Search results matching tags 'Cloud Computing' and 'Conferences'

Cloud Computing - just get started already!

BuckWoody — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:43:27 GMT

OK - you've been hearing about "cloud" (I really dislike that term, but whatever) for over two years. You've equated it with just throwing some VM's in some vendor's datacenter - which is certainly part of it, but not the whole story. There's a whole world of - wait for it - *coding* out there that you should be working on. If you're a developer, this is just a set of servers with operating systems and the runtime layer (like.NET, Java, PHP, etc.) that you can deploy code to and have it run. It can expand in a horizontal way, allowing massive - and I really, honestly mean massive, not just marketing talk kind of scale. We see this every day.

If you're not a developer, well, now's the time to learn. Explore a little. Try it.

We'll help you. There's a free conference you can attend in November, and you can sign up for it now. It's all on-line, and the tools you need to code are free.

Put down Facebook and Twitter for a minute - go sign up. Learn. Do. :)

See you there. http://www.windowsazureconf.net/

Big Data and the Cloud - More Hype or a Real Workload?

BuckWoody — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:57:36 GMT

Last week Microsoft announced several new offerings for “Big Data” - and since I’m a stickler for definitions, I wanted to make sure I understood what that really means. What is “Big Data”? What size hard drive is that? After all, my laptop has 1TB of storage - is my laptop “Big Data”?

There are actually a few definitions for this term, most notably those involving the “Four V’s” Volume, Velocity, Variety and Variability. Others disagree with this definition. I tend to try and get things into their simplest form, so I’m using this definition for myself:

Big data is defined as a large set of computationally expensive data that is worked on simultaneously.

Let me flesh that out a little. To be sure, “Big Data” has a larger size than say a few megabytes. The reason this is important is that it takes special hardware to be able to move large sets of data around, store it, process it and so on. (large set)

If you store a LOT of data, but only use a small portion of it at a time, that really isn’t super-hard to do. It’s mainly a storage issue at that point. But, if you do need to work with a large portion of the data at one time, then the memory, CPU and transfer components of the system have to adapt to be responsive - new ways to work with that data (game theory, knot-algorithms, map-reduce, etc.) need to be brought into play. (computationally expensive)

Once that data is loaded into the processing area (memory or whatever other mechanism is used) it must be worked on in parallel to come back in a reasonable time. You have two options here - you can scale the system up with more internal hardware (CPU’s, memory and so on) or you can scale it out to have multiple systems work on it at the same time using paradigms such as map/reduce and so on. Actually, when you lay this out in an architecture diagram, scale up or out doesn’t actually change the logical structure of the process - in scale out the network becomes the bus, and the nodes become more RAM and computing power. Of course, there are changes in code for how you stitch the workload back together. (worked on simultaneously)

So back to the original question. Is Big Data, as I have defined it here, a workload for Windows and SQL Azure? Absolutely! In fact, it’s probably one of the main workloads, and I believe it represents the latest, and perhaps also the earliest frontier of computing. Jim Gray, a former researcher here at Microsoft and a hero of mine, was working on this very topic. I believe as he did - all computing is simply an interface over data.

Microsoft has multiple offerings on the topic of Big Data. In posts that follow from myself and my co-workers, we’ll explore when and where you use each one. Whether you are a data professional or a developer, this is the new frontier - don’t wait to educate yourself on how to leverage Big Data for your organization.

Hadoop on Windows Azure and SQL Server - Microsoft’s partnership to include Hadoop workloads on Windows Azure and SQL Server/Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW)

LINQ to HPC - Microsoft’s High-Performance Computing SKU of HPC is now in Azure

Windows Azure Table Storage - A key/value pair type storage with full partitioning that is immediately consistent, able to handle huge loads of data and works with any REST-compatible language

Other offerings - Including the new Data Explorer, Project Daytona (with a Big Data Toolkit for Scientists and researchers), Power View and more.

The era of Big Data is here. And you can use Windows and SQL Azure to bring it to your organization.

PASS Summit 2011, Day 1

KKline — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:40:00 GMT

I've already had a few good days in Seattle/Redmond this week, meeting with the Microsoft SQL Server program teams and with other Microsoft SQL Server MVPs. I was as excited as a squeeling Justin Beiber fangirl waiting for his new video, wishing I could tell you all of the cool things I learned at Redmond about the future of SQL Server. But as you'd expect, all of that cool stuff is presently NDA. I'm sure there'll be some cool announcements from Microsoft this week. So be on the lookout for the good word from Microsoft.

Keynote

Rushabh Mehta, the PASS president, spent a few moments extolling the value of community and the achievements of the professional association. And he's got a lot to be proud of. PASS has come such a long way. One of the most telling facts about the significance of PASS, to me, is that important SQL Server announcements now happen at the PASS Summit. There was a time, and not very long ago too, in which Microsoft made important SQL Server announcements at other Microsoft events like PDC and TechEd. No longer! PASS is the nexus for Microsoft's data management users. And it shows. Ted Kummert, Microsoft's top data executive, had a lot of exciting talking points about how the community has grown. PASS now has hundreds of chapters worldwide and nearly ninety thousand members. The event has over 4000 paying attendees this year, which means probably around 6000 total attendees including press, exhibitors, speakers, etc. That's big! In fact, that's just about the peak capacity for the Washington State Convention Center here in Seattle. No wonder PASS will be at other locations in the future.

