****

Linux LFCE Learning Path Available at Pluralsight

Mon, 21 May 2018 15:40:55 +0000

I’m proud to announce the completion of my first Pluralsight Learning Path. This learning path is built to advance your Linux knowledge to the system administrator or system engineer level. In this series of courses you’ll learn the theory behind how things work and also practice demonstrations and tips to really nail home the things you need to know to run production Linux systems.

The learning objectives of this series align with the Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE) certification “Domains and Competencies” however these courses will be very valuable to your development as a Linux professional even if you’re not interested in certification.

Installing OpenSSH Server on Windows 10

Thu, 17 May 2018 14:01:43 +0000

So in yesterday’s post we learned that the OpenSSH client is included with the Windows 10, Update 1803! Guess, what else is included in this server, an OpenSSH Server! Yes, that’s right…you can now run an OpenSSH server on your Windows 10 system and get a remote terminal! So in this post, let’s check out what we need to do to get OpenSSH Server up and running.

First, we’ll need to ensure we update the system to Windows 10, Update 1803. Do that using your normal update mechanisms.

OpenSSH is now Part of Windows!

Thu, 17 May 2018 01:57:10 +0000

Today is a big day! The OpenSSH client version 7.6p1 is now part of the Windows 10 operating system! Microsoft released Windows 10 Update 1803 and included in that release is the OpenSSH client, which is installed as part of the update.

That’s right an SSH client as part of the Windows operating system by default! Also included with this update is the OpenSSH Server which is included as an Windows Feature on Demand.

Speaking at SQLSaturday Atlanta – 733

Tue, 15 May 2018 23:35:34 +0000

Speaking at SQLSaturday Atlanta!

  I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/733">SQL Saturday Atlanta</a> on May 17th 2018! This one won’t let you down! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/733/Sessions/Schedule.aspx">Check out the amazing schedule</a>!

  If you don’t know what SQLSaturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

  If you haven’t been to a SQLSaturday, what are you waiting for! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/733/registernow.aspx">Sign up now</a>!

  My presentation is **“<a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/733/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=71960">Monitoring Linux Performance for the SQL Server Admin</a>” **

  <img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/images/sqlsat733_header.png" alt="SQLSaturday #733 - Atlanta 2018" />

  Here’s the abstract for the talk

<blockquote>

    So you’re a SQL Server administrator and you just installed SQL Server on Linux. It’s a whole new world. Don’t fear, it’s just an operating system. It has all the same components Windows has and in this session we’ll show you that. We will look at the Linux operating system architecture and show you where to look for the performance data you’re used to! Further we'll dive into SQLPAL and how it architecture and internals enables high performance for your SQL Server. By the end of this session you’ll be ready to go back to the office and have a solid understanding of performance monitoring Linux systems and SQL on Linux. We’ll look at the core system components of CPU, Disk, Memory and Networking monitoring techniques for each and look some of the new tools available including new DMVs and DBFS.Prerequisites: Operating system fundamentals, process, memory and disk concepts.

</blockquote>

Distributing SSH User Keys via PowerShell

Sun, 18 Feb 2018 22:51:00 +0000

Folks in the Linux world are used to moving SSH keys to and from systems enabling password-less authentication. Let’s take a minute to look at what it takes to use PowerShell to distribute SSH user keys to remote systems.

In the OpenSSH package there’s a command ssh-copy-id which is a bash script that copies a user’s public key to a remote system. There’s a little intelligence in the script to set things up properly on the remote system for password-less key based authentication. If the appropriate directory and key file aren’t set up, ssh-copy-id will create the directory and key file with the correct permissions on remote system. As far as I can tell, ssh-copy-id has not been implemented in the Win32-OpenSSH port. So that leaves us with implementing this functionality ourselves, in PowerShell.

New Pluralsight Course – LFCE: Linux Service Management – Advanced HTTP Services

Sat, 17 Feb 2018 16:40:58 +0000

My new course “LFCE: Linux Service Management – Advanced HTTP Services” in 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 offers practical tips from my experiences building high performance web infrastructure for Centino Systems clients.

This course targets IT professionals that design and maintain RHEL/CentOS based enterprises. It aligns with the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) and Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE) and also Redhat’s RHCSA and RHCE certifications. The course can be used by both the IT pro learning new skills and the senior system administrator preparing for the certification exam

Speaking at PowerShell Summit 2018!

Sat, 27 Jan 2018 13:07:31 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2018 on the conference runs from April 9th 2018 through April 12th 2018. This is an incredible event packed with fantastic content and speakers. Check out the amazing schedule! All the data you need on going is in this excellent brochure right here!

This year I have two sessions!

On Tuesday, April 10th at 2:00PM – I’m presenting “OpenSSH Internals for PowerShell Pros”

Attempting to Run SQL on Linux Inside Windows Subsystem for Linux

Sat, 16 Dec 2017 17:53:14 +0000

Update - head on over to Andrew Pruski’s blog to find out how to get this to work!

Shawn Melton MVP and dbatools contributor last week had an issue running SQL Server on Linux inside of Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Error trying to configure <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/sqlLinux?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#sqlLinux</a> on the openSUSE app for Windows 10 <a href="https://t.co/0Eg5TtV0o5">pic.twitter.com/0Eg5TtV0o5</a>

— Shawn Melton (@wsmelton)

<a href="https://twitter.com/wsmelton/status/937565476632358914?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2017</a>

I didn’t want to leave a brother hanging so I spent this morning digging into this a little bit.

A Novel Idea for High Availability in SQL Server on Linux

Sat, 02 Dec 2017 21:03:16 +0000

Over the past year we’ve learned about how SQL Server on Linux is implemented, leveraging SQLPAL and the team is pretty confident in their architectural decisions as indicated in this post here.

Now that there is this wrapper around SQL Server, this really opens up some interesting opportunities…perhaps we can leverage SQLPAL to facilitate some new high availability techniques.

When I was in graduate school, I worked on a research project, that became my master’s thesis. In this work, I developed a technique that synchronized the process address space of a virtual machine on two separate physical hypervisors.The technique involved an initial copy of all pages between the two systems and then selectively copying the virtual machine’s pages as they became dirty. Using this technique, the process address space of the virtual machine is synchronized between the two hypervisors. This allows for a significant reduction in the amount of information that had to be replicated between the hypervisors but more importantly…the virtual machines memory in sync which meant if hypervisor hosting the virtual machine crashed we could theoretically start the virtual machine on the second hypervisor.

I’m Presenting Two Linux Sessions on One Day!

Thu, 30 Nov 2017 12:18:30 +0000

On 12/13 I’m presenting two, back to back, sessions on SQL Server on Linux online. So you can attend from anywhere!

Let’s go through both!

First, on 12/13 at 1PM Central, I’m presenting for the PASS Database Administration Virtual Group here’s my session details:

Topic: Linux OS Fundamentals for the SQL Admin

Registration: You must register if you want to attend. You can register at http://dba.pass.org/. When you register, you will receive a link to the meeting. All attendees will be entered into a raffle for a $25 gift card.

Top 5 Reasons Why I think SQL Server on Linux is Legit

Sun, 12 Nov 2017 22:17:10 +0000

Here are my top 5 reasons why I thing SQL Server on Linux is Legit!

