This is more a rant than a review, or comparison.  I don’t cover functionality and features, such as lack of copy and paste, nor the expensive apps (compared to other platforms), the tile UI being great but also desirable to have the choice to disable, or various other aspects of the platform and hardware… if you want this then a quick search will reveal other posts that address.
If you want to hear my story and why I’m going to be waiting until the New Year to re-try Windows Phone 7 (WP7) then read on…

Having been on Windows Mobile since early HP units such as the HP5450, and then Windows Mobile phones (various, but last an HTC/Orange M3100 – still have it for Tom Tom ) I eventually defected to Apple when the iPhone 3G came out and Apple finally cracked the Exchange ActiveSync integration.

Now whilst I love Apple hardware (bar no Micro SD/additional storage, proprietary interface, non-user serviceable battery, etc. etc.) and the usability of the UI is second to none, I REALLY don’t dig the whole Apple ecosystem.  I also despise iTunes on Windows as much as any good and decent PC user should do, indeed it’s such filth that when I do have the displeasure of using it I do on dedicated and old PC (still says Compaq on the front!) that is sandboxed.
(great post at http://en.kioskea.net/faq/191-managing-ipod-without-itunes btw)

So when the chance came up to ditch the rotten Apple and return to the warmth of the Microsoft Mother ship with the just launched Windows Phone 7 I jumped at the chance!  A swift an easy call to O2 excellent customer service across mobile, broadband and fixed line) I took delivery next day (16th November) of a shiny new HTC HD7 from O2 (SIM free, as in no contract) for a cracking £330 inc VAT. I noted the 14-day change your mind no quibble return…

Unfortunately after just a week I’d made up my mind, the HD7 had to go and Windows Phone 7 needs a few more months (maybe the first big update) and I exercised that return offer today

So.. in current form does Windows Phone 7…

Beat the iPhone 4 – NO WAY!  will it beat the iPhone? probably not.
Does it beat Android?  maybe / depends what you want..  Will it take market share from Android? Definitely! (even if its just me )
Is it good for the market? Yes!
Will it get better?  it needs to, and of course will, it has the Mother ship behind it!

thoughts on HD7..

Wot no AMOLED screen!
Wot no battery life!
Crappy camera to say its 5MP
Too big for the screen resolution, and whilst I’m at it the screen had wishy washy colours with poor viewing angle (considering it has a stand to make it a viewing device – two kids in the car sharing it would end in tears or a crash)
Talking of crashing… I managed to crash my WP7 device 3 or 4 times in just over a week, which is about on par with my iPhone 3G…  this year.

So, after all the above I’ll be waiting until the new year to try again and with a different device! and I’m still desperate to get off the rotten Apple (even though just bought a iPod Touch for my today 8yr old – Happy Birthday Harry! – what have I done!?!  akin to giving him a crack pipe!.. ).

btw, the Zune software ROCKS!!! it is WAY WAY better than iTunes, on that Microsoft has done great, hopefully WP7 will be rocking soon…

We recently installed a new HP Pro 3120 SSF Series machine that ships with Windows 7 Pro and Office 2010.  The name Pro is a little over-egged as they are actually low-end machines as a replacement the DX24xx range.  The SSF or Space Saver Form is quite correct as its basically a half depth Micro Tower – think back to the Compaq Evo SSF but not nearly as well made.

Now, I’ve always been a fan of HP for their reliability, build quality, and typically a huge fan of their normally excellent Value Added Software – am thinking ProLiant servers, Insight Manager, SmartStart, etc.  However the shipped build on this machine which is aimed at the business market has got me thinking what the guys at HP have been smoking!  maybe too close to their colleagues at Apple!

The Out Of the Box Experience (OOBE) this machine is great, it covers the HP setup routine, registration, updates configuration, and what appears to be a McAfee opt-out.

