Posts Tagged ‘2008 R2’

Enable Backup Compression as Default in SQL Server 2008 R2

Of all the features added to SQL Server over the past few years I was particularly pleased with the addition of backup compression, there have been third-party tools around for a while that have done this (such as Quest’s excellent Litespeed) but third-party tools always add an extra layer of admin and maintenance that as a DBA I could do without. In SQL Server 2008 it was made available for Enterprise licences only but with the launch of SQL Server 2008 R2 backup compression is now available with a Standard license, though in both cases the feature is turned off as a default – so how do you use it?

Well, if you’re making a backup from Management Studio you can specify manually on the Options page of the “Back Up Database” page (right-click on DB >> Tasks >> Backup), like so…

Alternatively, if you’re one of the “Real DBAs don’t use GUIs” crowd you can add the “WITH COMPRESSION” option to the BACKUP command..

BACKUP DATABASE reportserver TO disk = ‘E:\ReportServer.bak’
WITH COMPRESSION

Or, conversely you can specify not to use compression…

BACKUP DATABASE reportserver TO disk = ‘E:\ReportServer_no_compression.bak’
WITH NO_COMPRESSION

But what if you want to use compression but don’t want to have to think about it every time – or more importantly, don’t want your users to have to think about it? To enable backup compression as a server-wide default you will need to use sp_configure…

USE MASTER;
GO
EXEC sp_configure ‘backup compression default’,’1′;
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE;

Now all you need to do is tell your storage admin that he/she owes you a drink!

32-Bit ODBC Drivers in Windows Server 2008 R2

Lately I’ve been taking advantage of my MSDN subscription (thanks to Ken Simmons‘ competition last month) and playing with some new technologies, initially experimenting with Windows Server 2008 R2. If you hadn’t heard prior to launch period, Microsoft made 2008 R2 64-bit only – probably the right decision to make but whilst the software industry is still making a transition from 32-bit to 64-bit there are bound to be some niggles here and there.

Being a database guy, one of the issues I noticed right away was that the ODBC Data Source Administrator accessible via Control Panel / Administrative Tools is the 64-bit version and can only be used to setup connections for 64-bit ODBC drivers. Not only was the 64-bit version missing the Postgres driver I had just installed, there were no drivers at all other than SQL Server…

It turns out that there are are two, entirely identical ODBC tools and the one that most of us will end up using initially (unless we’re lucky enough to have an all 64-bit architecture) is kept in the basement that is the c:\Windows folder. The 32-bit ODBC Data Source Administrator can be found by going to the Start Menu, selecting Run and executing c:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe as follows…

Once launched, you’ll see a tool that appears to be identical in every way, except that the ‘missing’ ODBC drivers are now available…

Please note that you can’t run both 32-bit and 64-bit tools at the same time so please make sure you close the 64-bit one first, it’s also worth bearing in mind that if you’re running 32-bit applications they will probably be looking for 32-bit DSNs so even if you can get a 64-bit driver for your data source it doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do.

As much as I understand Microsoft’s decision to stop developing 32-bit operating systems, a little bit of a helping hand during the transition period would’ve been nice - perhaps a second shortcut in the Administrative tools folder and the ability to run them simultaneously?  The whole thing seems like a confisuing mess in their own words…

The 32-bit version of the ODBC Administrator tool displays 32-bit system DSNs, 32-bit user DSNs, and 64-bit user DSNs. The 64-bit version of the ODBC Administrator tool displays 64-bit system DSNs, 32-bit user DSNs, and 64-bit user DSNs.  

To maintain backward compatibility, no resolution for this problem is currently available… to work around this problem, use the appropriate version of the ODBC Administrator tool.

I’ve made my own shortcuts to the 32-bit version and if you’re like me and constantly diving in and out of ODBC Administrator then you’ll probably want to do the same.

Microsoft’s UK Tech Days: SQL 2008 R2

I enjoy going to SQL Server community events, I usually find they provide a refreshing look at what other people are doing and provide inspiration and ideas of what I could be doing myself.  Vendor-run events are different so I attended Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 R2 Tech Days event with mixed expectations, not sure if it was going to overly marketing-heavy or whether it really would be worth taking a day out of the office.

Thankfully I was in luck, Microsoft did a great job of treading the line between promotion and information and whilst the intro and the first 5-10 mins of each take were quite marketing oriented the majority of the content was realistic and provided honest demonstrations of the product.  Also throughout the talks presenters were offering to answer questions via SMS or via the Twitter hash-tag #uktechdays, this was a great touch and even though there wasn’t time to answer all of the questions it really added to the interactivity of the event.