**SQL Server on Linux is Fast** – Earlier this year SQL Server on Linux posted the fasted 1TB TPC-H benchmark in the world and at the end of October posted the a 10TB result! Check out the results here and some info on how they did it here and here.
It’s tunable – From and OS standpoint, I think the “tunability" of the operating system is more well documented and well known on Linux. Check out Microsoft’s recommendations <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-performance-best-practices">here</a> and also Redhat’s <a href="https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Performance_Tuning_Guide/">here</a>.
Features – If you’re a developer in the Linux ecosphere, this is the reason why you’re evaluating using SQL Server on Linux…there’s likely a feature you want…that you can now have. Check them out <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-editions-and-components-2017">here</a>!
Enterprise Support – I like cruising around in forums just like anybody else, but sometimes you have to <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-overview">call</a> support to bring in the people that actually wrote the software.
Availability Solutions – SQL Server has a proven track record for availability, those same concepts and techniques apply to SQL Server on Linux. Backups, Availability Groups, and Failover Clusters <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-business-continuity-dr">check it out</a>.

Launching SQL Server on Linux in Single User Mode

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 19:01:10 +0000

There was a question this morning on the SQL Server Community Slack channel from SvenLowry about how to launch SQL Server on Linux in Single User Mode. Well you’ve heard everyone say, it’s just SQL Server…and that’s certainly true and this is another example of that idea.

The command line parameters from the sqlservr binary are passed through into the SQLPAL managed Win32 SQL Process. So let’s check out how to do this together…

New Pluralsight Course – SQL Server on Linux Administration Fundamentals

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 10:07:05 +0000

New Pluralsight Course – SQL Server on Linux Administration Fundamentals

  My new course **“SQL Server on Linux Administration Fundamentals”** in now available on Pluralsight <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/sql-linux-administration-fundamentals">here</a>! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/player?name=a0d5ed59-1d43-4233-ae90-b5b391e8d43d&mode=live&clip=0&course=sql-linux-administration-fundamentals">here</a> or if you want to dive right in check it out <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/sql-linux-administration-fundamentals">here</a>!

  This course targets DBAs that design and maintain SQL Server on Linux systems (or those evaluating the technology). This course can be used by both the seasoned DBA to learn foundational Linux skills and also what’s new and different when running SQL Server on Linux.

  **Course Description**

  SQL Server is available on Linux, and management wants you to leverage this shift in technology to more effectively manage your data platform. In this course, SQL Server on Linux Administration Fundamentals, you’ll delve into SQL on Linux in order for you to become an effective DBA.  First, you'll explore an overview of its architecture, installation, and configuration. Next, you'll learn how to administer SQL Server on Linux. Finally, you'll discover high availability and disaster recovery options available to you for keeping your SQL Server online. By the end of this course, you'll have a solid foundation necessary to utilize SQL Server on Linux in production.

  The modules of the course are:

<ul>
  <li>
    **Introduction and SQL Server Architecture** – Introduce the viewer into world of SQL Server on Linux. Why did Microsoft do this? What’s the strategy? Introduce the SQL Server Ecosphere, such as the database engine, SQL Server Agent and SSIS.
  </li>
  <li>
    **Installing and Configuring SQL Server on Linux** – We’ll look at our installation and configuration options for SQL Server on Linux, introducing Linux package managers and repositories and install SQL Server on Linux and it’s components.
  </li>
  <li>
    **Administering Linux for DBAs** – We’ll look at managing services with systemd and how to query journald’s log files for information about SQL Server.  Also dive into file ownership, disk partitioning concepts and mounting file systems and remote file systems.
  </li>
  <li>
    **Managing SQL Server on Linux: Administration and Tools** – Now that the viewer knows where things are in this new operating system, let’s move up the stack and look at the tooling available for SQL Server on Linux. We’ll cover VS Code, SSMS, SQLCMD and DBFS.
  </li>
  <li>
    **High Availability and Disaster Recovery with SQL Server on Linux** – Dive into the High Availability and Disaster Recovery options available to SQL Server on Linux<br />
  </li>
</ul>

  <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/sql-linux-administration-fundamentals"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="pluralsight_logo_new_blck.jpg" src="/images/2016/04/pluralsight_logo_new_blck-1.jpg" alt="Pluralsight Redhat Linux" width="225" height="18" border="0" /></a>

  Check out the course at <a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/sql-linux-administration-fundamentals">Pluralsight</a>!

Exit Codes, systemd and SQL Server on Linux

Sat, 28 Oct 2017 11:34:03 +0000

In this blog post we’re going to cover systemd, process exit codes and highlight how systemd reacts in certain exit conditions from SQL Server on Linux. My friend and SQL Server guru Argenis Fernandez – @dbargenis asked about this behavior on Twitter and I’ve been meaning to write this post, so here you go! Also, there’s a Connect item filed by Argenis on this here. Vote!

systemd Basics

Systemd is an initialization daemon, it’s job is to bring the system to usable state. Meaning, it’s responsible for the orderly starting of services on a Linux system. It does much more than that, in fact, one of it’s other core components is journald. Journald stores logging information from systemd units.

SQL Server on Linux Content at PASS Summit

Fri, 20 Oct 2017 20:15:10 +0000

PASS Summit is right around the corner and I’ll be there speaking on Monitoring Linux Performance for the SQL Server Admin!

There’s a fantastic amount of SQL Server on Linux content available at Summit. I encourage you to attend one of these sessions. You’ll likely find me at all of these!

SQL Server on Linux – External Memory Pressure

Fri, 20 Oct 2017 10:40:53 +0000

In this blog post we’re going to explore how SQL Server on Linux responds to external memory pressure. On Windows based SQL Server systems we’ve become accustomed to the OS signaling to SQL Server that there’s a memory shortage. When signaled, SQL Server will kindly start shrinking it’s memory caches, including the buffer pool, to maintain overall system stability and usability. We’ll that story is a little different in SQL Server on Linux…let’s look and see how SQL Server on Linux responds to external memory pressure

Speaking at IT/Dev Connections 2017 – San Francisco!

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 14:15:56 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be delivering two sessions at IT/Dev Connections in San Francisco! This is my second year at IT/Dev Connections, real content for IT pros!

Networking Internals for the SQL Server Professional

Tuesday, 10/24/2017: 1:15 pm – 2:30 pm

Room: Contiental 7

Abstract

Once data leaves your SQL Server do you know what happens or is the world of networking a black box to you? Would you like to know how data is packaged up and transmitted to other systems and what to do when things go wrong? Are you tired of being frustrated with the network team? In this session we introduce how data moves between systems on networks and TCP/IP internals. We’ll discuss real world scenarios showing you how your network’s performance impacts the performance of your SQL Server and even your recovery objectives.

New Pluralsight Course – LFCE: Linux Service Management – HTTP Services

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 21:38:44 +0000

My new course “LFCE: Linux Service Management – HTTP Services” in 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!

Instant File Initialization in SQL Server on Linux

Sat, 23 Sep 2017 22:49:01 +0000

Earlier this week Ned Otter (@NedOtter) brought up a question about Instant File Initialization on SQL Server on Linux, check out the thread here. I was up way too early in the morning, as I normally am, so I decided to poke around and see how it was done. SQL Server pros, here you can see you can get some deep internal information from the OS very easily. Hopefully with this blog post you’ll be able to compare how this is done on Windows and draw the connections between the two platforms and leverage this technique in other areas.

Warning Handling in dbatools Automation Tasks

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 02:20:37 +0000

So I’ve been using dbatools for automated restore tasks and came across a SQL Server Agent job that I wrote that was reporting success but the job was actually failing.