However, upon booting into Windows for the 1st time its soon apparent that there is a truly massive  clean-up / bloatware removal task needed if being used in a standardised business build, starting with:

- HP Games (18 of them)
- McAfee Browser Protection Service
- McAfee Firewall Protection Service
- McAfee Virus and Spyware Protection Service

the McAfee stuff was a real sneaky one, especially as I quite clearly chose NOT to use McAfee.

Additionally we are removing:

HP Advisor – a 93MB toolbar with links to eBay, McAfee, Huddle, Biz Solutions (actually Solutions and Offers for your business AKA marketing guff!)
Device Access Manager for HP ProtectTools
Drive Encryption for HP ProtectTools
File Sanitizer for HP ProtectTools

But first to cut to the chase..  As I mentioned to a colleague only today – the Vail refresh ROCKS!!, it needs Silverlight 4 for the integrated media controls to make video, music, photos, etc. super sexy and prompts to install if you haven’t got it – Silverlight’s awesome also!

Microsoft Windows Home Sever codenamed Vail – TP refresh install

So it is R2 after all (I always thought it would be but quite a lot of folks who should know better referred to it as Windows Server 2008 – fundamentally different than Windows Server 2008 R2!)

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A lovely Vail splash screen, configure a few tasks:

Shutdown with 28 updates later..

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I’ve built several systems for various friends and family over the years, but when our main home media center based on a Shuttle SG36M died due to a PSU failure (also took out the motherboard – a bummer!), it was time to be looking for a new machine (the brightside to the failure I guess! )

As a long time listener of Ian Dixon’s podcast at http://thedigitallifestyle.com I’d heard of Tranquil (http://www.tranquilpc.co.uk) who are based in Manchester. Tranquil produce fanless pieces of highend exotica covering Media Centers, Home Servers, and powerful new Intel i5 based PC’s…

Now Tranquil don’t produce ‘cheap’ kit and fortunately I’m a believer in ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ so £459 + VAT later I’d ordered the ixL i5 Power PC with an Intel i5-650 (and a CD/DVD optical drive).

I got my order in late on Tuesday, and this morning a very nice looking box arrived..

..with a complimentary Boost bar! – how they knew my hangover needed a sugar fix I don’t know, but the experience certainly started great!

Over the weekend I’m looking forward to getting a couple of gigs of 1066Mhz RAM, a Corsair 128GB SSD, and my Hauppauge dual DVB-T in there and seeing how she flys with some test builds.. likely Win7 32-bit and Windows Server 2008 R2 (for testing as a Hyper-V platform plus 64-bit driver support), but first work and clients to see…

Returning at the weekend for my first test built I grabbed a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit) which installed painlessly enough, but did list the following as needy of drivers:

Display adapter driver – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3144&DwnldID=19099&lang=eng
Ethernet (network) driver – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/download.aspx?url=/19059/a08/PROWin32.exe&DwnldId=19059&lang=eng
PCI Serial Port -
PCI Simple Communications Controller (read IR RX) -

With no documentation or driver media in the box, if you’ve ordered anything but a pre-built system you will need to go and find driver support from the web, however as the sytem is based on a current Intel desktop motherboard, the Intel® Desktop Board DH57JG, this is a fairly trivial task.

A visit to http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/dh57jg/dh57jg-overview.htm will get you covered with 32 & 64-bit drivers for Windows 7, Vista, XP Pro, plus 32-bit for XP Home, and even Windows XP Media Center Edition (one day I might restore an image of XPMCE as I still have the Compaq D510 SSF PC I used in the first builds back in 2002-3!).