It's Officially called SQL Server 2012

SQL Server "Denali" is officially rolling out as SQL Server 2012. There are a lot of interesting new developments with SQL12 regarding the way the product is splitting into multiple types of appliances designed for specific workloads and customer needs. Need a massive processing appliance, check! That's PDW. Need a hybrid solution for data housed both on premises and in the cloud? Check. Need processing power for BigData? Need processing for non-relational and unstructured data? Check. Microsoft's improving tools will culminate in a new release of development tools called "SQL Server Data Tools", formerly known as Project Juneau, while the business intelligence side of the house will have a new set of tools in "Power View", formerly known as Project Crescent. Hadoop figured large in the keynote, as Microsoft acknowledges that many BigData problems are best served by non-relational data stores. Denny Lee, of SQLCAT, proposed an in-house data marketplace during his demos. My face lit up like a kid at a surprise 10-yr birthday party. Really?!? FOR ME?!!? I laugh because I'd been doing that at jobs throughout my career, offering up what I used to call the "data feedstore" to managers within my team. +! for validation of your ideas.

First Session of the Day

From there I headed out to my first presentation of the conference, which I was delivering with my pal Buck Woody (blog | twitter) of Microsoft. Our session was all about Cloud 101 - when it's appropriate to use the cloud and where you can learn more about the specific technologies like IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Many IT pros don't know the difference and are being subjected to the "implement it!" decrees of their bosses who simply read an article on an airplane saying that the cloud is the future. The best quote from the Twittersphere about our session? "Elastic is fantastic" I couldn't have said it better! Speaking of conference sessions, my buddy Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) pointed out this great mobile schedule planning resource:

Go to Guidebook and download the app for your iPhone, Windows Phone 7, Android, or Blackberry. After launching it, you’ll be prompted to download a guide. Type in PASS Summit, and we’re near the bottom of the list.

Voila! Instant mobile schedule guidebook to the PASS Summit.

The Energy is Nuts!

After delivering my session, it was off to the Exhibit Hall, where I played the role of booth jockey for Quest Software for the rest of the proceedings that day. I noticed two things of significance. First, the crowds were thicker and more energetic than I've seen in years. Wow! I knew attendance was our highest ever, but the crowd was near to bursting out at the seems like a 14-year old kid wearing last season's clothes. So either the Washington State Convention Center is no longer big enough or more planning is needed to make this venue work. When I was in leadership for PASS, planning and properly utilizing the venue was always a logistical nightmare. So I don't envy the current leadership in figuring out how to make the PASS Summit scale to an even larger size. The second thing I noticed was how focused the crowd was. Usually, you get a lot of tire-kickers in the booth who, deep down inside, only want your vendor swag. Yes, we had some cute swag this year (a Toad beanie baby and some cool ribbons for your badge). But we also had huge crowds even after we ran out of swag. And, in case you didn't detect the important part of the previous sentence, we ran out of swag! That's right we gave out everything on day 1 of a 3 day event. I nearly freaked the freak out. What is going on here, folks? Haven't you heard that there's a recession going on?

Adventures in the Land of CloudDB/NoSQL/NoAcid

KKline — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:44:00 GMT

Cloud, Bunny, or CloudBunny?

Last year, some of my friends from Quest Software attended Hadoop World in New York. In 2009, I never would've guessed that Quest would be there with products, community initiatives, as a major sponsor and with presenters?

There were just under 1,000 attendees who weren’t the typical devheads and geekasaurs you'd normally see at very techie events like Code Camps, SQL Saturdays, Cloud Camps and or even other NoSQL events such as the Cassandra Summit. We're talkin' enterprise customers with active Hadoop projects underway.

Some observations from the show that may be of interest to you:

- Hadoop World was a trending topic on Twitter during its duration.

- Hadoop has "arrived" with an average cluster of 66 nodes weighing in at 114TB. (For the philosophers among us, how much does a terabyte weigh?) The most famous Hadoop cluster is FaceBook with a trifling 30PB in storage - that's petabytes. That's more written information than has ever been written by man, cumulatively, including the Advice on Men column from Cosmo Magazine. Unfortunately, that's only a few hundred thousand pictures of teenagers pursing their lips at themselves and holding a digital camera while standing in front of the bathroom mirror. They're expecting about 60PB by the end of 2011.

- HP was there, creating a lot of buzz, from a hardware perspective.

- Quest was there as the leading independent tool maker for cloud apps.

