We’re back with a new episode of The Fantastic 12 of 2012: Behind the Scenes Blog Series, where we’re providing unique insights from the SQL Server Engineering Team as they developed SQL Server 2012. This week we are jumping ahead to Number 6 of The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012 (PDF) and we’ll revisit Number 5 in the weeks ahead. Be sure to catch the first four episodes here.

In this new episode John Hancock, Principal Program Manager, provides some interesting insights behind a major design decision around the new modeling capabilities including Key Performance Indicators, Hierarchies, and Perspectives and determining where those new capabilities ought to go into SQL Server 2012. Should those capabilities go into the professional environment or is there another approach? Find out how the team addressed and solved this challenge in the episode below!

Don’t forget The Fantastic 12 of #SQL2012 Twitter Contest is happening every Thursday at 10:30am PT, where we’re giving away the brand new SQL Server T-Shirts selected by the SQL Family. 

 

Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012

6 Managed Self-Service BI

Gain insight and oversight

• PowerPivot for SharePoint: Balance the need to monitor, manage, and govern the data and analytics end users create with IT dashboards and controls that help IT monitor end user activity, data source usage, and gather performance metrics from servers.

Enable IT Efficiency

• End user created, IT managed: SQL Server 2012 bridges the gap between end user created BI applications and IT managed corporate solutions by providing the ability to import PowerPivot models into Analysis Services so that they can be professionally managed and transformed into corporate grade solutions.
• Ease of administration through SharePoint: Enable end user alerting from reports published to SharePoint and benefit from the ease of consolidated management through the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration.
• SQL Azure Reporting: Extend rich user insights to even more people with SQL Azure Reporting that removes the need for deploying and maintaining a reporting infrastructure.

As part of our commitment to delivering and supporting high-quality software to our customers, Microsoft is pleased to announce SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 CTP. Customers with existing investments on SQL Server 2008 R2 are encouraged to explore Service Pack 2 CTP. Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 2008 R2 includes product improvements based on requests from the SQL Server community and hotfix solutions provided in SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Cumulative Updates 1 to 5. A few highlights are as follows:

• Reporting Services Charts Maybe Zoomed & Cropped
  Customers using Reporting Services on Windows 7 may sometime find charts are zoomed in and cropped.  To work around the issue some customers set ImageConsolidation to false.   

• Batch Containing Alter Table not Cached
  In certain situations with batch files containing the alter table command, the entire batch file is not cached.   

• Collapsing Cells or Rows, If Hidden Render Incorrectly
  Some customers who have hidden rows in their Reporting Services reports may have noticed rendering issues when cells or rows are collapsed.  When writing a hidden row, the Style attribute is opened to write a height attribute. If the attribute is empty and the width should not be zero.   

SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 provides software solutions for these customer reported issues and more.  For more details please visit the KB article 2630455 accompanying the SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 CTP release. Customers running SQL Server 2008 R2 can now download and test the SP2 CTP and send feedback to Microsoft for continuous product improvement.

To download the SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 release please select from the links below:

• SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 CTP
• SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 CTP Express
• SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 CTP Feature Pack

We look forward to your feedback!

Once again it’s on! We hope you enjoy this fourth episode of the Fantastic 12 of 2012: Behind the Scenes Blog Series, where you’re getting a peak into workings of the SQL Server Engineering Team with previously unheard stories from team members as they developed and tested SQL Server 2012. The first three episodes can be viewed here and don’t forget to download The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012 (PDF) to follow along with all 12 episodes. |

This week we have Joe Yong, Senior Program Manager, whose teams in Redmond and Shanghai worked on the upgrade and migration capabilities of SQL Server 2012. Joe tells a story of the team working with their first Technical Adoption Program (TAP) customer during the very early builds of SQL Server 2012 that wanted to test something in the SQL Server Labs. They came in and loaded up their data, which included a 100GB trace file, which the team had never encountered. Watch the video below to find out what happened!

The Fantastic 12 of #SQL2012 Twitter Contest happens every Thursday at 10:30am PT, where we’re giving away the cool new SQL Server T-Shirts that the SQL Family selected. 

Enjoy this week’s episode…..    

  

Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012

4 Peace of Mind

Help ensure peace of mind with the right product tools, premier services and support, a trusted partner ecosystem, and a wealth of no-fee tools.

Product Enhancements

• Distributed Replay: Simplify application testing and help minimize errors with application changes, configuration changes, and upgrades.
• System Center Alignment: Up-to-date Management Packs enable centralized monitoring across SQL Server versions including SQL Server 2012.
• System Center Advisor: Help reduce overall downtime with ongoing assessments of SQL Server configurations and changes over time.
• No-fee Service Packs: Unlike many software companies, Microsoft offers free access to software service packs.

Free Planning Tools

• Quickly plan for an upgrade or migration with a wealth of no-fee tools like Migration Assistant, Upgrade Advisor, and MAPS developed by Microsoft engineers and available for download online.

Tailored Support and Licensing Programs

• Mission Critical Support: Microsoft’s Premier Mission Critical Support and the Microsoft Critical Advantage Program, provide the services and support needed for companies to establish the proactive IT environment and operations necessary to deliver maximum availability and performance to their Mission Critical Applications.
• Enrollment for Application Platform: Microsoft delivers piece of mind with the licensing program EAP which offers unlimited support to customers with specific software assurance plans and up to 40% savings on license costs for new deployments.

Stay tuned for the next episode of this series coming every Thursday through the end of June 2012. Get more information on SQL Server 2012 and download the free trial today.

I had the good fortune of being part of a recent benchmark study that looked to see how SQL Server 2012 could handle massive volumes of content under active operation. Being an ISV that provides solutions in the Enterprise Information Management market, I deal regularly with customers who are ingesting and managing exponentially growing amounts of information. Their base requirements are always the same: help me ensure that all my infrastructure is ALWAYS operating at optimal performance. This means that my environment is scalable, available and reliable.

Part of the deep and rich partnership between OpenText and Microsoft is to ensure these requirements are met and that our solutions are tested under the most rigorous conditions and optimized for ideal performance. In February of this year, OpenText and Microsoft kicked-off performance and scalability testing on the email monitoring and records management components of the OpenText ECM Suite running on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 data management software. The results were very impressive.

It would be fair to say that email is certainly not going away any time soon. In fact, the growth of email within organizations is not slowing at all. Add to this the mandate to manage a large portion of emails as business critical corporate information and the issue and effort surrounding the management of data volume is exacerbated by the requirement to manage it against a lifecycle under compliance. It was this primary corporate requirement that we planned to put to the test with SQL Server 2012.

The benchmark testing took place at the Microsoft Platform Adoption Center (PAC) in Redmond, Washington. Specifically, the study looked to measure the peak ingestion of email messages in addition to the throughput when ingestion and dispositions of email messages were running concurrently. With peak ingestions rates of 995,000 email messages in a single hour, 14.8 million messages in a 24-hour period, or 171 messages a second―up to 15 times the typical ingestion volume – to say that the testing was successful would truly be an understatement. These results showed that OpenText’s enterprise information management solutions can perform at record rates when combined with SQL Server 2012.

OpenText and Microsoft have been putting together some great detail on this benchmark study so if you’d like to learn a little more check out the SQL Server Blog: http://OpentextOnsql.com, or go to http://socialassets.opentext.com/btc_benchmark_study for more information.

Dave Martin
Director, Microsoft Solutions Group, OpenText Corporation

Welcome to the third episode of the Fantastic 12 of 2012: Behind the Scenes Blog Series, where we’re providing a unique look into some interesting stories and perspectives from members of the SQL Server Engineering Team as they developed SQL Server 2012. If you missed the previous episodes, be sure check out Episode 1 and Episode 2 and download The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012 (PDF) to follow along with the episodes in the 12-part series.

In this week’s episode covering Organizational Security and Compliance, the ever-famous Il-Sung Lee, Senior Program Manager, talks about some of the new functionality in SQL Server 2012 and the history behind User-Defined Server Roles and how it became the first feature included in SQL Server 2012. He also talks about a unique tester he worked with and how the team would play practical jokes on him. We can only assume the tester wasn’t pleased!

Don’t forget to participate in The Fantastic 12 of #SQL2012 Twitter Contest where we’re giving away the cool new SQL Server T-Shirts that the SQL Family selected. 

Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012

3 Organizational Security and Compliance
Help enable security and compliance with built-in security and it controls

Data Protection

• Encryption: Protect data with built-in encryption capabilities that help protect confidential information including Transparent Data Encryption that adds advanced protection without requiring changes to the application.
• Certifications: Maintain confidence with third-party verifications; release over release, SQL Server pursues and achieves globally recognized Common Criteria Certifications.

Control Access

• User-Defined Server Roles: Easily manage permissions to support separation of duties.
• Default Schema for Groups: Help increase manageability and decrease complexity of database schema by allowing a default database schema for Windows group user accounts.
• Contained Database Authentication: Help control database access to deployed applications while improving manageability with self-contained access to information without the need for server logins.
• Active Directory: Help secure end user data analytics with new SharePoint and ActiveDirectory security models for end user reports published and shared in SharePoint.

Ensure Compliance

• SQL Server Audit: Help ensure compliance related to auditing with audit resilience, filtering, user-defined audit, and enablement across all SQL Server editions.
• Policy-Based Management: Define configuration policies and apply them to servers, databases, tables, and other targets across a server environment to help ensure policy compliance across the environment.

Stay tuned for the next episode of this series coming every Thursday through the end of June 2012. Get more information on SQL Server 2012 and download the free trial today.

 

With TechEd North America, June 11-14, 2012, and TechEd Europe, June 26-29, 2012, just around the corner, we wanted to share with you some of the exiting session content and speakers. This year, with the release of SQL Server 2012, we have an incredible line up of presenters and staff to bring you solid session content and top knowledge at both events.

 

 

We are also very excited to announce two SQL Server pre-conference seminars:

Pre-conference: Using BISM Tabular in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2012 (North America | Europe)

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 introduced new BI Services, like Power View and the BI Semantic Model (BISM) in Analysis Services, which offers two types of models, Tabular and Multidimensional. The Tabular model is required in order to publish data for Power View and it is based on concepts like tables and relationships that are familiar to anyone who has a relational database background.

In this seminar, learn from Marco Russo how to build a complete solution in Tabular, either by creating a new model from scratch or by importing an existing PowerPivot model. After an initial introduction of the overall architecture with the Microsoft platform, including SharePoint, PowerPivot and Power View, most of the time is dedicated to the definition of a BISM Tabular model. Learn about creating one from the ground up and then defining all the metadata required in order to obtain a rich semantic model that provides better user experience for data exploration in both Excel and Power View. You also learn the basics of DAX language and how to manage role based security and partitioning in a Tabular model.
At the end of the day, you will be able to create your BISM Tabular models, fully exploiting the features available in a Corporate BI scenario. You will gain a solid background to enable you starting your next project with Tabular.

Pre-conference: Microsoft SQL Server Performance Tuning and Optimization (North America | Europe)

In this session, learn about SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2012 performance tuning and optimization. Industry Experts Thomas LaRock and Denny Cherry guide you through tools and best practices for tuning queries and improving performance within Microsoft SQL Server. This session details real-life performance problems which have been gathered and tuned using industry standard best practices and real-world skills.

At both TechEd North America and TechEd Europe, we will have some great opportunities for you to LEARN and help advance your depth of knowledge with SQL Server; CONNECT with Microsoft experts, partners, speakers, and community members; and SHARE information with peers – before, during, and after each event. Here are a few opportunities we would like to call out:

• Hands-on-Labs: A great way to experience SQL Server 2012 is through our hands-on-labs. Onsite at TechEe we have a hands-on-labs room, ready for you to take on any of our product features and experience it for yourself.
  
• SQL Server Workshop: Brent Ozar, SQL Server MVP, will be hosting this year’s two-hour SQL Server workshop, where you will be able to learn about SQL Server 2012 on Windows Server Core, learn about new administration tasks, new features for DBAs and features that make your life as a Database Developer more interesting using SQL Server Data Tools to build and deploy applications.
  

Where to Register?

Register today for TechEd North America or TechEd Europe! If you are already registered don’t forget to drill down into the entire session agenda list (North America or Europe) and prepare for your trip.

We look forward to seeing you at TechEd!

 

 

 

Last week we kicked off the Fantastic 12 of 2012: Behind the Scenes Blog Series, the first episode covering SQL Server AlwaysOn was just the beginning of this unique 12-part look into the SQL Server Engineering Team. Download The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012 (PDF) to follow along with all the episodes and learn more about SQL Server 2012.

In this second episode of the series, Michael Rys, Principal Program Manager, SQL Server Engine Team talks about his recent trip to the SQLBits X conference in London and the feedback he received from other attendees. Michael also answers the most frequently asked question he heard while attending the event.

Lastly, this week we announced The Fantastic 12 of #SQL2012 Twitter Contest where we will be giving away the new SQL Server T-Shirts as chosen by the SQL Family. Don’t forget to join in on the fun as the contest questions come directly from the SQL Server Engineering Team members featured in the video series and sporting their favorite new shirts!

Now on to this week’s episode….

Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012

2   Blazing-Fast Performance
Gain breakthrough & predictable performance backed by industry-leading benchmarks

Accelerated Query Performance

• ColumnStore Index: Significantly boost data warehouse query performance, by up to 10x for star join and similar queries, using the new ColumnStore Index—built-in.
• Full Text Search: Support blazing fast queries with dramatic improvements to Full-Text Search that offer serious performance and scale advances.
• Compression: Accelerate the performance of I/O intensive workloads by cutting growing volumes of data 50-60%1 with back up and data compression capabilities.
• Improved Spatial Query Performance: New Indexing options, supporting nearest neighbor queries with indexes.

Proactive Performance Management

• Resource Governor: Gain consistent performance for concurrent and mixed workloads by defining resource usage across different applications.
• Management Tools: Analyze query execution plans, capture database activity, optimize indexes and structures, and help ensure consistent query performance within Management Studio.

Industry-Verified

• Benchmarks: SQL Server continuously leads in industry-relevant TPC-E and TPC-H performance benchmarks.
• SAP-Certified: Release over release SQL Server is SAP-certified to run some of the industry’s most demanding workloads.

¹Source: TechNet Books Online

Stay tuned for the next episode of this series coming every Thursday through the end of June 2012. Get more information on SQL Server 2012 and download the free trial today.

Prior to the launch of SQL Server 2012, we asked the SQL Family to vote for their favorite new SQL Server t-shirt based on six original designs. We counted all of your votes and printed the top four most popular designs that are shown below. Now it’s time to get the opportunity to win one! Be sure to follow The Fantastic 12 of 2012: Behind the Scenes Video Blog Series on the SQL Server Team Blog (watch the first episode) to get a first-hand look at how SQL Server 2012 was developed, some the feedback we’ve received, answers to common questions, and insights from members of the SQL Server Engineering Teams. New episodes of The Fantastic 12 of 2012: Behind the Scenes will be posted every Thursday through the end of June 2012.

Members of the SQL Server Engineering Team featured in each week’s episode will provide a question focused on The Fantastic 12 of 2012 topic of the week. Be sure to download The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012 (PDF) to be ready to answer the contest questions quickly!

You need to be following @SQLServer on Twitter in order to participate and win, so be sure to follow us today if you haven’t done so! Also, your response to our question needs to contain the #SQL2012 hashtag in order to win. Any correct answers without the #SQL2012 hashtag will be automatically disqualified. We will post the winners each day as they are determined. The contest questions will be posted to Twitter from @SQLServer every Thursday at 10:30am PT beginning on April 26, 2012 through June 27, 2012. You’ll have approximately 30 minutes from when the new “Behind the Scenes” episode is published to when the contest question will be asked on Twitter. The first person to answer the question accurately wins a new SQL Server t-shirt!

Here are some key things to remember when participating in the contest:

• You must be following @SQLServer to be eligible to win
  
• Your answer must be a reply to our tweet with the #SQL2012 hashtag included in your response
  
• Typos and misspelled words will automatically disqualify you, so be sure to type your answers correctly
  
• List out the full name of product feature or technology correctly when needed
  
• If you become a winner, you are not eligible to win again during this contest period (Entry Period: 10:30 a.m. PT on April 26, 2012 to 12:00 p.m. PT on June 27, 2012)
  
• This contest is available to anyone worldwide with a valid current mailing address and has a Twitter account following @SQLServer
• Be sure to read the detailed rules below

Here are the new SQL Server T-Shirts selected by the SQL Family for the SQL Family that we’ll be giving away: 
 
              “Constantly Modeling”                               “Binary to ASCII” 
                                                                        (Says “SQL Server” in Binary Code)

       
      “Further. Forward. Faster.”                               “I’M A THINKER” 
                        (long sleeve)                  

OFFICIAL RULES - THE FANTATIC 12 OF 2012: BEHIND THE SCENES TWITTER CONTEST

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY.