Going for the lazy option I grabbed the network driver first so I could let Windows Update do its worst on the rest – 35 updates later, inc. Intel HD Graphics (Intel listed 15.17.4.2119 as , Microsoft Update provided 8.15.10.2119 – the last digits being significant, the same) and a restart resulted in still needing the PCI Serial Port & Communications Controller (likely the same driver)

At the same time, I’d recommend:

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/dsktpboards/dh57jg - which includes a link to Automatically detect and update drivers and software
http://www.intel.com/support/detect.htm (the really lazy option – but it works really well, after I’d been struggling getting the audio outputs to work, bar SPDIF)

http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/software/dolby/index.htm

Chipset: Intel® Chipset Device Software for Intel® Desktop Boards – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=10884&lang=eng
(this one may also address the PCI Simple Communications Controller / IR reciever, but I’m having no luck just yet…)

Intel® Desktop Utilities for 4 & 5 Series Desktop Boards – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18934&lang=eng

Intel® HD Graphics Driver for Windows* Vista and Windows* 7 15.17.7.2141 – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3144&DwnldID=19099&lang=eng

Audio: Realtek* ALC Audio Driver - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=19018

I mentioned performance updates coming soon, on Windows 7 32-bit with the above drivers the Performance Information and Tools (Windows Experience Index) gave a rating of 4.8, comprised of:

Processor: 6.9
Memory: 5.5
Graphics: 4.8
Gaming graphics: 5.3
Primary hard disk: 5.9

Thermal performance and other hardware monitors curtousy of the Intel Hardware Monitor application:

As our business (The Full Circle – www.thefullcircle.com) is a Microsoft Gold Partner that has been involved in Microsoft virtualization since the beginning I thought it was time we were testing Hyper-V with Dynamic Memory!  Microsoft’s answer to VMware’s memory over commit allows Hyper-V to dynamically allocated memory to a guest machine from a pool of available memory.  This doesn’t allow you to over specify what physically isn’t available (a safer option than over-commit), but it does allow a group of VM’s to more efficiently use memory resource where it is needed – just what is needed for Microsoft to get serious in the VDI space.

From Microsoft’s own words:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V introduces a new feature, called Dynamic Memory, in the Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta releases.  It allows customers to achieve increased density when they’re consolidating physical servers into a virtual realm, providing them with predictable performance and linear scalability.  With Dynamic Memory, IT administrators are able to pool available memory on a physical host and then dynamically dole that memory out to virtual machines running on the host, based on current workload needs.
For a technical overview of the new Dynamic Memory feature, download the Dynamic Memory Technical Overview whitepaper.

So a quick 1.2GB download later (to support Win7 x86 & WS2008R2 IA64 & x64) and you’ve got an ISO to unpack or burn.

1st hurdle on my test install of Hyper-V Server R2 is.. a language blocking issue with the installer reporting ‘Hyper-V Service Pack 1 install has detected unsupported language files’ reporting that Chinese (Traditional) is not supported..

Did I install Chinese?  I don’t think so.. well, not intentionally anyway! but checking both our test and live Hyper-V cluster systems revealed that the ‘Chinese (Traditional)’ display language was installed (by default) per:

Fortunately this is a simple fix, as shown in the picture - at a command line (or Task Manager Run) you can access the Region and Language settings control panel by executing  ’intl.cpl’, goto Keyboards and Languages, hit the Install/uninstall languages button, and finally select Chinese (Traditional), Next.  After a few moments the progress should report ‘Uninstall complete’ and you can close and OK out of the Control Panel app.

Once the language support (or lack of if you wanted Chinese!), re-running setup should run through as below:

And eventually, after the mandatory reboot checking out the Windows version (Task Manager, About, no more winver from the command line in Hyper-V Server or Server Core) should report – Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Build 7601: Service Pack 1, v.178 – yikes that’s a lowish version, and the Build number is significant up from 7600 (more accurately version 6.1.7600), anyway we are only on test system at the minute! (and without EAP support I think that’s about as far as it should go! )
(more on EAP’s and The Full Circle’s involvment in the development of Hyper-V 2008 R2 at http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2009/11/05/the-full-circle-secures-ascom-network-testing-for-windows-server-2008-r2-early-adopter-program/)

next on to the changes within Hyper-V and hopefully dynamic memory!

