Internet Database based Services find a suitable service provider

So when you are chosing the provider you have to be sure on services based on SQL Server databases that can benefit largely by offering Database Change Management. DUe to the management factor that Service Providers allocate separate account(s) in the SQL Server database running in their network for their customers to host any web service/application. Any modification to be done to the production database schema would be done by the customer either by themselves or in coordination with the provider. These updates, would typically involve comparing the new schema against the existing schema (in the production database), generating migration scripts and executing the same to propagate the new changes into the hosted production database.

This involves tedious and error-prone manual work due to lack of hosted sql server database change management tool which is remotely accessible being offered by the service providers . Additionally it also mandates the customer to maintain the various migration scripts/updated schema to have an audit trail of the schema changes done over a period of time

Achieving 99.99% Business Continuity with SQL Server tools

Within the IT organisations it has been a huge expansion of increased challenges with regard to number of office locations and keep up the data consistent across the Enterprise. Travelling around the globe is a olden day myth and now even by sitting at your office or home you can obtain the required data, when it comes to Business or Sales using Business Intelligence with Microsoft Office integration is very easy to accomplish. This is where the requirement of availability has been increased and day-by-day the data needs to be available 24/7 rota and DBAs & System Administrators role has been more important to look at High Availability options to ensure that their systems are there when they are needed.

There is no doubt to state that SQL Server product has been evolved into a major Database provisional technology when you need such a flexible and one-click solution. At the same time achieving High Availability & Business Continuity is major hurdle to achieve within any product & tools.

In this regard I would like to refer 2 important events from Technet that has got important information in achieving Business Continuity for your Database Applications:

http://www.microsoft.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?CMTYSvcSource=MSCOMMedia&Params=~CMTYDataSvcParams%5E~arg+Name%3D%22ID%22+Value%3D%221032373899%22%2F%5E~arg+Name%3D%22ProviderID%22+Value%3D%22A6B43178-497C-4225-BA42-DF595171F04C%22%2F%5E~arg+Name%3D%22lang%22+Value%3D%22en%22%2F%5E~arg+Name%3D%22cr%22+Value%3D%22US%22%2F%5E~sParams%5E~%2FsParams%5E~%2FCMTYDataSvcParams%5E

24 Hours of SQL Server 2008: Ensuring Business Continuity:here you can download the podcast (audio only): WMA | MP3 (right click and ‘save target as’ to download)

SQL Server 2008: Access Your Data Any Place, Any Time.

SQL Consolidation: Insights from Customers, Analysts & HP

Featured Web Seminar: SQL Consolidation: Insights from Customers, Analysts & HP On-Demand

Combat SQL Server Sprawl - Inside Experiences & Best Practices

Microsoft SQL Server has enjoyed phenomenal success as a database server. Its relatively low cost, steadily increasing capabilities and ease of deployment have all combined to accelerate its growth. However, that same growth has led to a phenomenon commonly called SQL Server “sprawl”— the rampant, often uncontrolled, proliferation of SQL Server databases.

The problems with SQL Server Sprawl:

• 5% to 20% Server Utilization Rates
• Expensive and Complex High Availability
• Ever-Expanding Management Burden

View this webcast with John Webster of Illuminata and Todd Behrbaum of HP to hear them discuss an approach to successfully combat SQL Server sprawl, how to best consolidate SQL Server environments, and improve application availability and response time. In addition, this webcast will explore relevant user experiences and common themes gleaned from interviews with user's of HP Polyserve’s unique file system solution.

Register today!

Justifying Business Continuity and Risk Management - Web Seminar

Better enable your users to execute their job functions, regardless of any disastrous event

Availability of mission-critical applications to all users at all times is a key component of justifying business continuity and risk management plans. Merging traditional disciplines such as high availability, disaster recovery and continuous operations to deal with planned and unplanned downtime is the key to creating and justifying 24x7 business continuity.

This seminar will cover:

• Definition of Business Continuity
• Why Continuity is Important
• Road Blocks to Justification
• Defining Risk Management
• Reduction through the Business Impact Analysis

Learn the critical success factor in justifying your business continuity plan/solution

Register today!

Best Practices for Measuring and Managing Today's Complex Messaging Environment

Like SQL Server Data, email is also an important aspect of day-to-day business life, more or less it is a business-critical communication tool, and downtime can be disastrous for your company.

As like to the Disaster Recovery for your data, is your email environment performing at its highest level? Do you understand how the components in your messaging environment impact your company's ability to communicate with one another and with your customers?

For the Business Continuity with main communication aspect of your business you must need the following messaging components such as:

• Perimeter servers
• Firewalls
• Anti-malware and spam solutions
• Remote access strategies
• Archiving recommendations

Refer to the  Download this white paper today that will  discuss best practices for keeping your environment running at peak levels.

SQL Server and data protection compliance laws, what affects you?

10 Best Practices for Data Archiving - all platforms

When you think about effective data management, archiving will also play important role to manage your data.

In this regard Windows Magazine has included best practices for your data management.

Data privacy and identity theft have a higher profile in the minds of consumers but data retention issues have a far greater financial impact on businesses. Using an automated archive solution offers companies a way to capture a variety of data types and manage the data for compliance and litigation readiness. This white paper takes an in-depth look at 10 best practices that enable IT to plan, evaluate and implement an enterprise archiving solution.

The best practices discussed include:

• Engaging key stakeholders
• Considering search and tagging requirements
• Automating the archiving process
• Using reporting features to improve efficiency and effectiveness
• Defining or updating a record retention policy and schedule

Register now for this white paper to learn the remaining best practices for archiving.