COMMON TERMS USED IN THESE RULES:

These are the official rules that govern how The Fantastic 12 of 2012: Behind the Scenes Twitter Contest (“Contest”) promotion will operate. This promotion will be simply referred to as the “Contest” throughout the rest of these rules.
In these rules, “we,” “our,” and “us” refer to Microsoft Corporation, the sponsor of the Contest. “You” refers to an eligible Contest entrant.

WHAT ARE THE START AND END DATES?

This Contest starts at 10:30 a.m. PT on April 26, 2012 and ends at 12:00 p.m. PT on June 27, 2012 (“Entry Period”).

CAN I ENTER?
You are eligible to enter this Contest if you meet the following requirements at time of entry:

• If you are 18 of age or older, but are considered a minor in your place of residence, you should ask your parent’s or legal guardian’s permission prior to submitting an entry into this Contest; and
  
• You are NOT an employee of Microsoft Corporation or an employee of a Microsoft subsidiary; and
  
• You are NOT involved in any part of the administration and execution of this Contest; and
  
• You are NOT an immediate family (parent, sibling, spouse, child) or household member of a Microsoft employee, an employee of a Microsoft subsidiary, or a person involved in any part of the administration and execution of this Contest.

This Contest is void wherever prohibited by law.

HOW DO I ENTER?
At approximately 10:30am PT each Thursday during the Entry Period, a new The Fantastic 12 of 2012: Behind the Scenes trivia question will be posted online at www.twitter.com/sqlserver. To enter, you must do all of the following:

• Sign in to your Twitter account. If you do not have an account, visit www.twitter.com to create one. Twitter accounts are free.
  
• Once logged into your Twitter account, follow the links and instructions to become a follower of SQL Server at @SQLServer.
  
• From your own account, reply to the question from @SQLServer and include your answer in your reply. Your tweet must contain the #SQL2012 hashtag to be eligible for entry.
  
• Your answer must list the product/feature/technology name correctly including correct spelling. The SQL Server team reserves the right to decide winners as needed based on the answers provided.

The first person to correctly tweet a correct reply will win the prize described below. Limit of one entry per trivia question per person or Twitter account.

We are not responsible for entries that we do not receive for any reason, or for entries that we receive but are not decipherable for any reason.

We will automatically disqualify:

Any incomplete or illegible entry; and

• Any entries that we receive from you that are in excess of the entry limit described above
  
• Any entries that do not comply with Twitter.com terms of use

WINNER SELECTION AND PRIZES
The first person to correctly respond will receive Microsoft branded items, including one of the new SQL Server t-shirts. Approximate Retail Value $20. Limit of one prize per person during the Entry Period.

If you are a potential winner, we will notify you via Direct Message on Twitter to the account provided at time of entry within seven (7) days following the random drawing. If the notification that we send is returned as undeliverable, or you are otherwise unreachable for any reason, we may award the prize to an alternate, randomly selected winner. Winners can expect to receive their prize within two (2) to three (3) weeks following verification of eligibility.

If there is a dispute as to who is the potential winner, the SQL Server Team reserves the right to determine the winner and will consider the potential winner to be the authorized account holder of the Twitter account used to enter the Contest. If you are a potential winner, we may require you to sign an Affidavit of Eligibility, Liability/Publicity Release within 10 days of notification. If you are a potential winner and you are 18 or older, but are considered a minor in your place of legal residence, we may require your parent or legal guardian to sign all required forms on your behalf. If you do not complete the required forms as instructed and/or return the required forms within the time period listed on the winner notification message, we may disqualify you and select an alternate, randomly selected winner.

If you are confirmed as a winner of this Contest:

You may not exchange your prize for cash or any other merchandise or services. However, if for any reason an advertised prize is unavailable, we reserve the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater value; and

You may not designate someone else as the winner. If you are unable or unwilling to accept your prize, we will award it to an alternate potential winner; and

If you accept a prize, you will be solely responsible for all applicable taxes related to accepting the prize; and

If you are otherwise eligible for this Contest, but are considered a minor in your place of residence, we may award the prize to your parent/legal guardian on your behalf

WHAT ARE YOUR ODDS OF WINNING?
Your odds of winning this Contest depend on the number of eligible entries we receive and the accuracy of your answer.

WHAT OTHER CONDITIONS ARE YOU AGREEING TO BY ENTERING THIS CONTEST?
By entering this Contest you agree:

• To abide by these Official Rules; and
  
• To release and hold harmless Microsoft, and its respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, employees and agents from any and all liability or any injury, loss or damage of any kind arising from or in connection with this Contest or any prize won; and
  
• That Microsoft’s decisions will be final and binding on all matters related to this Contest; and
  
• That by accepting a prize, Microsoft may use of your proper name and state of residence online and in print, or in any other media, in connection with this Contest, without payment or compensation to you, except where prohibited by law.

WHAT LAWS GOVERN THE WAY THIS CONTEST IS EXECUTED AND ADMINISTRATED?
This Contest will be governed by the laws of the State of Washington, and you consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts of the State of Washington for any disputes arising out of this Contest.

WHAT IF SOMETHING UNEXPECTED HAPPENS AND THE CONTEST CAN’T RUN AS PLANNED?
If cheating, a virus, bug, catastrophic event, or any other unforeseen or unexpected event that cannot be reasonably anticipated or controlled, (also referred to as force majeure) affects the fairness and / or integrity of this Contest, we reserve the right to cancel, change or suspend this Contest. This right is reserved whether the event is due to human or technical error. If a solution cannot be found to restore the integrity of the Contest, we reserve the right to select winners from among all eligible entries received before we had to cancel, change or suspend the Contest.

If you attempt to compromise the integrity or the legitimate operation of this Contest by hacking or by cheating or committing fraud in ANY way, we may seek damages from you to the fullest extent permitted by law. Further, we may ban you from participating in any of our future Contest, so please play fairly.

HOW CAN YOU FIND OUT WHO WON?
We will post the winners on @SQLServer each day as they are determined.

WHO IS SPONSORING THIS CONTEST?
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052

Welcome to the Fantastic 12 of 2012: Behind the Scenes Blog Series! If you haven’t read The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012, you can download the PDF here. Over the next several weeks we will be publishing video blogs that will provide a behind the scenes look at how SQL Server 2012 was developed, some the feedback we’ve received, answers to common questions, and insights from members of the SQL Server Engineering Teams that worked on the capabilities that are part of SQL Server 2012.

In our first installment of this series, we focus on Required 9s and Data Protection. Luis Carlos Vargas Herring, Senior Program Manager, from the SQL Server Team shares his top 3 features that he is most excited about around AlwaysOn and his favorite moments while developing the AlwaysOn capabilities in SQL Server 2012.

We’ll have new posts in this series every week and we’ve got some special surprises in store. So keep coming back to see what we have planned next!  
 

Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012

1  Required 9s and Data Protection
Deliver required uptime and data protection, server to cloud without wasting time and money

Greater Uptime

• SQL Server AlwaysOn: Help reduce planned and unplanned downtime with the new integrated high availability and disaster recovery solution. Achieve maximum application availability and data protection with options to configure multiple secondaries and the ability to quickly failover and recover applications.
• Windows Server Core: Help reduce OS patching by as much as 50-60%† with new support for Windows Server Core.
• Maintain uptime during maintenance operations using enhanced online operations and eliminate planned downtime on Hyper-V environment using Live Migration.

Improved Productivity

• Common Tools: Configuration Wizard, Windows PowerShell support, dashboard, system views and System Center alignment simplifies deploying and managing of Availability Groups within AlwaysOn.

Greater Hardware Utilization

• Help reduce idle hardware and improve IT cost efficiency and performance using Active Secondaries which enables offloading of various workloads to the secondary instances.
  

Download SQL Server 2012 today and learn more about SQL Server 2012 through our on-demand Virtual Launch Event.