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 beta adds Dynamic Memory host memory management and RemoteFX to enhance VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) implementations. The beta release of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 introduces new ways to manage virtual machine memory, graphics and peripheral devices that add new dimensions to the usefulness of Hyper-V.

These features, including Dynamic Memory, RemoteFX and improvements to USB redirection, will require IT manager attention as plans are made for server and remote desktop implementations over the next several years. IT managers who are considering data center virtualization projects should put the Windows Server 2008 R2 service pack beta on their immediate evaluation shortlist. The beta is stable enough for use in a test environment.The SP1 beta became available in July and is offered as a no-charge download from Microsoft. I tested the SP1 beta on our test rig HP ProLiant ML110 G5 with a single dual core Intel 2.33Ghz cpu, 8GB of memory, and 2 mirrored arrarys (2x250GB system, 2x1TB data), it does not have a sufficiently powerful graphics card to test RemoteFX but I’ll be sourcing one!

This system, and all the virtual server instances that I created in my test environment, were running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 beta version 178.

It’s clear that with SP1, Microsoft is signaling that the server hardware of tomorrow will need to be equipped much differently than it is today if certain workloads, including those that vary significantly in memory usage or desktop graphics support, are destined for the data center.
Buyers that are accustomed to buying server hardware with only minimal graphics capabilities will need to become much more savvy in the ins and outs of specifying high-end graphics cards for data center servers that are destined to host sophisticated virtual desktop implementations. This is on top of the growing RAM requirements of dense virtual environments.

Dynamic Memory

The SP1 beta includes Microsoft’s answer to VMware’s memory management system. In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 this feature is called Dynamic Memory. I used the Dynamic Memory feature to balance the memory automatically between my VMs based on preset limits. As with most management systems, Dynamic Memory uses policy set in a period of calm to determine how scarce resources (in this case RAM) will be divvied up when in times of tumult and contention.

When I created my VMs, I specified several RAM memory parameters including Startup, Maximum, Buffer and Priority. These parameters make sense in that they specify the minimum amount of RAM needed to start a system, the maximum I would ever want it to consume, a buffer measured as a percentage and the priority of this workload in the overall scheme of business operations.

In my tests, the VMs performed as expected. When I beefed up operations on a high priority VM, the other VMs were starved in order to keep my priority system running at top performance. When RAM requirements on my priority system fell, this resource was reallocated among the other VMs on the test system.

Summary
Step-by-step understanding is key to successfully implementing and deploying SharePoint 2010. This 15-module course will guide you through each critical stage, giving you exactly the skills you need to leverage full value from the latest SharePoint technology.

Agenda
Module 0 – Getting Ready for a SharePoint 2010 Implementation: Why Governance and Business Requirements are Essential for a Successful Implementation.
Module 1 – Understanding the Architecture of SharePoint Server 2010
Module 2 – Installing SharePoint Server 2010.
Module 3 – Administrating and Configuring Farm Settings in SharePoint Server 2010
Module 4 – Understanding and Administrating Web applications
Module 5 – Managing Web Applications
Module 6 – Introduction to Site Collections
Module 7 – Creating Site Collections
Module 8 – Managing Site Collections
Module 9 – Working with SharePoint Server 2010 Portals
Module 10 – Governance and Information Assurance
Module 11 – Enterprise Content Types & Managed Metadata
Module 12 – Managing Documents and Records
Module 13 – Workflow
Module 14 – Implementing and Managing Search
Module 15 – People & Social Networking
Module 16 – Disaster Recovery

A handful of notes from the week..

Installation Preparation for Service & Install Accounts 

The SharePoint Installation Account

While I’ve become used to installing applications on servers with either the local or domain admin account, SharePoint 2010 really really really needs to have its own account created for the installation process. If you don’t you’ll have to correct the various service and app pool accounts later and that’s a pain.