What I found was the function I used, Restore-DbaDatabase, was not able to access the path that I was trying to restore databases from. The Restore-DbaDatabase function, and all dbatools functions according to the dbatools team on Slack, will throw a Warning rather than an Error by design.

There will be no Doctor No, for now!

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 14:18:00 +0000

A few weeks back several SQL Server bloggers discussed their academic pasts…well here I’m going to let you in on a little secret of mine too. I failed out of college too. I was a Management Information Systems major and limped along with a 1.82 GPA before I got tossed from The University of Mississippi in 1999.

Fast forward a few years, in 2002 I went back to school at Benedictine University in Lisle Illinois to study Computer Science. There I finished my Bachelors degree in 2005 with a 3.98 GPA graduated with honors. I was fortunate to learn from a collection of retied Lucent engineers…and if you know the history of corporate research…Bell Labs engineers. It was an unbelievable educational experience. And they were cool too, we watched the 2004 Cubs in the classroom that fateful night Steve Bartman got a little too ambitious around a foul ball.

TechMentor Dine Around

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 18:25:42 +0000

Next week I’ll be speaking at TechMentor in Redmond, I’m doing a 1/2 day workshop on Linux OS Fundamentals for the Windows Admin be sure to come see me!

If you’re there on Monday night (August 7th) and let’s get together for dinner! We’ll talk tech and hopefully make a few new friends and networking connections!

Where – We’ll start at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue, light appetizers will be provided. Then we’ll head on over to Lot No. 3 for dinner. I’ll pick up the first round of drinks and the appetizers!

Speaking at TechMentor – Redmond

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 12:08:47 +0000

I’ll be speaking at TechMentor, August 7-11 at Microsoft HQ in Redmond. Surrounded by your fellow IT professionals, TechMentor provides you with in-depth, immediately usable training that will keep you relevant in the workforce.

I’ll be presenting the following session: Workshop: Linux OS Fundamentals for the Windows Admin – this will be a fun session getting you started on your road to Linux proficiency, we’ll install Linux together and work through things like command line syntax, building complex commands with pipeline, performance basics and package management.

Speaking at PASS Summit 2017

Wed, 19 Jul 2017 17:53:22 +0000

I’m very pleased to announce that I will be speaking at PASS Summit 2017! This is my first time speaking at PASS Summit and I’m very excited to be doing so! What’s more, is I get to help blaze new ground on a emerging technology SQL Server on Linux! My session is “Monitoring Linux Performance for the SQL Server Admin” so if you’re a Windows or SQL Server administrator, this session is for you. We’ll look at some of the internals of SQL Server on Linux and dive into Linux OS internals and show you where to look inside Linux for most important performance data for your SQL Server. I hope to see you there!

Reflecting on the Last Year of Microsoft’s OpenSource Technologies

Sat, 24 Jun 2017 11:50:07 +0000

This past year has certainly been interesting in the world of Linux. Microsoft has taken a new strategy and is embracing the open source model. It’s releasing it’s key software products with versions for Linux. It’s truly a remarkable time. In this post I want to highlight some of the bigger events and cover what does this mean to you and where you can go do get some training on these topics.

Speaking at SQLSaturday Sacramento – 650!

Fri, 23 Jun 2017 22:04:32 +0000

Speaking at SQLSaturday Sacramento!

  I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/650/eventhome.aspx">SQL Saturday Sacramento</a> on July 15th 2017! And wow, 650 SQLSaturdays! This one won’t let you down. <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/650/Sessions/Schedule.aspx">Check out the amazing schedule</a>!

  If you don’t know what SQLSaturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

  If you haven’t been to a SQLSaturday, what are you waiting for! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/650/registernow.aspx">Sign up now</a>!

  <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/650"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="SQLSATSAC650.png" src="/images/2017/06/SQLSATSAC650.png" alt="SQLSATSAC650" width="127" height="20" border="0" /></a>

  **This year I have TWO sessions!**

  **1. <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/650/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=63281">Linux OS Fundamentals for the SQL Admin</a>**

<blockquote>

    SQL Server and PowerShell are now available on Linux and management wants you to leverage this shift in technology to more effectively manage your systems, but you’re a Windows admin!  Don’t fear! It’s just an operating system! It has all the same components Windows has and in this session we’ll show you that. We will look at the Linux operating system architecture and show you how to interact with and manage Linux system. By the end of this session you’ll be ready to go back to the office and get started working with Linux with a fundamental understanding of how it works.

</blockquote>

  **2. <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/650/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=63279">Designing High Availability Database Systems using AlwaysOn Availability Groups</a>**

<blockquote>

    Are you looking for a high availability solution for your business critical application? You're heard about AlwaysOn Availability Groups and they seem like a good solution, but you don't know where to start. It all starts with a solid design. In this session we introduce the core concepts needed to design a Availability Group based system. Covering topics such as recovery objectives, replica placement, failover requirements, synchronization models, quorum, backup and recovery and monitoring. This session is modeled after real world client engagements conducted by Centino Systems that have lead to many successful Availability Groups based systems supporting tier 1 business critical applications.

</blockquote>

dbfs – command line access to SQL Server DMVs

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 15:33:13 +0000

With SQL Server on Linux, Microsoft has recognized that they’re opening up their products to a new set of users. People that aren’t used to Windows and it’s tools. In the Linux world we have a set of tools that work with our system performance data and present that to us as text. Specifically, the placeholder for nearly all of the Linux kernel’s performance and configuration data is the /proc virtual file system, [procfs][1]. Inside here you can find everything you need that represents the running state of your system. Processes, memory utilization, and disk performance data all of this is presented as files inside of directories inside /proc.

PowerShell Remoting in Multi-Platform Environments – Use Cases

Mon, 12 Jun 2017 11:59:52 +0000

In our previous post we discussed how to implement OpenSSH (the plumbing) as the transport layer for PowerShell remoting. In this post, we’re going to leverage that configuration and look at some common remoting use cases. This is one of the core things I use everyday when I work with PowerShell. Remoting gives me the ability to administer scale up and administer large collections of systems. So like I said in my very first post about my PowerShell journey, it’s become a part of my every day life and techniques like this are at the core of how I use PowerShell. So let’s get started…

Speaking at SQL Saturday Pensacola!

Fri, 26 May 2017 12:12:01 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Pensacola on June 3rd 2017! Check out the amazing schedule!

If you don’t know what SQLSaturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

If you haven’t been to a SQLSaturday, what are you waiting for! Sign up now!

My presentation is **“Designing High Availability Database Systems using AlwaysOn Availability Groups” **

Abstract:

PowerShell Remoting in Multi-Platform Environments using OpenSSH

Thu, 25 May 2017 20:24:08 +0000

So in my last post I told you about how I started my journey on learning PowerShell, let’s keep going down that path together. In this post I’m going to introduce PowerShell Remoting in Multi-Platform Environments, specifically using OpenSSH. We’ll discuss WinRM in multi-platform systems in an upcoming post.

Have you ever had to execute a command against one system or a collection of systems? Have you ever wanted a remote shell on a Windows system? Using Remoting you can you can do all of these things, very, very easily.

Why PowerShell?

Tue, 09 May 2017 02:22:26 +0000

Why do I use PowerShell?

Well, here’s a little back story…last year I was involved in a Pluralsight Play by Play with Jason Helmick and Jeffrey Snover for launch of Open PowerShell on Linux and Mac. Before this video, I didn’t take PowerShell seriously. Basically, if I Google’d a problem and found a solution in PowerShell I would grind my teeth and copy and paste the text into the foreign blue console and cross my fingers.

