One of the neat security features with SQL 2005 and later is the ability to use a SSL certificate to encrypt off-host SQL server communications over port 1433. Encrypting communications between your SQL server and your remote applications is strongly recommended. Do you really want credit card data, personal information...
As previously mentioned in my blog about SQL TDE (Transparent Data Encryption), the example script I gave just used a SQL self-signed certificate to encrypt the database. While this is fine for a demo, you should only used trusted certificates in a production environment.Getting a trusted certificated inserted into SQL...
One of the new features in SQL Server 2008/R2 is Transparent Database Encryption, or TDE. TDE lets you encrypt any database, without having to change your application. This means you can fully encrypt databases and log files for SharePoint, RMS, or anything else you wish. For the ultimate in security...
This session talked about several proven methods of high availability and disaster recovery for SQL 2008. It focused on several case studies of real-word companies, their HA/DR approach, and metrics from their environments. It didn't cover any new wizbang technology or third party products. With the proper design, processes, procedures,...
This past weekend I worked on automating our SQL installs and scripting security lockdowns. During that effort I found the new policy evaluation tool in SQL 2008. This built-in tool allows you to run specific checks against your SQL 2008 installation to report on best practices. During my evaluation everything...
On servers that are running Windows server 2008 or later, you can take advantage of the built-in two-way firewall. SQL server firewall rules can be pretty easily created through the GUI, but it can be a bit tedious. So I wrote a little batch file that asks you for an IP...
After installing and re-installing VMware vCenter and VUM many times (mostly for testing) all of the manual database creation steps got old pretty fast. So I put some effort into creating a T-SQL script for SQL 2008 that automates most of the tasks.The T-SQL script below does the following:1. Adds...
Today I was reading a whitepaper by 3PAR regarding SQL 2008 performance on their storage arrays. It's an interesting comparison of wide striping, RAID levels, mixed workloads, and number of disks. While browsing through the document I stumbled upon a SQL 2005/2008 feature which I was unaware of, but is...
One of the best sessions to date of VMworld was discussing virtualizing SQL 2008 in vSphere. VMware has written a lengthy whitepaper going over the gory details. In short, you will likely get 86% or better of bare metal performance if you virtualize SQL with vSphere, even for the most...
One new feature of SQL 2008 SP1 which I didn't know about was the ability to slipstream a service pack right into the installation routine, like you can with operating systems.This will make deployment quicker, faster, and less error prone. The full set of instructions can be found at this...