Key points about the account used to install with -

• It will become the application pool account used in IIS for the Central Admin
• If you do plan to let SharePoint create your databases (content DBs’ etc…) this account needs rights to the SQL database to create DB’s (DBCreator and DBAdmin)
• If DB’s are already created then it only needs DBAdmin
• It only needs Local Admin permissions on the installation machine
• Not to be used in day-to-day admin
• Imagine this account to be “enterprise admin” of SharePoint.
• It should never be used again after the initial install, obviously that doesn’t mean disable or delete it.

Example User Account – spinstall

The Farm Admin Account

 The farm admin account is an account that should be used by as few people as possible.

• It either needs to be a local admin on the SharePoint front end or create a new supper user or login as spinstall(logging in as spinstall is not recommended)
• The farm admin account change services running on the machine hence the need for local admin rights, farm admin right in SharePoint central admin isn’t enough

Example User Account - spfarmadmin

During the SharePoint 2010 install

 Make sure you move index location during install off from the C:\…\14\data location

 This index file is a flat file used in search and can grow very large in next to no time.

After the install – the Configuration Wizard

Do not use it, it doesn’t follow best practice.

 Performance Tip for SharePoint databases 

Turn off Auto Growth

While it’s been mentioned a thousand times and shouldn’t need to be mentioned…

To prevent it happening in existing installations for any new databases:

SQL Management  Studio > Database > Model. Under the file groups section  change the properties for .mdf to grow by 50MB at a time

Fixing it for existing databases:

Open the properties of each database and under the file groups section, change the properties for .mdf to grow by 50MB at a time

Note: Why 50MB? Because it’s just right for SharePoint since it aligns with the default maximum upload file size.

Registering Managed Service Accounts for SharePoint 2010

• Best practice is to add them here first then start to use them to run services
• All are generally fine  as just domain user accounts without elevated privileges

Application Pool Accounts in IIS for SharePoint 2010

 Never change the app pool account from inside IIS as the config DB will not know about the change, web apps will not know about the change and new servers added to the farm will not know which account to use.

One of the few things you can and do need to configure in IIS is SSL certificates and also needs to be done on each and every web front end.

Today is a good day for that mantra as we are attending an excellent training seminar by SQL MVP’s and founders of www.SQLskills.com - SQL Server MasterClass

My scribbles from the day.. and the formal agenda, speaker bio’s, etc. at the end

Bridging the gap between Development & Production..

DBA’s & Developers not communicating and the reluctant/involentary DBA..

The dilema of development, change control, production scheduling, and customer demands for new features

4 features that break an Enterprise to Standard restore – Partitioning, data compression, …, …

How Design Affects Production
Design considerations such as capacity planning up front to scale databases correctly, try to avoid autogrowth! & Log file fragmentation (LVF’s etc.)

Use of correct data types e.g. Use of bigint for small numbers, datetime when you only really need date, etc. – why use 16-bytes when you can use 4!

Disk maybe cheap, but memory overhead across a system is not.

Indexing – design them, not ad-hoc!

Resouce Governer – limit ad-hoc SQL query users

Naming conventions – obvious in any system (or should be!), makes long term management easier

Design choices affecting maintenance e.g. Fixed vs. Variable length impacting the ability to perform online index rebuilds or not!

Even some some MS apps break this such as SharePoint!

Nested Transactions – avoid!  ..they are evil!  (nested begins, only free resource at end of first transaction)

Instant File Initialisation (IFI) – restores create the file the full with zeros unless IFI is enabled.

Parameterization – trying to get your plan in cache, optimize at dB level.

Phyical dB layout – as dB’s become larger partioning into multiple filegroups is necessary – what’s a large dB? over 100GB you need to consider, TB absolutely!

Measuring your restores to check against your SLA’s – restores take longer than backup, ballpark 25% more, you can break your maintenance window (& SLA’s) by underestimating the restore time.

Primary Key Choice – obvious but not always followed.

Indexing Strategies – difficult!

Database Maintenance – lack of causes problems!

