One of the new features added to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and R2 is the ability to slipstream a service pack into the installation. This streamlines the installation, and reduces human error. Now that SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 is officially out, here's how to slipstream SQL Server 2008 R2...
Brent Ozar, Microsoft Certified Solutions Master (MSCM), www.brentozar.comThis was a REALLY great session that was both practical and filled with great technical details and good take away information. #1 takeway is "TempDB is like a public toilet: You never know what's in there." LOL Clearly Brent Ozar knows his stuff,...
Denny Cherry, Independent Consultant (www.mrdenny.com @mrdenny)vExpert 2012, Microsoft Certified Master, MVPThis session covered some helpful tips for virtualizing SQL server, be it on Hyper-V or VMware. Yes you can virtualize SQL and still get excellent performance. But there are some special considerations that you need to be aware of. Most of the...
In the midst of all the uproar about the vSphere 5.0 licensing changes, I missed the fact that Microsoft released SQL 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 yesterday. You can download it here. The master list of bug fixes can be seen here. The new features are listed below. For the full...
Microsoft recently released SQL Server 2008 R2 cumulative update package 8 to the web for downloading. You can request the hotfix from this page. Also remember that the June 2011 monthly security patches included some for SQL Server (2005 through 2008 R2). You can find the whole bulletin list here....
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...
One of the last things I do during a SQL installation is configure the temp databases. Temp databases are very important to some applications, as they are used as a scratch or buffer space. Other applications may not use them hardly at all, so it really depends on your environment.One...
One of the best things Microsoft did with Windows Server 2008 and later is the built-in firewall. Unlike previous OS releases where the firewall was pretty much a joke, Microsoft started from scratch and came up with a very robust two-way firewall. SQL is one of the prime targets for...