Why Did Your Availability Group Creation Fail?

Sat, 22 Apr 2017 19:28:50 +0000

Availability Groups are a fantastic way to provide high availability and disaster recovery for your databases, but it isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world to pull off correctly. To do it right there’s a lot of planning and effort that goes into your Availability Group topology. The funny thing about AGs is as hard as they are to plan…they’re pretty easy to implement…but sometimes things can go wrong. In this post I’m going to show you how to look into things when creating your AGs fails.

New Pluralsight Course – LFCE: Network and Host Security

Sun, 09 Apr 2017 13:45:25 +0000

My new course “LFCE: Network and Host Security” in 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!

Speaking at PowerShell Summit!

Wed, 22 Mar 2017 13:39:14 +0000

Speaking at PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2017!

  I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2017 on the conference runs from April 9th 2017 through April 12th 2017. This is an incredible event packed with fantastic content and speakers. <a href="https://eventloom.com/event/home/summit2017">Check out the amazing schedule</a>!

  This year I have two sessions!

  On **Tuesday, April 10th at 10:00AM** – My session is with none other the <a href="https://twitter.com/theJasonHelmick/">Jason Helmick</a>. Our session is “**Cross platform Management – Windows/Linux**”

  Here’s the abstract

<blockquote>

    Let Jason Helmick and Anthony Nocentino take you through a fun filled, demo heavy adventure of how Windows and Linux admins can work together managing a heterogeneous environment. You will learn all you need to know from both sides of the aisle to get started!

</blockquote>

  On **Wednesday, April 11th at 10:00AM** – I’m presenting solo on “**Linux Fundamentals for the PowerShell Expert**”

  Here’s the abtract

<blockquote>

    PowerShell is now available on Linux and your management wants you to leverage this shift in technology to more effectively manage your systems, but you’re a Windows guy! Don’t fear, iIt’s just an operating system! It has all the same components Windows has and in this session we’ll show you that.

    We will look at the Linux operating system architecture and show you how to interact with and manage Linux system! By the end of this session you’ll be ready to go back to the office and get started working with Linux In this session we’ll cover the following – Process control – Service control – Package installation – Configuration management – System resource management (CPU, disk and memory) – Using PowerShell to interact with Linux systems

</blockquote>

  <a href="https://eventloom.com/event/home/summit2017"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="/images/2017/03/NewImage.png" alt="PowerShell Summit" width="315" height="65" border="0" /></a>

Using dbatools for automated restore and CHECKDB

Sat, 04 Mar 2017 14:14:34 +0000

OK, so if you haven’t heard of the dbatools.io project run by Chrissy LeMaire and company…you’ve likely been living under a rock. I strongly encourage you to check it out ASAP. What they’re doing will make your life as a DBA easier…immediately. Here’s an example…

One of the things I like to do as a DBA is backup my databases, restore them to another server and run CHECKDB on them. There are some cmdlets in the dbatools project, in particular the Snowball release, that really make this easy. In this post I’m going to outline a quick solution I had to throw together this week to help me achieve this goal. We’ve all likely written code to do this using any number of technologies and techniques…wait until you see how easy it is using the dbatools project.

TugaIT – Pre-conference workshop on PowerShell on Linux

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 19:26:01 +0000

Where – Thursday, May 18, 2017

Where – TUGA IT – Lisbon, Portugal

Full Day Session – “Open Source PowerShell on Linux – Skills to Manage Your Heterogenous Data Center“

Registration Link – https://app.weventual.com/detalheEvento.action?iDEvento=4011

Early Bird Price – before 03/18/2017 – 150€
Normal Price – before 05/01/2017 – 200€
Late Registration – 05/18/2017 – 250€

PowerShell is now available on Linux and Mac and you want to use it to manage your multi-platform data center. In this workshop we will introduce Open Source PowerShell and learn why this is such a groundbreaking technology shift. Then we’ll get into the essentials of using PowerShell on Linux and Mac, we’ll start with installing Powershell and building PowerShell from source, work our way into using cmdlets and bash integration, building pipelines, remoting scenarios with heterogenous operating systems and discuss Desired State Configuration.

Speaking at SQLSaturday Chicago – 600!

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 14:00:00 +0000

Speaking at SQLSaturday Chicago!

  I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/600/EventHome.aspx">SQL Saturday Chicago</a> on March 11th 2017! And wow, 600 SQLSaturdays! This one won’t let you down. <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/600/Sessions/Schedule.aspx">Check out the amazing schedule</a>!

  If you don’t know what SQLSaturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

  If you haven’t been to a SQLSaturday, what are you waiting for! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/600/registernow.aspx">Sign up now</a>!

  My presentation is **“<a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/600/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=56730">Networking Internals for the SQL Server Professional</a>” **

  <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/600/EventHome.aspx"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="/images/2017/02/NewImage.png" alt="NewImage" width="116" height="57" border="0" /></a>

  Here’s the abstract for the talk

<blockquote>

    Once data leaves your SQL Server do you know what happens or is the world of networking a black box to you? Would you like to know how data is packaged up and transmitted to other systems and what to do when things go wrong?  Are  you tired of being frustrated with the network team? In this session we introduce how data moves between systems on networks and TCP/IP internals. We’ll discuss real world scenarios showing you how your network’s performance impacts the performance of your SQL Server and even your recovery objectives.

</blockquote>

Friend of Redgate – 2017

Sun, 05 Feb 2017 14:17:38 +0000

I’m excited to announce that I have been named a Friend of Redgate for 2017. The program targets influential people in their respective technical communities such as SQL,.NET and ALM and enables us to participate in the conversation around product and community development.

As a multi-year awardee in the program I get to see first hand the continuing dedication Redgate has to the SQL community and to making great software. I met a ton of really cool, very dedicated people along the way. Thanks for the recognition and I look forward to another great year!

Monitoring SLAs with SQL Monitor Reporting

Sat, 04 Feb 2017 16:30:17 +0000

Proactive Reporting for SQL Server

If you’re a return reader of this blog you know I write often about monitoring and performance of Availability Groups. I’m a very big proponent of using monitoring techniques to ensure you’re meeting your service level agreements in terms of recovery time objective and recovery point objective. In my in person training sessions on “Performance Monitoring AlwaysOn Availability Groups”, I emphasize the need for knowing what your system’s baseline for healthy replication and knowing when your system deviates from that baseline. From a monitoring perspective, there are really two key concepts here I want to dig into…reactive monitoring and proactive monitoring.

Speaking at PowerShell Virtual Group of PASS

Thu, 19 Jan 2017 12:15:24 +0000

This month I’ll be speaking to the PowerShell Virtual Chapter of PASS. The session is on Linux OS Fundamentals for the SQL Admin. At the core of the session we will introduce you to OS concepts like managing files and file systems, installation packages, using PowerShell on Linux, managing system services, commands and processes and system resource management. This session is intended for those who have never seen or have very little exposure to Linux but are seasoned Windows or SQL administrators. Things like processes, memory utilization and writing scripts should be familiar to you but are not required.

Weekly Newsletter

Sun, 15 Jan 2017 15:12:53 +0000

This week we started our Centino Systems weekly newsletter. Check out the first edition here!

The newsletter is going to include the latest in SQL Server and other things in technology that I think are important or interesting…and maybe you will too!

So if you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter go ahead and sign up here!