 

† The percentage reduction in patching varies and can be less based on the server roles that are enabled and the type of patches that are applied.

Last week at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit in Los Angeles we heard from customers such as Revlon, Menlo Worldwide Logistics, LA Fitness and Great Western Bank talking about the benefits of using Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) solutions to solve a variety of business issues. Given the great momentum we are seeing with customers using SQL Server BI capabilities and following the recent announcement of the general availability of SQL Server 2012, I thought it would be useful to put together some of the recent SQL Server 2012 BI, big data and data warehouse customer stories. Each of the summaries below has a link to the individual case studies, but if you want to search or filter on all the SQL Server customer stories, visit the SQL Server website.

Volvo Car Corporation
When Volvo Car Corporation split off from Ford in 2010, it needed to develop its own stand-alone IT environment in some areas. At the same time, the company wanted to improve its business intelligence (BI) capabilities and operational efficiency. So Volvo decided to prototype a Microsoft data management solution that simplifies its IT environment, provides graphical self-service reporting capabilities, and improves collaboration.

“Instead of having a few expert users, with Power View we can give BI to entire departments.” IT Architect, Volvo Car Corporation

Klout
Klout wanted to give consumers, brands, and partners faster, more detailed insight into hundreds of terabytes of social-network data. It also wanted to boost efficiency. To do so, Klout deployed a business intelligence solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise and Apache Hadoop. As a result, Klout processes data queries in near real time, minimizes costs, boosts efficiency, increases insight, and facilitates innovation.

“When it comes to business intelligence, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 demonstrates that the platform has continued to advance and keep up with the innovations that are happening in big data.” David Mariani, VP of Engineering

Menlo Worldwide Logistics
Con-way subsidiary Menlo Worldwide Logistics intends to drive double-digit growth of its supply chain services business over the next 3–4 years. It expects business intelligence (BI) to be a main driver of new customer value and growth but has not been satisfied with the capabilities of its existing IBM Cognos and DB2 software platform. To jump-start its BI effort, Menlo is deploying the Microsoft BI platform, which will help it attract business with improved analytics and new value-added customer services.

” The flexible Microsoft BI approach enables our end-user teams to tailor solutions to meet the unique requirements of our customers while taking advantage of a common, consistent, and cost-effective platform” Mark Molau, Senior IT Manager for Menlo Worldwide Logistics

ABB S.p.A.
ABB S.p.A. is owned by ABB, a global power and automation company headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. To meet business demands, ABB S.p.A. needed to give employees better business intelligence (BI) capabilities. The company also wanted to consolidate its data to give employees a single view of business and customer information. ABB S.p.A. is implementing a Microsoft BI and data warehouse solution that will provide better business insight and give employees a unified data view. The solution also gives the company the flexibility to add analytical tools going forward.

“Using the SQL Server Power View tool and the BI Semantic Model in SQL Server 2012, our employees will be able to easily create multidimensional reports, providing better insight into business and customer data.” Andrea Franchi, BI Technical Lead, ABB S.p.A

Stein Mart
Stein Mart, a nationwide department store, needed better access to business data to set prices each week. By implementing a Microsoft data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) solution, the company can manage information more efficiently and cut reporting time from hours to minutes. The solution is easy to use and manage, and the company has cut its total cost of ownership by more than 60 percent.

“The alternative solutions considered would have required purchasing separate reporting, ETL and integration, and database management tools. We’ve reduced our total cost of ownership about $600,000 with a Microsoft BI solution,” Ilan Wajsman, Director of IT at Stein Mart

Which other are customers using SQL Server?

Visit the customer story page on the SQL Server website which allows you to filter on over 200 customer stories by Industry, Country, Solution Workload, Partner or SQL Server version. This will help you find the customer stories most suited to the scenario you are working on.

David Hobbs-Mallyon
Senior Marketing Manager , SQL Server Marketing

With PASS SQLRally Dallas just a month away, Microsoft SQL Server Senior Marketing Manager and PASS Director Jennifer Moser talked with PASS President Bill Graziano about what to expect at the May 10-11, 2012 conference focusing on all things SQL Server.

Jennifer: Who should attend PASS SQLRally, and how would you describe the event to someone not familiar with it?

Bill: If you’re looking for high-quality, affordable SQL Server training that will have immediate payback in terms of practical solutions and expert contacts, SQLRally is the event for you.

Our US SQLRally is in Dallas, Texas, this year. And the North Texas SQL Server Users Group (NTSSUG), with the support of all our South Central Region PASS Chapters, has put together an excellent roster of industry experts, Microsoft MVPs, and Microsoft SQLCAT and CSS team members to help you learn and connect. In the end, SQLRally is really about best practices and effective troubleshooting – helping you work smarter, save your company money, and build a better SQL Server environment.

Jennifer: How many attendees are you expecting, and what are some highlights you’re looking forward to?

Bill: We’re expecting 500 die-hard SQL Server pros at SQLRally, and I’m expecting to face a lot of hard choices: How many of the 60 top technical sessions can I fit in? How much time can I devote to discussing my questions with members of the Microsoft SQLCAT and CSS teams at the SQL Server Clinic? And when exactly will I catch any sleep with all the after-hours networking activities on tap?

Jennifer: In addition to the sessions in the main conference program, SQLRally also has 2 days of pre-conference seminars May 8-9.

Bill: Yes, we’re kicking off SQLRally with 7 full-day pre-conference seminars before the conference starts. Talk about tough choices – every one of these workshops is a must-see. To help people decide which ones they want to attend, we’ve put together a Q&A series with our presenters that give attendees a sneak peak at what they’ll be learning. Each pre-con costs $219 – really a bargain for the opportunity to spend 7 hours with any of these experts and fantastic teachers.

Jennifer: I can’t wait to connect up with the SQLRally attendees, speakers, and PASS volunteers in Dallas, but PASS also has a lot going on in the next month for SQL Server pros in other parts of the world.

Bill: Absolutely – in fact 24 Hours of PASS - Russia is tomorrow, April 12, and PASS SQLRally Moscow is this Saturday, April 14. We also have a free PASS SQLSaturday tour across Australia and New Zealand April 12-April 28, hitting Brisbane, Wellington (New Zealand), Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide, and Perth – not to mention events in Rio de Janeiro, Costa Rica, and Johannesburg. It’s a wonderful, busy time in the SQL Server community.

Jennifer: It’s exciting to see all the enthusiasm around SQL Server and community learning around the world. Thanks for sharing about these upcoming events.

Bill: Great talking with you, Jennifer. Looking forward to seeing you and all our #sqlfamily members at SQLRally Dallas – it’s going to be a fun time!

In this post I want to spend some time discussing “in-memory” database technologies and Microsoft’s technical roadmap in this space. In-memory database technologies are approaching a disruptive tipping point for the database industry and we’re going to hear a lot more about them going forward. These technologies are already reshaping the analytics and reporting segment and they will increasingly impact operational and transaction processing workloads as well.

First, a quick review. Virtually all database management systems (DBMS) try to keep portions of a database resident in RAM. The DBMS manages the transfer of disk based data to and from random access memory (RAM) which is allocated to a region often called a “buffer pool”. For certain scenarios, you can even allocate enough buffer pool space to fit an entire database into RAM. While this can be a viable way to operate a performance sensitive database, it is not what is meant by an “in-memory” DBMS.

Traditional DBMSs were designed to support databases which are typically much larger than available RAM. In-memory DBMSs, on the other hand, are typically designed to support databases which fit in RAM while a number of them support databases which can be larger than available RAM.

In-memory DBMSs have been around for some time. They were originally employed in performance sensitive applications serving telephony and financial services markets. There is a resurgence of interest around in-memory database technology and we are starting to see in-memory DBMS technology reach a disruptive tipping point for a number of scenarios.

Disruptive tipping points occur when a technology comes along and provides a significant improvement in service along several dimensions. Often the disruptive technology has been available for some time and has served more niche scenarios before a set of factors converge to enable a 10x or more improvement for a broader class of scenarios. Consider the recent disruption when non-volatile Flash memory displaced hard disk drives (HDDs) in personal electronic devices such as MP3 players. In a single generation of these devices, the cost, capacity, power and improved physical characteristics of Flash memory displaced hard disks. Flash memory wasn’t new but the price, performance, and durability converged to a point where HDD storage was no longer attractive for this scenario.