Real Testing!!! – developers need access to similar environment to live otherwise

Myth Buster – top 10 myths debunked, taken from Paul’s Myth a day posts in April at SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul/Misconceptions

e.g. Failover Clustering is best HA for SQL..? It depends!
Read more at “Proven SQL Server Architectures for High Availability and Disaster Recovery – http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/D/5BD13FFA-5E34-4AE1-9AA0-C6E6951B8FC8/SQL%20Server%202008%20R2%20High%20Availability%20Architecture%20White%20Paper.docx”

Tempdb or transaction log should be x% of the size of the largest dB – it depends! If you had a 10TB dB would you have 25% allocated for the log? e.g. 2.5TB wasted on logs.. NO!

use of single user mode, and admin connections.. the :m. and :a. startup switches

DR handbook should be written  by the most experienced member of the team, but tested by the most junior – who’d going to be holding the pager when the system goes bang at 02:00 on a Sunday…?  likely not the architect!

GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward
Dilema of GUIDs everywere, great for uniqueness, not so great if used for non-clustered indexes and used as a primary key (due to it’s uniqueness) – back to using the correct data types, why use a 64-byte key when a 4-byte key will suffice – for a 10,000 row table this can mean an internal system index of 400Mb, a 64-byte key will be nearer 5GB – just for the system!

Massive performance and storage gains to be had from correct use of GUIDs – see Kimberly’s blog post on this for more info at http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/KIMBERLY/post/GUIDs-as-PRIMARY-KEYs-andor-the-clustering-key.aspx

The Top-Ten List…

10) Data File Management – you can have up to 32768 files per database, and a minimum of two being the MDF & LDF, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should!  However, careful placement of physical files on different storage types can add huge value to your SQL environment..

9) Transaction Log file management – only one log file is necessary, try and isolate from the data files to avoid disk head contention, use appropriate RAID (not RAID 5 as has high overheads for write & logs are write intensive)

Tempdb – tempdb is a special case as it is very susceptible to contention issues because only 1 per instance and 1 tempdb file per processor core, you can now create multiple files to spread the contention. KB328551 maybe suitable in your environment.
Guideline for number of tempdb files, .25-.5 the number of cores.

7) Indexing Best Practice – dont’t go crazy with indexes, as with data files, just because you can.. doesn’t mean you should!  if anything try to reduce your indexes!  Good workload analysis to determine characteristics and query priority as over-indexing can be worse than under indexing.  Poorly maintained indexes can be more trouble in the long term – be sure to automate index maintenance.  A narrow index has very few issues, a wide one has the potential for many more!

6) Statistics

5) Index Fragmentation – Fragmentation Defined.. two broad types: internal (wasted space on data/indexes aka physical defragmentation) & logical (..)
Main causes.. GUID as high-order key, updates to variable length columns, badly configured FILLFACTOR, wide schemas that only fit a small number of rows per page
Keys to success.. how to read the data
How to correct.. create index with drop_existing, rebuild the index, defrag the index
Most folks rebuild or reorganise but their are tradeoffs.. how much disk space have you got?  

4)

3) I/O errors – 823/824 errors have already been retried 4 times before you find out that the I/O subsystem has transient problems.  monitor for error 825 – read errors

2) DBCC CHECKDB – see the blog post http://sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/category/CHECKDB-From-Every-Angle.aspx
How often should you run CHECKDB – at least once per week – yikes!, how long will it take? – it depends!   but if it starts to take longer it normally means a problem.

1) Recovering Using Backups – best way to avoid data loss but not necessarily the best way to avoid downtime so consider other mechanisms to full backups such as log shipping, mirroring, etc.  Recommend at least Full & Log backups but frequently e.g. full weekly, logs as often as every 5 minutes… however Differentials are better – redundancy in the backups

Q&A – I asked about placement of tempdb in a failover cluster and if there is a downside to putting it on non-cluster shared storage e.g. a local SSD drive or RAMdisk – no, this is fine as long as the same drive letter is available on each node as the tempdb is flushed and recreated everytime SQL starts anyway & got yet another geek polo shirt – my wife will love that…

more info at.. www.SQLskills.com

www.SQLskills.com/webcasts.asp - over 50hrs of free online training resources

Formal Event notes, background, agenda, speaker bio’s, etc.

www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql
This special one-day event will focus on some of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. Very often there is no dedicated DBA and so the IT managers struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unaware of how application design choices affect database performance.