First up was Power Pivot, as a product it looks to be immensely powerful and provides lightning fast analytical capabilities though I imagine it needs a decent amount of RAM and an up to date processor to achieve it – the most amazing part is that it’s a free add-in for Excel 2010!  Essentially PowerPivot allows you to extract up to a million records from a database and perform in-memory analysis with that set of data, including combining it with other data sets, combining it with data in your spreadsheet, performing calculations, making summaries, etc.  It’s well worth taking a look at the demos, PowerPivot is a massive leap forward in Excel’s capabilities but to me it seems like a step backwards in terms of the centralised BI ‘single version of the truth’ concept – allowing users to rip a million rows out of the Data Warehouse, mix them up with other data sources and then send them around via email or even publish them via SharePoint.  As it goes the Share Point integration was also pretty remarkable, allowing other users to use published reports not only for viewing but also as a data source on which to build new reports – pretty ground breaking stuff but I’d hate to be the guy debugging a report based on a report based on a report based on… (you get where I’m going).  Overall I’d give PowerPivot a 5* rating for innovation but it seems that Microsoft is using a common tactic from Formula One – trying to get ahead of the competition by taking a contrary strategy, but will it turn out like Jenson Button in Shanghai (he won) or like Lewis Hamilton in Australia (he didn’t)?

After a relatively dry talk on virtualisation and Hyper-V Live Migration (impressive stuff but I’ve seen it before) the next talk was about Report Builder 3 and having never been a user of Reporting Services I thought I was just going to sit through it and twiddle my thumbs – I was wrong.  Having been knocking about in the BI world for about 8 years or so I can really say that this release of Report Builder really cements Microsoft’s position in Business Intelligence.  It’s still not very slick from a usability standpoint but the visualisations they’ve added are stunning and having been a long-time user of Business Objects the talk actually did make me think “how hard would it be to switch?” – since I have a mature installation the answer is very hard but it still made me think.  The most impressive visual elements were the Spark Lines, Data Bars and Indicators but the maps were also pretty good especially given that you can use ESRI shape files.

The next talk was “Maximising your existing hardware CPU, memory and disk” by Ramesh Meyyappan, I’ve seen Ramesh before at SQLBits and he’s always very good, very detailed and straight to the point.  It was a great talk, taking place mainly in Management Studio rather than PowerPoint and if you get the chance to see one of Ramesh’s talkes in the future you should definitely go (but have a cup of coffee first).  Following Ramesh’s rollercoaster of a talk was much more relaxing run-through of Microsoft’s ‘database in the cloud’ offering SQL Azure, a product I find extremely interesting but don’t have an immediate use for though I expect in time as the feature-set converges with SQL Server I will be changing my mind.  Next up was StreamInsight, R2′s Complex Event Processing (CEP) solution for analysing large data streams (10k rows/sec+) on the fly without touching the relational engine – it looks interesting but I don’t have those sorts of requirements at the moment so I don’t have much of a reaction.  The day was rounded off by a presentation by Andrew Fryer about Master Data Services, a difficult topic to present in a jazzy way but it looks very interesting and if it will integrate with the spaghetti-junction of systems floating around in most organisations it could do a lot to help us keep our data warehouses in line with corporate naming conventions, it sounds like a lot of fuss over a little issue but if you’ve ever actually tried to solve the problem yourself in a company with more than a couple of source systems you’ll understand how hard it can be.

All in all a good day, I’ll give a shout out to the staff at Jumbucks in Shepherd’s Bush where I had breakfast and bought a bagful of Australian confectionary and to the Vegetarian Chinese buffet over the road for providing me with much needed sustenance.

What’s New in Windows Server 2008 R2

I’ve never been much of a server admin but in order to install a fresh copy of SQL Server 2008 R2 (November CTP) I decided to install a fresh copy of Windows Server 2008 R2.  I downloaded the install from Microsoft’s site and because I’ve been primarily running on Windows Server 2003 I ran through one of their e-Learning sessions to fill in the blanks of what’s new in both R2 and Server 2008.

The main versions are:

• Foundation (up to 8GB RAM, 1 Socket, no VMs)
• Standard (up to 32GB RAM, 4 Sockets, Host + 1VM),
• Web Server (up to 32GB RAM, 4 Sockets, no VMs)
• Enterprise (up to 2TB RAM, 8 Sockets, Host + 4VMs)
• Data Centre (up to 2TB RAM, 64 Sockets, unlimited VMs)

As always there are lots of new features on the list but the biggies seem to be Hyper-V, Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).  The most stark break from the past here is that 2008 R2 will only run on 64-bit processors, existing users of Server 2008 32-bit installs on 64-bit processors will not be able to perform an upgrade and will have to do a clean install.

Hyper-V is Microsoft’s new virtualisation technology which on paper seems like a good challenger to VMWare ESX and it comes with R2 as standard although you’ll need Enterprise or Datacenter  to make the most of it.  By far the coolest feature of Hyper-V is the Live Migration (similar to VMWare’s VMotion), this allows you to move a guest system from one host server to another without any interruption to the users of the guest, that’s it – zero downtime.

RDS and VDI represent an enhancement of Terminal Services, along with Hyper-V you can now host virtual desktops on a virtual host and permit access from approved devices over the web or via the network, remote desktop now supports multiple monitors and Aero-Glass.

The session mentioned a number of other features, most noteworthy wew BranchCache (WAN optimisation), DirectAccess (seamless and interventionlessVPN replacement) and PowerShell 2.0 (command-line server admin) an there was an incremental 7.5 release of IIS.

Well, I hope you got something from this post, more details and a link to the e-Learning session can be found on Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 R2 microsite.