New Pluralsight Course – LFCE: Advanced Network and System Administration

Fri, 13 Jan 2017 12:12:52 +0000

My new course “LFCE: Advanced Network and System Administration” in 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!

Understanding Network Latency and Impact on Availability Group Replication

Fri, 06 Jan 2017 20:30:13 +0000

When designing Availability Group systems one of the first pieces of information I ask clients for is how much transaction log their databases generate. *Roughly*, this is going to account for how much data needs to move between their Availability Group Replicas. With that number we can start working towards the infrastructure requirements for their Availability Group system. I do this because I want to ensure the network has a sufficient amount of bandwidth to move the transaction log generated between all the replicas. Basically are the pipes big enough to handle the generated workload. But bandwidth is only part of the story, we also need to ensure latency is low. Why, well we’re going to explore that together in this post!

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional – Data Platform

Mon, 02 Jan 2017 14:20:12 +0000

Today, I’m proud to announce that I have been named a Microsoft MVP – Data Platform. This is an exceptional honor and I’m humbled to be included in this group of exceptional data professionals. I really look forward to working with everyone in the MVP community and continuing to contribute to our unmatched SQL Community!

What is an MVP?

Speaking at SQLSaturday Nashville!

Mon, 19 Dec 2016 12:21:25 +0000

Speaking at SQLSaturday Nashville!

  I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/581/EventHome.aspx">SQL Saturday Nashville</a> on January 14th 2017! This will be my first speaking event this year and I look forward to seeing you there!

  If you don’t know what SQLSaturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

  If you haven’t been to a SQLSaturday, what are you waiting for! <a href="https://www.sqlsaturday.com/581/RegisterNow.aspx">Sign up now</a>!

  My presentation is **“<a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/581/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=56663">Performance Monitoring AlwaysOn Availability Groups</a>”** (which is one of my favorite sessions)

  **This is an updated session including new Availability Group Monitoring Extended Events and SQL 2016!**

  <a href="http://www.sqlsaturday.com/581/EventHome.aspx"><img loading="lazy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="/images/2016/12/NewImage.png" alt="NewImage" width="187" height="86" border="0" /></a>

  Here’s the abstract for the talk

<blockquote>

    Have you deployed Availability Groups in your data center? Are you monitoring your Availability Groups to ensure you can meet your recovery objectives? If you haven’t this is the session for you. We will discuss the importance of monitoring and trending Availability Group Replication, how AGs move data between replicas and the impact replication latency can have on the availability of your systems. We’ll also give you the tools and techniques to go back to the office and get started monitoring and trending right away!

</blockquote>

SQL Server on Linux – How I think they did it!

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 19:02:25 +0000

OK, so everyone wants to know how Microsoft did it…how they got SQL Server running on Linux. In this article, I’m going to try to figure out how.

Update: Since the publication of this post, Microsoft has published a blog post detailing the implementation here.

There’s a couple of approaches they could take…a direct port or some abstraction layer…A direct port would have been hard, basically any OS interaction would have had to been looked at and that would have been time consuming and risk prone. Who comes along to save the day? Abstraction. The word you hear about a million times when you take Operating Systems classes in undergrad and grad computer science courses.:)

Building Open Source PowerShell

Mon, 07 Nov 2016 01:55:46 +0000

Open Source PowerShell is available on several operating systems, that really what’s special about the whole project! To get PowerShell to function on these various systems we need to build (compile) the software in that environment. This is what will produce the actual executable program that is powershell.

To facilitate the build process the PowerShell team has documented how to do this for the currently available platforms, Linux, MacOS and Windows. In this post I want to talk about why this is important, point you to the resources available online to help you build Open Source PowerShell and tell you my experiences building PowerShell on the Windows, macOS and Linux!

Configuring Passwordless PowerShell Remoting over SSH

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 01:57:21 +0000

Open Source PowerShell has been on fire, getting tons of community support and really making people think about what’s to come with a single language to manage a heterogenous data center.

To highlight this point, in my recent Pluralsight Play By Play Microsoft Open Source PowerShell on Linux and Mac with Jason Helmick and Jeffrey Snover I did a demo on using PowerShell remoting where I connected from a Linux machine to three other machines and retrieved lists of top processes from each…two Linux and one Windows. I used one script to accomplish this and no passwords. A simple implementation highlighting a very big idea. After, some people have asked…how did I do this without passwords?

5 Must Haves Before You Start Consulting

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 11:29:29 +0000

Please join me at IT/Dev Connections on Oct. 12 at 8:00AM where I’ll be hosting a Birds of a Feather session “Moving to Independent Consulting” Bring your questions!*

Yes, an 8:00AM session in Las Vegas, but if you’re serious about going out on your own…you’ll already be up:)*

The most common questions I’m asked during networking sessions at technical conferences and events aren’t technical! People want to know what it’s like being an independent consultant. Things like how to get started and what to look out for are common themes. So I wanted to share the some of the discussion points I bring up when I’m having these conversations. In this post I’m going to boil it down to the top 5 “must haves” before you start consulting, there’s certainly more…many books have been written about it!

Open Source PowerShell – Play by Play

Fri, 16 Sep 2016 17:26:20 +0000

What’s going on here?

So last week you may have seen this picture on Twitter…it went a little crazy…and you may have been wondering what are we up to? Well, last week I had the pleasure of filming a Pluralsight Play By Play. A Play By Play is a course on Pluralsight but in a slightly different format than you may be used to. A Play By Play bring together industry experts to discuss and demonstrate an emerging technology. This Play by Play is on “Microsoft Open Source PowerShell – PowerShell on Linux and Mac” and is available now and is FREE! You do not have to be a subscriber!

SQLMonitor Adds Graphical Query Plans!

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 11:00:00 +0000

The SQLMonitor team at Redgate has been releasing updates at a much more rapid rate…what’s this mean to you? More fixes and more features. In this latest release, they certainly added something special…Graphical Query Plans! Yes, right inside of SQLMonitor’s user interface. Why is this important? Well for me, when I’m troubleshooting a performance issue…I usually start with identifying what system resource is being taxed and try to zoom in from there on the root cause. Now lets say the root cause is a poorly performing query, SQLMonitor let’s you find that query pretty easily, but stopped short when it came to diagnosing that actual performance issue in the query.

Using Extended Events to Visualize Availability Group Replication Internals

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 14:14:21 +0000

SQL 2014 Service Pack 2 was recently released by Microsoft and there is a ton of great new features and enhancements in this release.This isn’t just a collection of bug fixes…there’s some serious value in this Service Pack. Check out the full list here. One of the key things added in this Service Pack is an enhancement of the Extended Events for AlwaysOn Availability Group replication.

Why are the new Availability Group Extended Event interesting?

If you’ve used Availability Groups in production systems with high transaction volumes you know that replication latency can impact your availability. If you want to brush up on that check out our blog posts on AG Replication Latency, Monitoring for replication latency, and issues with the DMVs when monitoring. These new extended events add insight at nearly every point inside your Availability Group’s replication. More importantly they also include duration. So using these Extended Events we can pinpoint latency inside our Availability Group replication.

Setting PowerShell as your default Linux shell

Sat, 20 Aug 2016 17:22:56 +0000

In this post we’re going set PowerShell as your default Linux shell.

What is a shell?

In Linux systems you’re given options, tons of options, you can set, reconfigure, add/remove almost anything that you want. And one of those options is your shell. The shell is the thing that you interact with when you’re typing commands at the command line. Different shells have different behaviors and characteristics. It’s a very personal choice. For ages I’ve been a fan of bash.