In the rest of this post we’ll cover the following:

• The technology trends setting up the disruptive in-memory opportunity.
• The design approaches used in in-memory technologies.
• Microsoft’s in-memory DBMS technologies.

The Trends

The last several decades have been breathtaking for information technology advances. The landscape for people designing database systems is constantly changing because some aspects of the technology components continue to advance with exponential change, such as transistor density with Moore’s law, while other aspects are tconstant or evolve with near-linear growth, such as HDD random access time. When these change rates are considered in total, the natural balance between technology elements can change dramatically. In particular, the “speeds and feeds” of hard disks, RAM, and CPUs have evolved dramatically over the last 10-20 years, setting us up for the in-memory inflection.

Most database systems were designed to operate from the ubiquitous HDD which has been subject to physical limits since its inception. In particular, the electromechanical elements to position a read/write unit over the physical media have been a constant challenge. While disk transfer bandwidth and capacity have experienced exponential growth over the last few decades, the time to place the read/write head in the right place has improved far less so. As a result, the sequential bandwidth of reading from disk has experienced exponential growth, while the ability to randomly access small amounts of data on disk has not. This shift led the late Jim Gray, one of the pioneers of the database industry, to proclaim, “Disk is the new tape”.

Dynamic RAM (DRAM), on the other hand, has been riding Moore’s law since its introduction. It has gotten cheaper and its capacity has increased dramatically. Like the HDD, system designers have been able to exponentially increase the bandwidth to and from DRAM but latency, the ability to randomly access a single byte, hasn’t been able to keep pace. This means that the latency to access a random byte of DRAM, measured in CPU processor cycles, has gone from near one CPU cycle 15 to 20 years ago to hundreds of CPU cycles with modern systems.

Moore’s Law still holds in the CPU arena but the designers have run into physics there as well. Up until about 5 years ago software developers got a free ride through faster clock speeds and improved architecture of CPUs. Unfortunately CPU power consumption is not linear with respect to clock speed and increasing clock speeds creates more challenges keeping elements of the processor coherent with respect to the clock. That forces CPU designers to keep things closer together. More power, closer together, created a thermal management problem which essentially put an end to ever increasing clock speeds. Since chip designers still have Moore’s law working for them, they can continue to put more transistors on a CPU die and these transistors need to be used somehow. The result, as we’ve all experienced over the last several years, is more processor cores, more on-board cache, and more specialized functions and instructions. All of these new CPU transistors can be put to good use for in-memory database scenarios but they require a new design approach.

One common theme across all of these changes is that bandwidth and capacity tend to increase much faster than reduction in latency[1]. Latency tends to hit us from both electromechanical fronts, such as hard disk drive seek time, as well as speed of light physics which impacts networks, DRAM latency, etc.

To really understand the dynamics we need to look at these elements from a relative perspective:

1. CPUs are getting more transistors but they are being used for multiple cores and specialized functions. Thus CPUs can perform a dramatic amount of work – if we can feed them the data they need to keep busy. This is a major challenge on data-centric workloads such as database systems.
2. DRAM is getting much larger and the system designers are working to keep the bandwidth between CPUs and DRAM high enough to keep feeding the processor.
3. Disks, well, as Jim Gray said, “Disks are the new tape”. They are places to store massive amounts of relatively cold storage.

In essence – everything is moving farther apart. Today it takes 100s of processor cycles to fetch a random byte from DRAM and many millions of cycles to access a random byte on a hard drive.

The answer, in as much as there is one, to creating high performance systems in the face of these shifts, is twofold: 1) bring things closer to CPU to reduce latency, and 2) stream data as much as possible since bandwidth is continuing to keep up whereas latency is hitting the limits imposed by physics. These forces, set up outside the world of databases, are leading the database implementers to rethink the design approaches they’ve used for decades.

In-memory database design approaches:

I’ll briefly describe several architectural patterns that designers of in-memory database systems employ. Fully describing the patterns I touch on could fill a book but a brief mention will highlight the differences from more traditional database technologies.

Compression

Many in-memory database systems employ data compression of some form. This helps to hold more data in the relatively scarce and relatively expensive DRAM. Decompressing the data, when necessary, to operate on it does take processor cycles, but, considering that getting uncompressed data off of a disk may take many million processor cycles, keeping more compressed data in RAM and then spending a few CPU cycles to decompress the data from there makes a lot of sense these days.

Data structures and algorithms

Foundational database algorithms are being revised to support in-memory needs. One approach, known as column based storage, is particularly powerful on modern systems. Most traditional database systems store data in records or rows. In these systems, an employee record may contain a first name, last name, employee ID, etc. and these attributes would all be stored together on-disk and in-memory. Column based approaches store all the values for individual attributes, such as employee ID, last-hire date, last name, together whether on disk or in-memory. Given this structure you might ask how we put “John Doe” back together to display all his attributes if they’re all stored separately. The answer is that each attribute (column) typically has an implicit ordinal number. So, if John Doe is the 56th record in the database we can find the 56th entry in each column storage set and get John Doe’s details.

So how does column storage help us? Let’s assume we wanted to find all employees who were hired in the last year. Finding these employees means searching the “last-hire-date” column. Since we placed all of the list-hire-date values together and likely compressed them as well, the data structure which stores this attribute is very dense – it only contains the data we need to do the search and we don’t have to wade through first and last names, etc. For reasons I won’t go into here, modern CPUs work especially well when scanning through dense data structures. With respect to compression; let’s say that our employees can have one of three states in an employee-status attribute – active, on-leave, or terminated. These three states can be represented with 2-bits each rather than 8 bits if we were to use a byte to represent the values. Let’s also assume that we have 1200 employees and 1104 of them are “active”. If we partition or sort the employees we can represent all 1104 active employees in a very compact representation using simple scheme called “run-length encoding” – basically noted that ‘the next 1104 employees all have the value of “Active”’. There are other more exotic compression schemes used in column based stores but these simple examples serve to make the key points.

Column based storage also lends itself to multi-core processors. Assume we wanted to find all terminated employees whose last hire date was within 18 months. To solve this query we could have one core find all terminated employees and another work on finding those employees with the appropriate hire date.

Locating those records which satisfy both the hire date and employee status criteria is as simple as intersecting the record ordinals which pass both criterion.

The role of modeling

Column based storage techniques work particularly well in analytic workloads which are dominated by numeric values and dimensions such as the employee-status attribute we discussed earlier. These workloads have been the domain of multi-dimensional OLAP (MOLAP) products, such as the original form of SQL Server Analysis Services. Traditional MOLAP products required the definition of a logical model so that aggregates, such as sales per quarter or sales per region could be pre-computed and used to rapidly answer questions of appropriate form. The logical model specifies the information model and types of questions you can ask of the data. The logical model also becomes the skeleton by which we can define a physical data model, such as where to pre-compute and pre-aggregate data to support dimensional queries. The raw performance of in-memory database technologies obviates the need for precomputing aggregations and other forms of indexing. With in-memory database technologies, the logical model can evolve based upon the needs of the business domain without having to update a physical model. This combination enables business analysts to create a logical model which meets the business needs without having to become experts in the physical design aspects required of MOLAP products. This results in greater agility and is a foundational part of Microsoft’s self-service managed BI approach.

What is Microsoft doing?

Microsoft has been investing in, and shipping, in-memory database technologies for some time. We have created a column based storage engine which ships as part of the “PowerPivot” add-in for Microsoft Excel. In SQL Server 2012, this ships as the xVelocity in-memory analytics engine as part of SQL Server Analysis Services. This same engine, integrated into the SQL Server RDBMS server ships as the xVelocity memory optimized columnstore index. This columnstore index will make its way into our parallel data warehousing product as well. One SQL Server 2012 customer was able to achieve a 200x speedup through the use of this new in-memory optimized columnstore index type. You can read about the case study here.

In addition to the obvious performance gains, there are many advantages to using a common engine. In the case of Power Pivot and Analysis Services there is a common Data Analysis Expressions language, known as DAX, which allows analytical queries to run identically in Excel, Excel Services or SQL Server Analysis Services. This is incredibly valuable as it allows business analytics models developed Microsoft Excel to run identically in a server based Analysis Services deployment. In SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services there is a new tool which allows you to very easily upsize an Excel based PowerPivot solution to a server based Analysis Services solution. This allows analytic solutions to be developed in a self-service approach within Excel, and then easily converted to a managed IT solution as needed.

