Search results matching tags 'cloud computing' and 'Big Data'

Two TechNet Radio Sessions You Don't Want to Miss

KKline — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 20:12:00 GMT

I was recently honored to speak on TechNet Radio in two separate sessions about BigData & Hadoop and cloud databases (specifically SQL Azure). The show debuted on the TechNet homepage under “Today’s News” and on the TechNet Edge homepage. In each of these shows, I did what I like to do for all the parties I attend - bring a friend. To make my life easier, I simply reposted the verbiage that TechNet used, rather that to write my own.

About the BigData/Hadoop video:

Microsoft SQL Server MVP Kevin Kline and Vice President of Database Development at Quest Software Guy Harrison (blog | twitter), join us for today’s episode where we discuss Big Data and Hadoop ---from what it is, why its important as well what role does it play in cloud computing.

Watch the video: HERE

Use the following short link to share the word with on Tweeter, Facebook, and LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/In8uu8

About the SQL Azure video:

Microsoft SQL Server MVP Kevin Kline is back and brings with him Director of Development at Quest Software, Patrick O’Keefe. Tune in as they chat about the latest enhancements of SQL Server 2012, SQL Azure, as well as Project Lucy – a unique data analytics service in the cloud which offers insight on system and data performance through analytical presentations.

Watch the video: HERE

Use the following short link to share the word with on Tweeter, Facebook, and LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/Hypc6z

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?

What I'm Reading, July 22 2011

KKline — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:43:00 GMT

I read too much, and that, my friends, is an entirely separate topic for a blog post. But I thought I'd share with you a little more about what I'm reading because sometimes, if I'm lucky, it might be something you'd enjoy too. So I'm going to start sharing what I'm reading at least once per week, partly so that I don't firehose too many reading links directly into your brain (where I to do it say once per month) and partly to solidify in my own mind the information that I'm reviewing. So here are a few good links for the seven days leading up to July 22, 2001:

Microsoft and Whitehouse partnership on BigData: BigData isn't a particularly new concept. But I was intrigued to learn that the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, and 13 other teams were partnering on developing better BigData analytics for lots of government data from activities such as healthcare, economic development, education, transportation, and the power grid. Cools stuff! Plus, Microsoft has developed a new tool called Project Daytona to better harness the power of the cloud, in general, and Windows Azure, specifically.
While we're on the topic of Federal IT in the Cloud be sure to read this linked article from ComputerWorld. Say what you will about our government, but putting government IT in the cloud and increasing both its transparency and availability will make a huge difference in how the Federal government will be able to service the public. We're talking as big a difference as corporations experienced between the "catalog on the web" experience of the 1990's to the Web2.0 experience of today.
If you're the social media type, give this article a read discussing the Power of Hashtags in Social Media.
The Register, of the UK, whose tagline is "Biting the hand that feeds IT" has a great article on a spat over database technologies between the IT sage Michael Stonebreaker and Google. It's a great read if for no other reason than to prove that databases are worth fighting over.
And if you think Microsoft is still towing the relational database barge without thinking about other technologies, you need to read up on Projects Dryad and Daytona.
Finally, I'm still getting lots of questions about when and where to limit SQL Server's Max Degrees of Parallelism. Be sure to read Microsoft's Recommendations and Guidelines for 'max degree of parallelism' configuration option here.

And just because so many of us in IT are closet or former musicians, there's Live Guitar Lessons with Steven Krenz, sponsored by my hometown boyz at Gibson Guitar. Got a favorite article or tool tip? Let me know! Enjoy,

-Kev

Follow me on Twitter.

Getting Ahead of the Curve – Big Data

KKline — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:41:00 GMT

I have to confess that I'm incredibly excited about BigData. I haven't been this excited about new innovations in IT since relational databases first appeared on the scene early in my career. But what is BigData? Back in those days, I can still feel the echos of adrenaline when I was hired to work on a NASA project that would involve over 100Mb of data. ONE HUNDRED MEGABYTES! Good grief, that was fantastically huge to us on the team. (That database was over 130Mb when I finally moved on to another project). And remember - PC software was installed using 640Kb floppy disks at the time. In fact, my Oracle v5 instance required shuffling through about a dozen floppy disks to get the thing installed on a 286 IBM PC. BigData today takes on an entirely meaning as database sizes scale into the petabytes. But the emphasis is still the same today as it was back in the 1980's - turning data into actionable information. However, with BigData, we can achieve amazing new insight from this data and mine for tidbits that would never have seen the light of day with smaller data sets. The two major themes to remember about big data are 1) the more data you have on a given domain, the more power you have, 2) the better the analysis you can perform on the data, the more power you have. In fact, theme 2 might be the most important thing to consider because lots of data is meaningless unless you can extract knowledge from it. And that's where better analytical techniques come into play. Here are some articles about Big Data that you might enjoy:

Let me know what you think. Best regards, -Kev

Follow me on Twitter at kekline