Getting Started With PowerShell on Linux

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 18:23:09 +0000

Getting PowerShell on Linux

Well it’s not just an announcement, you can actually get PowerShell on Linux and MacOS right now from GitHub – here!

Installing PowerShell

Once you’ve downloaded an installation file you can use RPM or apt to install the package. If you’re on a Mac…well just double click on the package!

yum install powershell-6.0.0_alpha.9-1.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm

`If you’re on Ubuntu, you’ll need a little more stuff read <a href="https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/docs/installation/linux.md#ubuntu-1404">this</a>.`

Running PowerShell

We’ll there’s really not much to that, just type **powershell** at the command prompt an you’re off and running!

SQL Server, Persistent Memory on NVDIMMs and DAX

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 11:21:44 +0000

Paradigm Shift!

What do I mean by that? Every once in a while a technology comes along and changes the way things are done, moves the bar…well last week Microsoft released a Channel 9 video on persistent memory using NVDIMMs and DAX on Windows 2016…then combining it with SQL Server! This is one of those technologies that moves the bar! Check it out here.

Why is this important?

Relational databases like SQL Server use a transaction log to ensure the durability of the transactional operations to the database. This is so it can ensure its data is consistent in the event of a system failure. SQL Server uses a logging protocol called write ahead logging (WAL). This means that the data change operations must be written to stable, persistent storage before the process can change data in the database file…so this means our database throughput is at the mercy of the performance of the device the changes (log records) are written to.

New Pluralsight Course – LFCE: Advanced Linux Networking

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 11:14:20 +0000

My new course “LFCE: Advanced Linux Networking” in now available on Pluralsight here!

This course targets IT professionals that design and maintain RHEL based enterprises. It aligns with the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) and Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE) and also Redhat’s RHCSA and RHCE certifications The course can be used by both the IT pro learning new skills and the senior system administrator preparing for the certification exam

This course will dive deeper into the internals of networking, giving the you insight into how things work under the hood in Linux based networks.

Speaking at IT/Dev Connections!

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 14:40:12 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at IT/Dev Connections on October 11th 2016 in Las Vegas! I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to be able to speak at this conference! I look forward to seeing you there!

Here’s the information on the talk!

Designing High Availability Database Systems using AlwaysOn Availability Groups

**Track: **Development Platform Tools and Devops

Abstract:

Are you looking for a high availability solution for your business critical application? You’re heard about AlwaysOn Availability Groups and they seem like a good solution, but you don’t know where to start. It all starts with a solid design. In this session we introduce the core concepts needed to design a Availability Group based system. Covering topics such as recovery objectives, replica placement, failover requirements, synchronization models, quorum, backup and recovery and monitoring. This session is modeled after real world client engagements conducted by Centino Systems that have lead to many successful Availability Groups based systems supporting tier 1 business critical applications.

Speaking at SQLSaturday Baton Rouge!

Mon, 25 Jul 2016 21:25:42 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Baton Rouge on August 6th 2016! This will be my forth SQLSaturday event this year and I’m really excited that I get to do it as a speaker. I look forward to seeing you there!

If you don’t know what SQL Saturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

If you haven’t been to a SQL Saturday, what are you waiting for! Sign up now!

Speaking at SQLSaturday Sacramento!

Fri, 15 Jul 2016 18:11:58 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Sacramento on July 23th 2016! This will be my third SQLSaturday event this year and I’m really excited that I get to do it as a speaker. I look forward to seeing you there!

If you don’t know what SQL Saturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

If you haven’t been to a SQL Saturday, what are you waiting for! Sign up now!

Hello World on.NET Core

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 11:27:29 +0000

The developments over the last few months in the data community had brought us to an interesting place. We’re going to have SQL on Linux and now we also have .NET on Linux too! While the implications of this are unclear, and worthy of significant prognostication…I’m going to take this time to show you how to get started with.NET Core on a Redhat Enterprise Linux Based System.

First up you’re going to need Redhat Enterprise Linux. The Redhat Developer Suite, now includes a free license of RHEL go get it on Redhat’s site.

Upcoming Course – LFCE: Advanced Linux Networking

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 15:45:56 +0000

I’m pleased to announce that I’m working on a new course for Pluralsight.

The course is titled LFCE: Advanced Linux Networking.

This course targets IT professionals that design and maintain Linux based enterprises. It aligns with the Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE) objectives and can be used by both the IT pro learning new skills and the senior system administrator preparing for the certification exam. This course will dive deeper into the internals of networking, giving the viewer insight into how things work under the hood in Linux based networks.

CPU Scheduling Basics – Windows and SQL Server

Thu, 26 May 2016 11:23:36 +0000

In this post we’re going to introduce the basics of CPU scheduling.

In a computer system, only one thing can happen at a time. More specifically, only one task can be on a processor at a point in time. This can expand to several tasks if the system has multiple processors or a processor with multiple cores, which most modern systems have. For example, a four core system can potentially execute four tasks concurrently.

New Pluralsight Course – Understanding and Using Essential Tools in Enterprise Linux 7

Thu, 28 Apr 2016 11:09:00 +0000

My new course “Understanding and Using Essential Tools in Enterprise Linux 7” in now available on Pluralsight here!

This course targets IT professionals that design and maintain RHEL based enterprises. It aligns with RHCSA and RHCE objectives and can be used by both the IT pro learning new skills and the senior system administrator preparing for the certification exam

Let’s take your LINUX sysadmin skills to the next level and get you started on your RHCSA/RHCE learning path.

Speaking at SQLSaturday Pensacola

Sat, 23 Apr 2016 11:58:13 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQLSaturday Pensacola on June 4th 2016! This will be my second SQLSaturday event and I’m really excited that I get to do it as a speaker. I look forward to seeing you there!

If you don’t know what SQL Saturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

If you haven’t been to a SQL Saturday, what are you waiting for! Sign up now!

Availability Group DMVs Reporting Incorrect Values

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 12:22:40 +0000

In my opinion one of the key features of SQL Server 2016 is the rebuilt and optimized log redo mechanism for AlwaysOn Availability Groups. Check out the many new AG features here. Check out my posts here and here to learn about how Availability Groups move data.

Early last week I was conducting a load test using SQL Server 2016 and wanted to compare the performance of the log redo thread with that of SQL Server 2014. To establish baseline the performance of 2014, I constructed a load test using a heavy insert workload on the primary. To measure that workload I used the following script to pull database replication performance data from sys.dm_hadr_database_replica_states

My thoughts on SQL Server on Linux

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 14:48:27 +0000

Well yesterday was a big day in the SQL Community, Microsoft announced that they will be developing a version of SQL Server for Linux. Check out the announcement here.

Image Source – Microsoft – http://bit.ly/1U8Afd3

This leaves us with a lot of questions, in talking with one of my customers this morning he asked some pretty cool questions. Here’s how the conversation went…

Friend of Redgate 2016

Sun, 07 Feb 2016 16:55:47 +0000

I’m excited to announce that I have been named a Friend of Redgate for 2016. The program targets influential people in their respective technical communities such as SQL,.NET and ALM and enables us to participate in the conversation around product and community development.

Last year was my first year in the program and the value that it provides to the community is immeasurable. I got to see first hand the dedication Redgate has to the SQL community and to making great software. I met a ton of really cool, very dedicated people along the way. Thanks for the recognition and I look forward to another great year!