Most of what we’ve covered in this post is about column based in-memory engines designed for analytic and data warehousing workloads – something we’ve been shipping for years. While column based stores are great for these scenarios, they are not optimal for transaction processing workloads which are characterized by inserting, modifying, or reading a single or small number of records at a time. Having to assemble individual records from multiple attributes, as necessary with column based storage models, is typically more expensive than row-based storage models. While most of the current success in in-memory database technologies has been through column based storage for analytic workloads, there are in-memory optimizations which apply to row-based transactional workloads as well. Microsoft is investing in this space as well and has conducted experiments with customers which have achieved greater than 10x speedup on existing transaction processing tasks – more on this in the future.

In-memory database technologies offer incredible advances but ultimately the highest value is achieved when these capabilities are delivered as a part of a complete data platform. There are benefits in terms of the “fundamentals” (management, security, information governance) but also how this enables these capabilities to be more easily used – by both existing and new applications. In terms of what we’ve done so far, by delivering as an index in the relational engine, integrating into Analysis services and delivering an experience for Excel users with PowerPivot, we have an easy on-ramp for existing applications as well as enabling whole new scenarios like self-service business intelligence on the desktop. Our technical approach considers not only best-in-class capability but how to integrate and deliver as a part of a complete data platform – ultimately the highest value for customers will be achieved this way.

Summary

A set of forces shaping information technology are setting up conditions for a tipping point where in-memory database technologies will become common over the next 5-10 years. Analytic workloads, dominated by read-mostly queries over numeric facts or numerically encodable dimensions are the first scenario where in-memory technologies are becoming widely adopted. Over time, in memory technologies will also be applied to transaction processing workloads.

You’ll likely hear a lot more about in-memory database technologies going forward. At Microsoft, we believe in this technology inflection point and have been shipping in-memory database technologies for some time in Microsoft Excel Power Pivot and SQL Server Analysis Services. With the introduction of SQL Server 2012, the core relational database engine will also make use of our in memory database technologies as a columnstore based index. Customers with relational data warehouse workloads using this new column based index are experiencing incredible speedups for a broad class of queries making use of this new capability.

Microsoft is also investing in other in-memory database technologies which will ship as the technology and opportunities mature. As a taste of what’s to come, we’re working on an in-memory database solution in our lab and building our real-world scenarios to demonstrate the potential. One such scenario, based upon one of Microsoft’s online services businesses, contains a fact table of 100 billion rows. In this scenario we can perform three calculations per fact – 300 billion calculations in total, with a query response time of 1/3 of a second. There are no user defined aggregations in this implementation; we actually scan over the compressed column store in real time.

In memory database technologies make it an exciting time for both the people building these systems and the customers who use them. On behalf of the SQL Server product engineering team, I hope you have an opportunity to use our in-memory database technologies to solve new challenges in your own organization.

Dave Campbell
Technical Fellow
Microsoft SQL Server

[1] David A. Patterson. 2004. Latency lags bandwidth. Communication of ACM Vol 47, 10 (October 2004), pp. 71-75.

With the launch of SQL Server 2012, Microsoft is changing the game in the world of data management. The introduction of SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups delivers a new replication mechanism that gives customers unprecedented confidence to put mission critical applications on SQL Server. But Availability Groups do much more than provide failover and clustering. They enable rolling upgrades that can reduce OS patching by as much as 50-60%! Customers can now leverage active secondaries to distribute workloads, provide self-service business intelligence, and to offload backups operations. All of these enhancements combined provide greater piece of mind, flexibility, and efficiency.

Now add the EMC VNX Family to your configuration to optimize your SQL Server 2012 deployment! EMC’s industry leading FAST Suite allows SQL Server 2012 users to dramatically improve performance, lower TCO, and store your valuable data on a platform that is battle-hardened in the most mission critical environments. The efficiency dilemma starts with the fact that not all data is created equal. Most data does not require high-performing disk; yet, often, oversized systems are used to meet performance requirements. Tuning systems manually is a full time job, a luxury fewer and fewer companies can afford.

Deploying the VNX FAST Suite ensures that the hottest data is on the highest performing storage (usually solid state disks – SSD), while cold data is automatically moved to more cost-effective high capacity hard disks. The result? Up to 80% less time spent tuning and managing the workload, better performance, and fewer drives to purchase. In short, a more efficient and powerful system…...that automatically ensures that data is the right place at the right time!

Back to SQL Server 2012. We set out to demonstrate how the VNX FAST Suite can enhance SQL Server 2012 and its AlwaysOn feature. EMC’s VNX has achieved compelling results leveraging FAST Cache, a VNX technology that moves hot spots onto SSD’s in real time. Based on extensive testing, VNX FAST Cache was able to accelerate transactions per second (TPS) of primary and active secondary copies by up to 4 times that of an all hard disk drive-based storage subsystem.

While mileage will vary, it is clear that FAST Cache is ideal for SQL Server 2012 OLTP. Sequential decision support workloads, such as data warehousing, will see significant benefit from the VNX High-Bandwidth option with further enhancements coming out in the next VNX product release. This can dramatically improve access time to information, if customers decide to leverage active secondary database copies for self-service business intelligence.

EMC has had a long-standing history of solid integration between Microsoft and EMC’s management frameworks. This close cooperation ensures faster provisioning and issue resolution in SQL Server environments. EMC’s Storage Integrator (ESI) is a no cost and easy-to-use tool that streamlines Hyper-V provisioning and visualizes the storage to VM relationship. EMC is also introducing additional System Center management packs that map the relationships between physical disk, storage subsystem, Hyper-V VMs, SQL Server databases, and applications like Microsoft SharePoint. When a drive in a storage subsystem fails, administrators can determine which SharePoint farm or SQL Server instance is impacted and act accordingly based on pre-defined run books.

The powerful combination of EMC and Microsoft will continue. Come see how by visiting EMC at Microsoft Management Summit (MMS 2012), Microsoft TechEd 2012, and EMC World. See the power of VNX and SQL Server optimizing your business and IT infrastructure.

We encourage you to visit the Community: Everything EMC and Microsoft to learn more and  engage with EMC’s experts for Microsoft.

To stay competitive, organizations must become more and more adept at managing and mining data to identify trends, measure return on investment, maximize performance and minimize risks. The world is changing, critical data is captured across many new data sources and formats that span internal systems, external systems and social media. Organizations of all sizes need an analytic platform to integrate and transform this data into actionable insight.

But here’s some great news! Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing are getting easier to implement and manage.

Solutions based on the Dell PowerEdge 12th Generation platform and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 are pre-configured, tested and verified and are designed to simplify and streamline business intelligence in your organization. SQL Server 2012 includes enhanced data warehouse and analytics capabilities, and Dell provides leading edge performance, scalability and management options. Together, you get something pretty amazing.

The Dell Advantage

Historically, organizations contemplating data warehouse and business intelligence projects have faced several key challenges, including large up front and maintenance investments, the need to develop new skill sets and complicated data integration requirements. Dell’s SQL Server 2012-based solutions are designed to meet these challenges by providing pre-integrated options that streamline implementation, capitalize on existing resources and accelerate time to value.

Our solutions capitalize on the new power and features of Microsoft SQL Server and deliver:

• Faster time-to-value using integrated, balanced and verified architectures jointly engineered with Microsoft.
• Outstanding performance on Dell’s 12th gGneration server platform, including enhanced onboard memory, the world's first hot-swappable PCIe SSD storage, and blazingly fast processor speeds. Our solutions are optimized for better data warehouse performance.
• Deep expertise as the largest Large Account Reseller/OEM for SQL Server. Dell and Microsoft have been delivering solutions together for over 25 years!
• A single point of contact for purchases, services and support. SQL Server 2012 is available for purchase worldwide from Dell starting April 3, 2012.
• Innovation to ramp up data warehousing and analytics performance, including advances in hardware as well as leading edge storage, performance and integration solutions.

Dell’s SQL Server solutions leverage Dell’s PowerEdge 12th Generation platform or are currently being migrated to this leading edge hardware. Performance is the #1 concern for organizations implementing business intelligence solutions, and PowerEdge 12th Generation servers feature the latest generation of Intel processors for high performance, third generation PCI Express slots for faster throughput, and PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) cards for faster disk I/O. The servers can handle large amounts of memory, to ensure optimal performance at all times.