- Oracle OraOop got attendees pulse's racing, since many want a high speed, scalable connector between Oracle and Hadoop to fill a necessary gap. I'm not sure if there's something in place for SQL Server and I'm not currently aware of any high-speed connectors built in to SQL Server Integration Services.

Some other good coverage to check out about the show as well:

Why Should You Care?

All of this is very important because NoSQL in general and Hadoop in particular are picking up speed and momentum. Even if your organization isn't using NoSQL technology today, chances are very good that your CIO will be asking you for details on how and when it should be deployed. And if you don't think it should be deployed, the natural response of the CIO is "Why not?". So you'd better get your ducks in a row, Mr SQL Server DBA.

There are lots of great sites to get Hadoop information, but I invite you to take a gander at Jeremiah Peschka's (blog | twitter) blog for much NoSQL goodness. Start with Jeremiah's blog post here, and ignore all indications that you might be in a biker bar or a San Francisco tattoo parlor. That's just Jeremiah's style.

His Hadoop writings are here, though lately he's been writing a lot about RIAK - which sounds like a euphemism for vomiting, as in "Jeremiah spent a lot of time riaking after chugging that bottle of cough syrup."

Enjoy! -Kev

Twitter at kekline

Cloud Evolving, SQL Server Responding

KKline — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:49:00 GMT

Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) and I did an interview with TechTarget’s Brendan Cournoyer at last summer's Tech-Ed, which as turned into a podcast titled “Cloud efforts advance, SQL Server evolves.” The podcast covers all the major trends at the conference (like BI), virtualization features in Quest’s products (like Spotlight), Brent’s new book and MCM certification, and more. Here’s a link to hear it, appearing on 6/11/10: http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/podcast/Cloud-efforts-advance-SQL-Server-evolves.

Enjoy!

-Kev

Twitter at kekline

Toad Just Keeps Getting Better

KKline — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:19:00 GMT

Toad for SQL Server Wins Best of TechEd 2010 in the Database Development Category

Toad and I go way back. I first started with Toad as a user on the Oracle DBMS back in the early 1990's. When I started at Quest Software back on January 2nd of 2002, one of the first products I tackled as a SQL Server product architect was Toad. How do we make this very popular Oracle product one that users in the SQL Server world will love too? And this challenge was made that much harder by the fact that Microsoft SQL Server ships with fantastic tools right there in the box. I haven't worked directly on Toad for many years now, but the tool marches on with new features and capabilities that push the envelop with each new release.

I want to applaud the product manager, David Gugick (center below), the developers and testers, and the active and supportive community who loves and embraces Toad. It's always a thrill when your hard work and efforts are recognized. And a big thanks to the fine folks at SQLMag and Windows ITPro Mag for making this happen.

L to R: Jason Hall, Qsft head of SC's; David Gugick, director of Architecture; and me

Want to try Toad for SQL Server for free?

The 5.0 version of Toad for SQL Server that we showed at TechEd is the latest beta, available at ToadWorld.com (build 387 at the time of this writing). It can coexist with Toad for SQL Server version 4.6, if you're already using it. The beta is quite stable and has a bevy of new features, including:

SQL Azure support for most modules including data compare and schema compare, including comparing regular SQL Servers to SQL Azure and back, also with Firewall management (under Server Security properties panel).
Much improved code completion (and it was already rockin'!) that’s faster and allows for column selection, multi-table selection, with tooltips for parameters. Don't forget, all of these features work on SQL Server 2000, 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2.
Updated Schema Compare with better exposed snapshots.
Group Execute enhancements that include database-level selection so you can execute across databases, an option to only show selected servers/databases, option to merge results (or not), improved merging, etc.
New Idle Connection Timeout – to close connections after a period of inactivity.
Result Set Pinning.
Improved Trace support with features like Import Trace File to Table and Open in Profiler capabilities.
New Debug Trace – traces all activity occurring inside of Toad, including storing all variable info in a replayable file.
Twitter Integration (under the View – Collaboration panel) with Yammer integration coming in a future beta release.

You can also see a lot more details about the tool here. And my long-standing offer still stands. If you want to try Toad for SQL Server or its brethren (such as Toad for Data Analysts, Toad Data Modeler, or Benchmark Factory), drop me an email and I'll get a long-term license key straight over to you.

But wait, there's more!

There are so many great resources for you to tap into. And best of all, they're all free! Check these out:

White Paper: How Managers Can Help Their Developers Write Excellent Code

In this white paper, renowned Oracle PL/SQL expert and fellow O'Reilly author Steven Feuerstein provides dev managers with guidance on how to help developers write the best software possible.

Live Product Demo: Toad® Data Modeler
Date: Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PT / 2:00 p.m. ET

Modern Analyst Webinar: Stress-free SQL Queries for the Analyst
Date: Thursday, June 17, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PST

Live Product Demo: Toad® for Data Analysts
Date: Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PT / 2:00 p.m. ET

Live Product Demo: Benchmark Factory® for Databases
Date: Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PT / 2:00 p.m. ET

I look forward to hearing from you. Enjoy!

-Kevin