SESSIONS SNAPSHOT
During the day Kimberly and Paul will:
Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server’s behaviour
Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company’s life-blood – the data
Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database
Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a wellperforming and available data tier

SESSIONS ABSTRACTS
KEYNOTE: Bridging the Gap Between Development and Production
Applications are commonly developed with little regard for how design choices will affect performance in production. This is often because developers don’t realize the implications of their design on how SQL Server will be able to handle a high workload (e.g. blocking, fragmentation) and/or because there’s no full-time trained DBA that can recognize production problems and help educate developers. The keynote sets the stage for the rest of the day. Discussing some of the issues that can arise, explaining how some can be avoided and highlighting some of the features in SQL 2008 that can help developers and DBAs make better use of SQL Server, and troubleshoot when things go wrong.

SESSION ONE: SQL Server Mythbusters
It’s amazing how many myths and misconceptions have sprung up and persisted over the years about SQL Server - after many years helping people out on forums, newsgroups, and customer engagements, Paul and Kimberly have heard it all. Are there really non-logged operations? Can interrupting shrinks or rebuilds cause corruption?
Can you override the server’s MAXDOP setting? Will the server always do a table-scan to get a row count? Many myths lead to poor design choices and inappropriate maintenance practices so these are just a few of many, many myths that Paul and Kimberly will debunk in this fast-paced session on how SQL Server operates and should be managed and maintained.

SESSION TWO: Database Recovery Techniques Demo-Fest
Even if a company has a disaster recovery strategy in place, they need to practice to make sure that the plan will work when a disaster does strike. In this fast-paced demo session Paul and Kimberly will repeatedly do nasty things to databases and then show how they are recovered – demonstrating many techniques that can be used in production for disaster recovery. Not for the faint-hearted!

SESSION THREE: GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward
Since the addition of the GUID (Microsoft’s implementation of the UUID), my life as a consultant and “tuner” has been busy. I’ve seen databases designed with GUID keys run fairly well with small workloads but completely fall over and fail because they just cannot scale. And, I know why GUIDs are chosen – it simplifies the handling of parent/child rows in your batches so you can reduce round-trips or avoid dealing with identity values. And, yes, sometimes it’s even for distributed databases and/or security that GUIDs are chosen. I’m not entirely against ever using a GUID but overusing and abusing GUIDs just has to be stopped! Please, please, please let me give you better solutions and explanations on how to deal with your parent/child rows, round-trips and clustering keys!

SESSION 4: Essential Database Maintenance
In this session, Paul and Kimberly will run you through their top-ten database maintenance recommendations, with a lot of tips and tricks along the way. These are distilled from almost 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server customers and are geared towards making your databases more performant, more available, and more easily managed (to save you time!). Everything in this session will be practical and applicable to a wide variety of
databases. Topics covered include: backups, shrinks, fragmentation, statistics, and much more! Focus will be on 2005 but we’ll explain some of the key differences for 2000 and 2008 as well.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Paul and Kimberly are a husband-and-wife team who own and run SQLskills.com, a world-renowned SQL Server consulting and training company.
They are both SQL Server MVPs and Microsoft Regional Directors, with over 30 years of combined experience on SQL Server. Paul worked on the SQL Server team for nine years in development and management roles, writing many of the DBCC commands, and ultimately with responsibility for core Storage Engine for SQL Server 2008. Paul writes extensively on his blog
(SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul) and for TechNet Magazine, for which he is also a Contributing
Editor. Kimberly worked on the SQL Server team in the early 1990s as a tester and writer before leaving to found SQLskills and embrace her passion for teaching and consulting. Kimberly has been a staple at worldwide conferences since she first presented at TechEd in 1996, and she blogs at SQLskills.com/blogs/Kimberly. They have written Microsoft whitepapers and books for SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, and are regular, top-rated
presenters worldwide on database maintenance, high availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning, and SQL Server internals. Together they teach the SQL MCM certification and throughout Microsoft.
In their spare time, they like to find frogfish in remote corners of the world.