Speaking at SQLSaturday Chicago

Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:43:06 +0000

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQLSaturday Chicago on March 5th 2016! This will be my first SQLSaturday event and I’m really excited that I get to do it as a speaker. I look forward to seeing you there!

My presentation is “Performance Monitoring AlwaysOn Availability Groups”

Here’s the abstract for the talk

Have you deployed Availability Groups in your data center? Are you monitoring your Availability Groups to ensure you can meet your recovery objectives? If you haven’t this is the session for you. We will discuss the importance of monitoring and trending Availability Group Replication, how AGs move data between replicas and the impact replication latency can have on the availability of your systems. We’ll also give you the tools and techniques to go back to the office and get started monitoring and trending right away!

Public Speaking – The First Time

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 12:27:10 +0000

Update for T-SQL Tuesday #84

Well, this year I was challenged with the goal of speaking publicly three times, well I blew that out of the water and have spoken 8 times (one of which was a major IT conference) this year with one more on deck for Friday at the Albuquerque SQL Server User Group. I never thought it would have gone this far, but it certainly is fun and exciting. I encourage you to set a goal, even if it’s speaking only one time…set the goal and do it! You’ll be surprised where it takes you, the great people you meet along the way and the support those same folks give you!

Thanks Paul!

Tue, 29 Dec 2015 23:16:38 +0000

What I’ve noticed this year is that there’s really not another group of people like the SQL Community. Earlier this year Paul Randal ( b | t ), in the name of community, offered his services to mentor to a small group of people. Check it out here. Crazy as it may sound he went ahead and offered mentoring to everyone that submitted here and I was on that list. Here’s my blog post submission

Load Testing Your Storage Subsystem with Diskspd – Part III

Tue, 06 Oct 2015 11:30:10 +0000

In our final post in our “Load Testing Your Storage Subsystem with Diskspd” series, we’re going to look at output from Diskspd and run some tests and interpret results. In our first post we showed how performance can vary based on access pattern and IO size. In our second post we showed how to design a test to highlight those performance characteristics and in this post we’ll execute those tests and review the results. First let’s walk through the output from Diskspd, for now don’t focus on the actual results.

Load Testing Your Storage Subsystem with Diskspd – Part II

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 13:16:00 +0000

In this post we’re going discuss how to implement load testing of your storage subsystem with DiskSpd. We’re going to craft tests to measure bandwidth and latency for specific access patterns and IO sizes. In the last post “Load Testing Your Storage Subsystem with Diskspd” we looked closely at access patterns and I/O size and discussed the impact each has on key performance attributes.

Diskspd command options

Let’s start with some common command options, don’t get caught up on the syntax. Diskspd’s documentation is fantastic. It’s included with the program download here. Here I’m going to tell you why I set these settings this way, so you can adjust them as needed for your environments.

Encrypting Connections To SQL Server Using Certificates

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 11:21:15 +0000

Encrypting Connections To SQL Server Using Certificates

In this post we’re going to cover configuring a connection string in.NET applications for encrypting connections to SQL Server using certificates. The audience for this document is a developer that needs to configure encrypted connections from applications to a database server.

Encrypting connections with SQL Server using Certificates consists of two parts:

An appropriately configured connection string
A server certificate installed on the Database Engine (not covered in this post)

Configuring a Connection String

Load Testing Your Storage Subsystem with Diskspd

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 10:43:39 +0000

One of the primary activities I do before bringing SQL Server into production is load testing the storage subsystem. On a new system this is critical because I want to ensure that we’re “getting what we’ve paid for” when it comes to the disk subsystem. All too often there’s a configuration issue, component mismatch, a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology or worse an insufficient disk subsystem…these all can lead to poor disk performance. Even if it’s the simplest test, its imperative to measure performance as it’s significantly harder to make changes to a SQL Server once a database is in production. So do your testing. This is especially an important topic if your disks are not direct attached or in a shared storage environment such as a SAN or VMware data store. Storage networks, controllers, shelves…it gets complicated fast!

Pluralsight Authoring – Upcoming Course

Sat, 29 Aug 2015 11:35:26 +0000

I am super excited to announce that I have recently been accepted as an author for Pluralsight.

My audition was on Monitoring AlwaysOn Availability Groups and was accepted on the first pass:) the clip discussed monitoring replication latency something I’ve blogged about here and here.

In the recent weeks I worked with my editor and we have selecting a course topic “Understanding and Using Essential Tools in Enterprise Linux 7”. This will be the first course in a series of courses that covers the Red Hat Certified System Administrator® (RHCSA) and Red Hat Certified Engineer® (RHCE) certifications. If all goes to plan the course should be completed in late November and published a few weeks after that.

Monitoring Availability Groups with Redgate SQL Monitor

Wed, 17 Jun 2015 13:34:05 +0000

In previous posts here and here we discussed AlwaysOn Availability Group replication latency and monitoring concepts, specifically the importance of monitoring the send_queue and redo_queue. In this post I’m going to show you a technique for monitoring Availability Group replication latency with Redgate SQL Monitor and its Custom Metric functionality.

Here’s the rub, monitoring AGs is a little interesting for the following reasons

We’re interested in trending and monitoring and that isn’t built into SQL Server or SSMS’s AlwaysOn Dashboard. Both provide only point in time values.
We’ll need to monitor the health of the Availability Group as a whole. So we want to track performance data on all replicas in the AG. But interestingly the redo queue and send queue values in the DMVs on the primary are always NULL. So we need to get those values from the secondary replicas.
Further, to work this into SQL Monitor’s Custom Metric framework we’ll need to limit our query’s result set to a single row and value.

Redo Queue

The redo queue is the amount of log records that haven’t been sent to a secondary replica in an AG. We want to track this as it is a measure of the amount of data on a secondary that is not yet redone into the database and can impact operations offloaded to secondaries

When was your last database backup?

Wed, 10 Jun 2015 18:51:22 +0000

Its pretty often that you have to sit down at a SQL Server and need sort out what the backup situation is. One of the first things that I check is, when did the last backup for each database complete? But answering that question is getting more complicated. If you’re using Availability Groups, you could be offloading your backups to a secondary and that can skew your backup data. In Availability Groups, database backup history is only stored on the instance that the backup executed on.

Immersed in SQL Server at SQLskills

Sat, 16 May 2015 14:53:28 +0000

Over the last two years I have had the pleasure of attending all three SQLskills Immersion Event classes. This training is second to none in its quality and intensity. The three courses help you look at SQL Server from different angles and are major parts of my job and likely yours as well. Each course uses a building block approach where you’re introduced into core fundamentals that the later modules build upon with more advanced topics.

Moving SQL Server data between filegroups – Part 2 – The implementation

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 10:33:46 +0000

In this post we are going to show the implementation of a PowerShell script using SMO to move data between filegroups on SQL Server. This article is the second of our two part series on “Moving SQL Server data between filegroups – Database Structures”, you can find the first article here.

The Challenge

Looking around on the web, I couldn’t find a solution to the problem of moving data between filegroups that I liked. Further, many of those solutions are T-SQL based, which I thought were very complex. So I went off to write it myself. The problem lends itself to an iterative solution and I felt that T-SQL was not the right tool for the job. Enter PowerShell, which give us the ability to easily iterate over sets of data with minimal code, couple that with the SQL Server Management Object model and we have the makings of an elegant solution.

Moving SQL Server data between filegroups – Part 1 – Database Structures

Tue, 21 Apr 2015 11:01:55 +0000

Why is moving data between filegroups hard?

