Normally I try to put topics in the positive in other words ''Do this'' not ''Don't do that''. Sometimes its clearer to focus on what *not* to do. Popular development processes often start with screen mockups, or user input descriptions. In a scale-out pattern like Cloud Computing on Windows Azure, that's the wrong place to start. Start with the ...

I was privileged to have a chat with my buddies over at www.dotnetrocks.com, Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell, episode number 876 (876!). Listen to the most popular internet audio talk show for .NET developers!  Here's the abstract:Carl and Richard talk to Kevin Kline about the latest features in SQL Server 2012. The conversation ...

Ever since returning from the UK for the SQLBits conference, I've been snowed under a mountain of action items.  I've got such a backlog of things to get done, emails to answer, and family to not ignore that I'm starting to feel really guilty.  So with that in mind, I wanted to whip out a quick blog post to let you know I'm ...

Cloud computing is actually being largely driven by the “Consumerization of IT”. That phrase, as grammatically incorrect as it is, represents a fundamental change to the way businesses think about technology, and subsequently how the IT team provides it. Years ago, technology was introduced by the office. No one owned a mainframe at ...

I've recently posted a blog on how cloud computing would change the Systems Architect’s role in an organization, another on how the cloud changes a Database Administrator's job, and the last post dealt with the Systems Administrator. In this post I'll cover the changes facing the Software Developer when using the cloud. The software ...

I recently posted a blog entry on how cloud computing would change the Systems Architect’s role in an organization, and another on how the cloud changes a database administrator's job. This time I'll cover a few of the changes the cloud brings for the Systems Administrator. The systems administrator shares some similarity with the database ...

I recently posted a blog entry on how cloud computing would change the Systems Architect’s role in an organization. In a way, the Systems Architect has the easiest transition to a new way of using computing technologies. In fact, that’s actually part of the job description. I mentioned that a Systems Architect has three primary ...

I know - I said I didn't like the ''cloud'' term, but my better-phrased ''Distributed Systems'' moniker just never took off like I had hoped. So I'll stick with the ''c'' word for now, at least until the search engines catch up with my more accurate term. I thought I might spend a little time on how the cloud affects the way we work - from ...

One of the use-cases for a cloud solution is to serve as a Disaster Recovery option for your on-premises servers. I’ll explain one particular use-case in this entry, specifically using Windows Azure “IaaS” or Virtual Machines as a Recovery Solution for SQL Server (more detail here: ...

Last week I blogged about developing a High-Availability plan. The specifics of a given plan aren't as simple as ''Step 1, then Step 2'' because in a hybrid environment (which most of us have) the situation changes the requirements. There are those that look for simple ''template'' solutions, but unless you settle on a single vendor and a single ...