SPEAKER TESTIMONIALS
“To call them good trainers is an epic understatement. They know how to deliver
technical material in ways that illustrate it well. I had to stop Paul at one point and
ask him how long it took to build a particular slide because the animations were so
good at conveying a hard-to-describe process.”
“These are not beginner presenters, and they put an extreme amount of
preparation and attention to detail into everything that they do. Completely,
utterly professional.”
“When it comes to the instructors themselves, Kimberly and Paul simply have no
equal. Not only are they both ultimate authorities, but they have endless
enthusiasm about the material, and spot on delivery. If either ever got tired they
never showed it, even after going all day and all week. We witnessed countless
demos over the course of the week, some extremely involved, multi-step
processes, and I can’t recall one that didn’t go the way it was supposed to.”
“You might think that with this extreme level of skill comes extreme levels of
egotism and lack of patience. Nothing could be further from the truth. … They
simply know how to teach, and are approachable, humble, and patient.”
“The experience Paul and Kimberly have had with real live customers yields a lot
more information and things to watch out for than you’d ever get from
documentation alone.”
“Kimberly, I just wanted to send you an email to let you know how awesome you
are! I have applied some of your indexing strategies to our website’s homegrown
CMS and we are experiencing a significant performance increase. WOW….amazing
tips delivered in an exciting way! Thanks again”
Kimberley L. Tripp
Paul S.Randal

Copying https://sharepoint.fqdn.com:PortNNN/General%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fGeneral%20Documents%2fFoldrer1%2fFolde2%2fFolder3 out of the IE address bar to paste into the Save As File name entry in hope that it would then enumerate the target folder..

Anyway, clearly its the wrong thing to do and in this case replaced the Allitems.aspx with a word document, this broke the browser view of all SharePoint pages on the site collection although using Windows Explorer to access SharePoint folders continued to work okay.

Our resident SharePoint expert and Development Director (Chris Hermon) used SPD 2007 to try and replace/restore the Allitems.apsx but whilst this initially appeared to resolve the issue, the basic SharePoint object controls were still broken such as not having the drop down available e.g.

We took a view on this and decided to perform an stsadm restore from the last content dB backup. This was a relatively straightforward decision for us as we knew and had made copies of documents changed since the last backup (daily), however in a busier enviornment this would not be so easy.

Restoring the stsadm backup resolved the issue it’s a rather drastic resolution for a incredibly easy issue to create (and no, I was not using an Admin account or the collection administrator, just a normal author).

I’ll try the same on SP2010 and see if Microsoft have fixed this rather obvious gap in system integrity protection!

notes from the day..

OpsMgr 2007 R3 – a first R3 release for Microsoft

ConfigMgr 2007 -> ConfigMgr v.Next – embracing user centric targeting

SCE 2010 notes to follow..

DPM 2010, Anthony Tyler, Storage Strategy Architect (aka Foggy, and an old team mate of mine from PSS some 12 years ago!)

Backup to pretty much anything inc. “SAN in a can” but nothing seen as a removable device (so no USB unless you use iSCSI or a.n.other mapping technology)

tactical deployment in line with MS application deployment

i365 EDPM appliance – supports hetrogenius environments via eVault

First things first.. the pre-reqs:

A database! – SQL 2008 R2, but which version..? – this should help, SQL 2008 R2 Features and Comparisons http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993(SQL.105).aspx

Arrrggggghhhhh!