Infrastructure at your Service
During the installation of a new SQL Server environment in a Project, we wanted to automate the whole process deployment and configuration when installing a new SQL Server Always On Availability Group (AAG). This installation requires to prestage cluster computer objects in Active Directory Domain Services, called Cluster Name Objects (CNOs) and Virutal Computer Objects (VCOs). For more information on the prestage process, please read this Microsoft article. In this blog, we will see how…
AWS S3 offers different Storage Classes, allowing to optimize cost among others. For instance, some classes are used for archiving purposes: S3 Glacier and S3 Glacier Deep Archive. It means the storage cost is the lowest you can obtain, but your data is not available immediately and the access cost is increased. In the case of S3 archive classes, retrieving the data is not cost-effective because this is clearly not what it is aimed for….
As encryption solution in SQL Server, Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) is simple and quick to set up. That’s why this is a common encryption mechanism. TDE encrypts data with a certificate at the page level, before SQL Server writes on the disk. It is supposed to protect your environment from some scenarios, where SQL Server files (backups or data) are stolen. By default the certificate used for encryption is stored in the master database. But…
Today is the first day of the PASS SUMMIT 2017 in Seattle (WA). The weather is cloudy and we have only 11°C… but where is the problem? Everything happens inside! (at the Convention Center). In this blog, I will make a summary of main attack vectors against MSSQL environments, based on Argenis FERANDEZ’s session called “Modern Security Attack Vectors Against SQL Server Environments”. METASPLOIT Metasploit is a penetration testing framework to exploit known security vulnerabilities….
Welcome to PowerShell Conference EU 2017 Started on April, 5th at 9:00 AM, I was immersed in a wonderful and amazing Open Ceremony among light effects and an epic music. Indeed, using PowerShell is always an epic moment… Then, lights turned on and all the speakers stood up and come behind the scene. As you may see, they came from all around the worlds to bring us the best of PowerShell! This Open Ceremony…
In this blog, I will present you the new Stretch Database feature in SQL Server 2016. It couples your SQL Server On-Premises database with an Azure SQL Database, allowing to stretch data from one ore more tables to Azure Cloud. This mechanism offers to use low-cost hard drives available in Azure, instead of fast and expensive local solid state drives. Indeed SQL Database Server resources are solicited during data transfers and during remote queries (and…
Azure offers two deployment models for cloud components: Resource Manager (RM) and Classic deployment model. Newer and more easier to manage, Microsoft recommends to use the Resource Manager. Even if these two models can exist at the same time in Azure, they are different and managed differently: in PowerShell cmdlets are specific to RM. In order to be able to communicate with Azure from On-Premises in PowerShell, you need to download and install the Azure…
Recently, there is a new way to manage the Azure infrastructure with Resource Manager. It brings many advantages regarding the classic deployment. The differences between these two deployments will not be covered in this blog because it is not the initial goal, and it already exists a very good Microsoft topic on this subject. In this blog, we will generate a new Windows Azure Virtual Machine using Resource Manager deployment with PowerShell from On-Premise. Remember,…
In previous posts, my colleague Daniel Westermann explained how to install the “Dell DVD Store Database Test Suite” into PostgreSQL, Oracle and MySQL. This time, this is my job to present you how to proceed with a SQL Server instance 😉 I will proceed this installation on SQL Server 2014 running under Windows Server 2012 R2. To be coherent with the other RDBMS examples, all the manipulation will be made on Windows core. Yes, it…
Since SQL Server 2008, Microsoft has introduced a system job called “syspolicy_purge_history”. This job is installed and enabled by default, and it contains three steps scheduled at 02:00 AM: What is this job? And what is it for? Since SQL Server 2008, a new feature called Policy Based Management has been added. When your policies are run, the results are stored in the msdb. But without a purge mechanism, msdb will keep growing. So…
