Category Archives for Important Events

SQL Saturday Brisbane Event Success

SQL Saturday was held in Brisbane today 12th April 2012.   It was excellent to see so many attendees and hats off to Paul Te Braak and the event sponsors for organising.

For those that attended my XRay Vision for SQL Error Logs presentation, thank you for being such a good audience and I hope you were able to take something from the session.

Part 1 of the multi part series XRay Vision For Sql Server Error Logs contains the first component of the solution demonstrated on the day.  From here you can download the solution files to build your own 30,000 foot view of your SQL Error Logs.

SQL Server Licensing Just Got Way More Expensive … Or Did It ???

Before we kick off, June 30 2012  will have been and gone and you would have missed the opportunity to purchase SQL Server 2012 Enterprise in the Server plus CAL license model – after which will be core only.

Some other notes when working out SQL 2012 licensing :

• The price of the SQL Server CAL goes up about 25%
• The per server license for Standard edition is about the same
• The per server license for Business Intelligence edition is about the same as Enterprise 2008 R2
• The per core price for SQL 2012 standard and enterprise is a quarter the per proc licence as the equivalent editions in Enterprise 2008 R2, hence if you have more than 4 cores per proc in your servers, your price goes up from there.

But my SQL Server 2008 R2 works just fine thank you….why do I need to upgrade ?   For starters, if you have software assurance it won’t cost you anything (only shore-ups from the licensing differentials).   Otherwise, you won’t need much prompting…your business people will be begging you for the 2012 release as there are a host of much needed improvements for more productive and more colourful Business Intelligence championed by PowerView and PowerPivot.  For Sharepoint folk there is now even more Business Intelligence capability. Easier, tighter integration, new tools and features to lower the cost of information delivery, to get your message to an even broader audience, and to give the business what they want – “to build their own B.I. solutions without engaging I.T.”! 

For the DBA’s SQL Server 2012 sports a host of high availability options with the gem being shared nothing multi site high availability (particularly when you combine contained databases with “Always On” for seamless application database failover), better support for data tier applications, and better support alround for cloud and portability basically.  Those with VSphere might want to compare VSphere’s HA functions with SQL Server 2012 Always On. 

If you have drafted some basic calculations by now, you may be seeing the cost of upgrading your current infrastructure going up up up.    The only real way to save money is to create a private SQL Server cloud, using consolidation as the vehicle to drive down costs. Your savings will come from the ability to run as many copies of SQL Server (SQL Server instances or Virtual machines) as your farm will allow (licensed on the number of cores in the physical hardware).  

I personally think the licensing changes will provide a more colourful business case for consolidation as the SQL 2012 licensing changes now truly reward those who consolidate and punish those who don’t.

For more info, you may find the Microsoft Assessment Planning toolkit for SQL Server 2012 useful. It has licence info plus discovery capabilities MAP Planning Tool 2012.

And just for gags – you could price the new Microsoft HP Consolidation Appliance for SQL Server Private Cloud SQL Server Private Cloud Appliance.

SQL Pass 2012 – Nov 6-9 Seattle WA

SQL Pass Summit dates for 2012 are November 6-9 Seattle, WA.  If you have a yearly training budget of around $3000-$4000, then consider a week at SQL Pass as an alternative to that 5 day training course you were considering.  For roughly $1000 for the event early bird ends Jan 31 2012, this gives you plenty of time to scour for the best value accomodation and flights.

SQLPass 2012 Seattle

SQL Pass Summit is the without doubt the premier event for SQL Server professionals.  This goes for Microsoft Business Intelligence, Database Development or Database Administration professionals alike.  On the Business Intelligence there are quite a few sessions to keep you alert, interested and happy, unless of course, you got back to the apartment at 5am from the previous evening’s activities….

Kimball University Classes 2012

For personal development in the Business Intelligence space you can’t go past Ralph Kimball’s classes for first class techniques, methodologies and of course the opportunity to link with like minded individuals.

For any folks in the Microsoft Business Intelligence space, in particular star schemas and cubes, you would be best looking first at the Dimensional Modelling class.   Anyone who spends most of their time in the ETL space, then the ETL Architecture is an excellent first stop.

For the many people I have been telling to watch out for the 2012 class schedule here it is – go to your manager’s office immediately and book those dates !

Kimball Calendar