****As a consultant its common to walk into a customer site and find databases that are contained in one very large file. For various reasons it can be beneficial to adjust the number a data files for a database. See here. However, in SQL Server moving data from a one file database into a multi-file configuration is a non-trivial task. It’s a two step process, requiring that you add a new filegroup then in the filegroup add your multi-file configuration. Once you have that up, then we need to rebuild the indexes into that filegroup. This can be challenging if you have a lot of tables with a lot of indexes as SSMS allows you do move data but only for non-clustered indexes and only one at a time. Another issue is there are different techniques for moving different physical structures such as clustered indexes, heap and tables with LOB data.

Designing for offloaded log backups in AlwaysOn Availability Groups – Part 2 – Monitoring

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 11:16:49 +0000

AlwaysOn Availability Groups have made a big splash in the SQL world and are quickly becoming the HA and DR technology of choice for many SQL Server environments. Crucial to their success is the ability to move data between the replicas in the Availability Group quickly and efficiently. In the previous [post][1] we discussed design concepts for offloaded backups in AlwaysOn Availability Groups, specifically we focused on how data is moved between AGs and the potential impact on backups and recovery. It is important to measure and trend replication health and this article introduces techniques and queries that you can use in your environment to measure and trend replication health and some of the nuances of the data reported in DMVs. ### Measuring Availability Group Replication Latency Central to measuring replication health is the [sys.dm_hadr_database_replica_states][2] DMV. On the primary replica this DMV returns rows representing the current state for each database and it’s replicas participating in AvailabilityGroups. The key fields we’re going to focus on for our monitoring are: * log_send_queue_size – the amount of log records not sent to a secondary * redo_queue_size – the amount of log records not yet redone on the secondary * last_commit_time – the time of the last committed log record on a replica * last_redo_time – the time of the last log record was redone on a replica

Designing for offloaded log backups in AlwaysOn Availability Groups – Part 1

Mon, 06 Apr 2015 10:57:11 +0000

AlwaysOn Availability Groups made their initial appearance in SQL 2012 and have generated a lot of buzz, HA and DR in one! Even with AGs, still integral to your DR strategy are backups and with AGs you’re given the option to offload backups to a secondary replica. In this blog we’re going to talk about offloaded log backups the potential impact to your databases’ recoverability under certain conditions, we’ll begin with some preliminaries on data movement in AGs.

Friend of Redgate 2015

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 12:11:30 +0000

Today I am excited to announce that I have been accepted into the Friends of Redgate program for 2015. The program targets influential people in their respective technical communities such as SQL,.NET and ALM and enables us to participate in the conversation around product and community development. In the short time I’ve been a part of this, I can already see the value of the program! Did I mention how excited I am:)

Book Review – SQL Server Internals: In-Memory OLTP

Tue, 24 Feb 2015 14:01:51 +0000

In-Memory OLTP – a potential game changing technology

Every once in a while a technology comes out that has the potential to change things dramatically. In-Memory OLTP (Hekaton) is one of them. The design team set out with a goal of reaching an order of magnitude improvement over existing technologies and techniques. To do so they had to rethink key facets of the relational database system, latching, locking, logging and statement compilation. When a technology as potentially disruptive as this comes along it gets everyone’s attention. When an opportunity to review a book based on this technology came along it certainly is worth the effort. I spent a ton of time with this book (maybe a little too much), reading and re-reading chapters but it was worth every minute.

Book Review – SQL Server Internals: In-Memory OLTP – Detailed Notes

Tue, 24 Feb 2015 14:00:22 +0000

Here are my unedited chapter notes:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Collation – current version requires BIN2 on character index columns. Best to do so at the column level. Supports only sorting, comparison and grouping. Will remove the need for case sensitive code on tables and columns but not data.
Collate database_default to handle tempdb collation of temp objects. Research more.
Interpreted SQL via interop useful for ad hoc or migration of code. Doesn’t perform as well as compiled.
Key point restrictions really show that the Hk tables need to be isolated bc of the interface between the engines. P 46

Chapter 3

Standard SQL Server Build

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 14:39:12 +0000

Often I’m asked what is the best practice for a single SQL Server installation. Well, that is a tricky questions and the answer is it always depends. Let’s discuss what a “standard” SQL Server build looks like if you had to start somewhere. Here let’s focus on Standard edition on a physical server. Enterprise edition and virtualization are topics that can stand on their own.

**Processors – **The higher the clock frequency the better

Reflections as a consultant

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 19:06:34 +0000

Let’s just start with the last three years have been fantastic! This blog post is a slight deviation from the technical content on my blog. We’re going to focus on career and professional development for a minute.

In 2011 I was thrust into the world of consulting…accidentally. Accidentally you ask, how can that happen? Well, at the time I worked remotely for a large health care practice doing system design and software development on the Microsoft stack. Fun and innovative stuff, with great leadership in fun environment. Learned a lot! Well, they were acquired by a much larger organization and the new corporate policy didn’t allow for remote workers. So rather than terminate me they asked if I would like to be a consultant. Well, who wouldn’t right? I had dabbled in consulting for years in the off hours, and always wanted to make the jump. This was the push that I needed. That left me with one huge question…

Availability Group Read-only Routing

Sun, 25 Jan 2015 18:29:24 +0000

This morning at a customer site I was researching an issue where Availability Group read-only routing was not working correctly. Quickly I was able to determine the issue was a misconfigured read-only routing URL list. In this blog post I’ll show you the requirements for read-only routing in Availability Groups, how I determined the URL list was the issue and what to do to fix the situation. The requirements for Read-only routing in Availability Groups are:

Building Debug Symbols – Troubleshooting symbol building

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 20:44:39 +0000

Recently,I have been working with the Debugger Symbols for SQL Server to generate call stacks and learn more about the internals of SQL Server.

I approached one of our clients about doing this on a non-production system and they thought it be great. They would get better insight on their workload, I would get access to a real workload. win..win, right? Even in their stage environment they have a pretty heavy workload so it would be a good candidate for generating call stack data.

Tracing call stacks in SQL Server – Installing the Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg) on Windows 8.1 and generating debug symbols for SQL Server binaries

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 20:17:27 +0000

Where to get the debugger tools

To generate the needed symbols you will need the “Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 10” download here: https://dev.windows.com/en-us/downloads/windows-10-sdk and click “Download the standalone SDK”

I like to select the Download option and pick “Debugging Tools for Windows” this will download all of the installation files

How to install the debugger tools

The installation of this software is very straight forward, Then find in the downloaded files \Windows Kits\10\StandaloneSDK\Installers\X64 Debuggers And Tools-x64_en-us.msi and install the debugger and install the tools with the default settings.

Tracing call stacks in SQL Server – Introduction

Wed, 24 Dec 2014 11:28:37 +0000

At this fall’s SQLIntersection conference in Las Vegas I attended, Paul Randal’s (t|b)“Performance Troubleshooting Using Latches and Waits” precon. Where at he asked for some assistance compiling data for a project he’s working on. The project that would require installing the “Debugging Tools for Windows” and generating debug symbols for the SQL binaries. I have always intended to work with the debug symbols to find the call stack traces and experiment with what SQL Server does during certain events, like creating a database, inserting a row and such. These are topics that interest me as a computer scientist and a SQL Server professional and also can help our clients in understand conditions when trying to get a handle on obscure performance anomalies.

Contact

Sat, 13 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The best way to contact me is via email, please feel free to reach out at info@centinosystems.com and you will be replied to promptly.

Thank you!