Our SQL Server solutions also capitalize on advanced technologies from Dell’s Boomi and Compellent acquisitions to enhance the features and performance of our business intelligence offerings.

• Dell Boomi addresses the growing need to pull real-time data into data warehouses and supports traditional batch ETL data integration. This robust integration platform successfully bridges the domains of application integration (e.g. real-time) and data integration (ETL) to support both integration needs on one solution. Dell Boomi comes standard on all QuickStart Data Warehouses and is available to support all our other analytics and BI solutions.
• Dell Compellent Storage , built on Dell Fluid Data Architecture, optimally enables growth in SQL Server capacity and performance while reducing TCO. Compellent Instant Replays capture automatic and consistent database snapshots, guaranteeing resilient and reliable SQL Server databases.

Dell and Microsoft – Three Great Solutions

Through our strategic Microsoft alliance, Dell has designed and engineered tightly integrated end-to-end solutions and provides end-to-end services and support. Our goal is to provide superior technology and solutions that meet needs of all market segments, industries and business objectives. We have three great SQL Server options:

• The new Dell Quickstart Data Warehouse Appliance is coming soon and will be the first data warehouse appliance in the market to run on SQL Server 2012.   It is designed for mid-market and departmental use to enable easy data access, analysis for better decision making and the factory integration  delivers results faster. This new data warehousing appliance, with Microsoft SQL Server 2012, takes advantage of the Dell Boomi acquisition for data integration and has been in beta test since February 2012.
• Fast Track for SQL Server 2012, a reference architecture developed jointly by Dell and Microsoft, combines Dell’s PowerEdge 12th generation servers and Fluid Data Architecture with the benefits of SQL Server software.  Delivered as reference architecture, customers receive step-by-step best practices, eliminating any guesswork on balancing and configuring the components of the hardware and software.  This solution reduces the risk, cost, and time to successful implementation and gives customers one of the lowest costs for a complete data warehouse solution in the market. This offering includes both data warehousing and major components of an integrated Business Intelligence and Enterprise Information Management platform.
• Dell’s Parallel Data Warehouse Appliance is a jointly developed appliance between Microsoft and Dell for larger customers with the most demanding data warehousing needs.  With scalability up to 600 Terabytes, the solution is delivered as an appliance, with software and hardware already integrated, giving customers the fastest time to solution and immediate value at a fraction of the cost of acquisition, operation and maintenance of other enterprise data warehouse solutions in the market. Because PDW is part of the SQL Server portfolio, customers will receive both Data Warehousing and major components of an integrated Business Intelligence and data integration platform included in the purchase.

Final Thoughts

The successful implementation and management of SQL Server and data warehousing technologies requires more than hardware and licensing.  With remote and on-site installation services and ongoing support from Dell Services professionals, customers can speed time to production, reduce costs and downtime, simplify management and ensure consistency throughout their IT environments. Dell has been providing enterprise-level data warehouse solutions and services for more than a decade across a broad spectrum of industries. 

Over the last 25 years, Dell and Microsoft have worked together to develop innovative complete solutions that combine the best of our hardware, software and services. Our Parallel Data Warehouse and Quickstart Data Warehouse appliances demonstrate how we collaborate to deliver optimized, innovative and integrated solutions that are much greater than the sum of their parts.

To learn more visit: www.dell.com/sql

Carey Dietert
Marketing Director, Dell Workloads Outbound Marketing, Product Group

Microsoft is excited to announce the general availability (GA) of SQL Server 2012 for purchase and download. SQL Server 2012 has already been deployed for production use by hundreds of global, industry-leading customers, such as Volvo Car Corp., Revlon, the HSN, Klout and LG Chemical.

SQL Server 2012 delivers a powerful new set of capabilities for mission-critical workloads, business intelligence and hybrid IT across traditional datacenters and public and private clouds. This includes:

• SQL Server AlwaysOn, a new high availability solution delivering increased application availability, lower TCO and ease of use.
• xVelocity, in-memory technologies significantly boost data warehouse and analytics performance by up to 100x.
• Power View, a web-based, highly interactive, data visualization and presentation solution designed to enable business users and decision makers to quickly discover meaningful insights from their data.
• Data integration and management, new and enhanced tools to deliver credible, consistent data to the right users at the right time, including new SQL Server Data Quality Services and enhanced Master Data Services.
• Enhanced PowerPivot functionalities enable customers to leverage new advanced analytic capabilities and further ease of use while still working within the familiar tools provided by Excel.
• The new Business Intelligence (BI) Semantic Model provides a single, scalable model for BI applications, from reporting and analysis to dashboards and scorecards.
• SQL Server Data Tools, a new tool that unifies SQL Server and cloud SQL Azure development for both professional database and application developers.

Customers can download the latest version of SQL Server 2012 here. Also, for a deep dive on all things SQL Server 2012, check out the SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event. All content from the Virtual Launch Event will be available until June 30, 2012. The event features 30+ webcasts from SQL Server 2012 experts in addition to a number of other multimedia features from Microsoft partners.

We are also pleased to announce the release of the second Preview of our Hadoop based service for Windows Azure. We are expanding capacity of this service by up to 4x to accommodate exceptionally high demand.  This preview provides an elastic Hadoop service with more reliability through disaster recovery of the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) NameNode, and support for advanced analytics through Hadoop projects like Mahout.  In addition, it provides actionable insights to everyone through familiar tools like Office, SharePoint and award winning BI tools like PowerPivot and Power View in SQL Server 2012.  This preview also enables customers to enrich their data by connecting to data and intelligence outside their firewalls.  Customers interested in signing up for the latest preview should visit http://www.hadooponazure.com.

We are very excited that the official UK SQL Server 2012 Technical Launch Event is happening next week in London, UK on March 29 – 31, 2012. SQLBits X is the second largest dedicated SQL Server & BI conference in the world, run by UK MVPs and community leaders, drawing highly technical audience from across Europe. It is a fully packed three day event with amazing deep SQL Server content with over 70 breakout sessions and a great opportunity to network with SQL Server professionals. Quentin Clark, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for database systems, will deliver a 75-minute SQL Server 2012 demo packed keynote adventure.

If you are not able to attend SQLBits X next week, don’t worry the UK SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event is still available through June 30, 2012. You will be able to hear from Microsoft executives including Maurice Martin, Director of Server, Data and Cloud Platforms in Microsoft UK, and watch over 30 sessions to learn about the new capabilities of SQL Server 2012 at your own pace, on your own schedule. The UK Virtual Launch Event is sponsored by 10 key UK partners:

Altius Consulting is a leading Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence consultancy specializing in Microsoft solutions. With over 18 years’ experience we design and build business-critical information systems to help businesses improve their Performance Management and Business Intelligence. Globally, we have bases in the United Kingdom, United States of America, and the Channel Islands. By improving their systems and processes, clients experience visible improvements to their knowledge management which help them to gain competitive advantages.

 

From Electronic Prescribing through to Paperless Clinical Management and even Pharmacy robotic interfaces, Ascribe's breadth of integrated systems has been proven to help Trusts improve their efficiency and cut costs. Ascribe's clinical systems are robust and scalable, from departmental systems through to strategic enterprise-scale solutions. The company is a Microsoft Gold Partner.

 

Black Marble is an established IT consultancy and custom development company which specializes in delivering innovative technology solutions on the Microsoft platform, and has developed a solid reputation for its clear and direct approach to solving complex business problems. Black Marble was the first UK Microsoft Partner to achieve the Gold competency in both: Portals and Collaboration and Application Lifecycle Management, as well as holding five Silver standard competencies (Content Management, Digital Marketing, Search, Software Development and Web Development).

 

Blueprint helps organizations to make better use of a strategic resource: the data they own. We specialize in business intelligence, performance management and financial planning systems, and data warehouses. The systems we develop provide valuable insights by answering important business questions, ranging from the complex (such as ‘how profitable are our clients?’) to the deceptively simple (for example ‘how many people do we employ?’). Our performance management systems help organizations to measure progress from basic KPI monitoring and reporting to more sophisticated approaches such as 'Balanced Scorecards'.

 

CONTEMPORARY is the UK Business Analytics operation of intelligence AG. CONTEMPORARY has long been recognized as a successful, tightly focused, business intelligence consultancy. Our top tier Microsoft Gold Business Intelligence Competency status and associated accreditations demonstrate our experience, our commitment to technical excellence and our track record of delivering outstanding client solutions. CONTEMPORARY’s single focus remains the provision of high value Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence consulting, training and support services.

 

A Microsoft GOLD Data Platform partner, DSP Managed Services is a leading provider of SQL Server Consultancy and Managed Services for the Microsoft platform. DSP was one of the first Microsoft partners in the UK to achieve “GOLD Data Platform” competency and have held this for over 2 years, reflecting their continued investment in the Microsoft Partner Program and success in both demonstrating and delivering solutions in performance, scalability and availability for SQL Server enterprises.

 

IMGROUP are a major provider of Information Management and Collaboration solutions with an excellent track record of delivering Business Intelligence, Data Integration, Data Warehousing, Performance Management, Portal, Collaboration, CRM and Cloud based solutions. Our innovation and ability to deliver solutions that solve complex information management problems has won us several highly coveted awards and industry recognitions including Microsoft’s Global Partner of the Year Award in Information Management Solutions for four consecutive years.

 

Quantix, part of the Interoute group, is one of the UK’s premier providers of Managed Cloud Services, Application Managed Services and Hosted Infrastructure Solutions for Enterprises and Independent Software Vendors – a true Managed Cloud Services provider. Our secure, dependable platform and proven application expertise allows us to provision a wide portfolio of both hosted and on-premise application management services that can deliver considerable IT cost savings and de-risk technology investments.

 

As Information Management experts Ridgian is committed to delivering business solutions coupled with a sensible use of technology and one of the major reasons our clients chose to work with us is in our long history and pedigree in delivering solutions across SharePoint, SQL Server, Business Intelligence and .NET. Our specialism is where the customers’ requirements span a number of these different technologies because we are not limited to one aspect or component of the Microsoft technology stack.

 

Tagetik is 100% dedicated to simplifying and streamlining business processes for the Office of Finance to accelerate informed decisions that achieve strategic goals. Our award-winning Tagetik 4.0 Performance Management software is the ideal solution for global companies that seek a clearly superior level of financial expertise in a single unified solution for planning, forecasting, consolidation, close, reporting, profitability management, disclosure, governance, risk, compliance, and analysis. Tagetik’s deep finance expertise, innovation, and high satisfaction rates have been cited by leading analyst firms and Tagetik was named Microsoft ISV/Software Line of Business Partner of the Year for 2011.

Register today for SQLBits X and join us online for the UK SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event.

For more global and community events please visit the SQL Server Events page.

SQL Server Connections is happening next week (March 26 – March 30) in Las Vegas and Microsoft is honored to be a Platinum Sponsor of the event. It will be an action packed week starting with the pre-con workshops on Sunday and Monday, with Shawn Bice’s Keynote on Monday evening. Tuesday is “Microsoft Day at the event, followed by sessions from industry experts on Wednesday and Thursday, and finishing with a couple post-con workshops on Friday. Check out the detailed Schedule (PDF) and plan out your week. For a few different pivots, check out the webpages for speakers, sessions, and workshops (March 25-26 and March 30).

To get a head start on the socialization make sure to follow @devconnections on Twitter and use hashtag: #SQLconnections.

Additional information can be found on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/devconnections
https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/228936407120523/

Be sure to read the SQL Server 2012 Early Adoption Cook Book courtesy of the Microsoft Data Platform Evangelism Team. They have compiled a lot of great content for you to explore.

Here are some links to great SQL Server blogs to help you brush up on SQL Server before rubbing elbows with some of the experts: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb671052.

SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) is a highly scalable appliance for enterprise data warehousing that enables massive scalability, predictable performance, and complete BI solution at low cost. PDW ships with a web based management console for monitoring the health of PDW appliance and resolving issues. The appliance model and this web based tool simplify the management of large data warehouses by enabling DBAs to manage several data racks from a single interface.

Enterprise customers would love to include PDW appliances in their enterprise monitoring solutions such as System Center Operations Manager (SCOM). The new PDW management pack (MP) delivers this critical functionality to our enterprise customers by accurately and consistently representing the health of PDW appliances, thereby enabling the datacenter operators to manage the PDW appliances seamlessly from a ‘single pane of glass’. In addition, it also empowers IT to manage all their SQL Server Data Warehouses, including Fast Track and SQL Server instances, from a single place. This blog provides an overview of PDW management pack (MP) feature set. You can download the management pack here.

The following diagram shows the high level physical architecture of PDW appliance monitored by SCOM.

 

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PDW MP Functionality can be broken down into the following three core capabilities:

1.  Discover the appliance and individual nodes

Discovery of the PDW appliance is as straight forward as creating an ODBC connection to the PDW appliance from the SCOM server. Once the ‘run-as account’ in SCOM is mapped to the right profile, the PDW MP will start discovering all nodes within the appliance and their roles. Just add more ODBC DSNs to monitor additional appliances, but make sure to add new ‘run-as accounts’ for each appliance if the monitor credentials are different on each PDW instance. SCOM will automatically discover the connection and then add the appliance to the list of appliances monitored. You do not have to install any agents on the PDW appliance. The following screen shot shows you the appliance and appliance nodes post discovery.

Appliance discovery – The appliance discovery includes the vendor type (HP/Dell). The health of multiple PDW appliances can be monitored from the same view.

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Appliance node discovery – Shows you the list of all the nodes within the appliance and their roles

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2.  Actively monitor the health of the appliances

The PDW MP issues queries from the SCOM server to the PDW Control Node. It uses the same Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) for monitoring that are used in the PDW administration portal. This way there is consistency in the health displayed in the administration console and the SCOM console. The health from the lowest component is rolled up from the individual nodes to indicate the overall health of the appliance.

• State view – This view is consistent with the PDW administrator console view. The appliance node state view (see previous diagram) shows the rollup from individual components of the node that make up the node’s health model. These component groups include storage internal, processing, power supply, cooling, cluster, Software networking and Storage external. This view allows you to see the health of all the nodes from all appliances your organization owns in a single view. The filter box allows at the top allows the admin to narrow down to specific appliance nodes.
  
• Health explorer – The health explorer is a very powerful view that provides drill down capabilities from higher level appliance health to most granular component. Along with each state, we have detailed knowledge that provides guidance to the IT administrator. This will include the summary, cause and resolution of each and every state. See the sample screen shot below. In the example, we can see that the heartbeat monitor from node ‘MAD01’ caused the appliance to get into a critical state.

 

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• Diagram view – In addition to the health explorer view, the PDW MP provides a more visual and intuitive way of visualizing the health of the appliance called the Diagram View. You can use the “filter by health” option on the menu bar to highlight the critical problem path. In this example, you can drill into the appliance all the way down to the ‘landing zone’ node to find out that volume free space is in a critical state (which means there is less than 10% free). In addition, the PDW MP supports the notion of multiple compute and control clusters (aka racks). This view helps the IT administrator to easily identify the problem node within a given cluster.

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3.  Proactively notify the IT administrator before the appliance health is critical

• Alerts view – SCOM allows organizations the ability to configure notifications (via E-mail, SMS) and see alerts in one place from all PDW appliances that are monitored. The PDW MP provides lot of flexibility to the IT admin to configure warning or critical alerts for things such as free space, hard disk failure; service state and node failover. The following screen shot shows the alert for when the heartbeat state on the node ‘MAD01’ is critical. Administrators can configure SCOM to send emails to an IT Operations group whenever these alerts are fired. This capability of SCOM really simplifies monitoring the PDW appliances.

     

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• Tasks – PDW MP provides contextual tasks that will redirect the IT administrator to the relevant page on the PDW administration portal for a deeper level troubleshooting

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Summary

The PDW management pack:

• Simplifies manageability of PDW appliance by enabling IT administrators to manage several data racks from a single interface and allowing drill down capabilities from higher level appliance health to most granular component.
  
• Proactively notifies the IT admin before the state of the appliance goes critical.
  
• Delivers on ‘single pane of glass’ monitoring experience across all SQL Server Data Warehouses including Fast Track and other SQL Server instances seamlessly from System Center.

Vinay Balasubramaniam
Senior Program Manager, SQL Server
Microsoft Corp