Keep Everything Clear of the Doors - get safe online

Security, whether it is for your home or systems you have to be very careful!

Ed Gibson, Chief Cyber Security Advisor from Microsoft has articulated very nice article that will talk more about these aspects, we have had a brief meeting with Ed when I was at Microsoft TVP during SQLBits conference. 

You’ve seen it, read it, heard it so many times you’ve blocked it out … routine, mundane. . . but instinctively you take the necessary precautions.  And the idiots who think they can beat the doors for gosh sakes . . . some make it, most don’t… when will they learn.  Even though, I suspect the next time you hear this spoken over the intercom in the Underground, or read the warning label on the inside of the carriage you’ll take just that extra second to really make sure everything is clear of the doors.  “Why?”, you ask.  “Because you’ve just read this!”  No different than the many times you’ve looked at your watch, and then someone else asks you what time it is; you can’t remember, so you look again.

 

Unremarkably, the same applies when it comes to being more safe online.  This past year you bought a brand new state of the art, 2g of RAM, 600g hard drive that will hold more stuff than you or I could ever fill up in a lifetime.  It’s loaded with free anti-spam, anti-virus software and everything is going very well, so well in fact that you don’t update your software (Windows Vista has ‘updates’ turned on by default, so unless you mess with it, you’re okay ), run a periodic anti-malware scan, and the wireless is working fine so need to check that.  You’ve read about the Government’s  GetSafeOnline.org campaign (www.GetSafeOnline.org) that e-Bay, Microsoft, HSBC, Home office, SOCA, and others participate in, you’ve seen the constant news articles about loss or theft of data from the largest of companies and government agencies (and if you’re a victim of HMRC ‘datagate’, you have every right to be angry) but hey, you’ve not been affected . . . why do anything.  Victims of online crime… not me, happens only to those people who go to the ‘wrong sites’ . . .who tried to make it thru the doors for gosh sakes, they should have known better.

 

Not so fast Mr ItAin’tGonnaHappenToMe.  That ‘other person’ is going to be you if you don’t take a few moments to make sure your operating system and software are up to date, that your firewall is turned on (both are already done for you if you are operating Windows Vista) your anti-spam and anti-virus software are installed and updated (don’t forget to renew your subscription to the anti-malware software if it is about to expire).  Organized criminals are ‘green’, ‘socially conscious agnostics’, they want what is best for you – NOT!!  Just like machines, THEY DON’T CARE who you are, where you grew up, what kind of accent you have, whether you’re beautiful (or like me, a face made for radio); they operate without regard to your sex or religious affiliations – I call them “THE EQUALIZERS”.  They want what is yours – from your bank account, your identity, or even a bit of your bandwidth – oh yes, they can quite happily use your computer while you do and you may not ever know.

 

As we approach the Holidays, don’t let the Grinch of Christmas Past ruin your holidays online.  Possibly, ‘just because you read this’, you will take a moment and run the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool , will visit www.GetSafeOnline.org , or possibly even give the most important cyber gift of all – a trip to the wild side, www.WindowsMarketplace.com (click on Security Downloads) for free anti-malware.  It will take you a few minutes; but a few minutes now might just save you months of hassle down the road.  Do you really want to be calling your credit card companies, bank, credit agency, DVLA, DWP, on New Years Eve.  Or worse, worry whether someone will be showing up at your doorstep because you couldn’t be bothered to spend a measly 10 minutes with your kids to talk to them about social networking sites (oh yea, they just told their friends on their Facebook site when you were going to be away). . . and you didn’t tell them how to prevent outsiders from accessing their pages.  Nor did you tell them in no uncertain terms that even when they close their site everything they put on the Internet IS THERE FOREVER.  Oh yes, some make it thru the doors, most don’t . . .when will THEY learn.

 

 

SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring - basics and related resources

To provide High Availability feature within your database environment you could take advantage of Database Mirroring when using SQL Server 2005. As with all critical databases, minimizing data loss and downtime are of the highest importance. Having "AlwaysOn" configuration within the SQL Server 2005 that allows a database to be highly available by automatically failing over to a “mirror” image of the database in the event of a disaster to the “principal” server.

This feature is called Database Mirroring and is only available for production use in SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1, also the Database Mirroring allows a critical database (the Principal Database) to send changes – via synchronous or asynchronous transaction log writes – to a secondary database copy (the Mirror Database). If a third server is available (the Witness) to form a consensus (quorum) in the event of a disaster, SQL Server can detect and automatically failover to the Mirror copy of the database. To help the client’s connect to the appropriate server, Database Mirroring also supports client connectivity options that allow your client applications to be redirected to the currently processing database in the event of a failover.

The following list consists the additional resources on Database Mirroring for your better understanding:

Improving Backup and Recovery RTO RPO in a SAN - think on your SQL Server environment

Backup and restore practices are at the core of today's best business continuity plans. While backup and restore provides many benefits, it simultaneously presents a variety of challenges with lost data, the time it takes to restore data, and the costs of restoring lost data.

This web seminar will explore SAN copy and replication methodologies, in conjunction with backup and restore, delivering more efficient operations and dramatically improving overall business continuity.

- Current commonly used backup/restore methodologies
- SAN copies and replication methodologies
- Requirements to enable different solution designs
- Inherent strengths and weaknesses of various solution designs

Register now!

Whatever the backup and recovery options available in the market, they are purely applicable to SQL Server databases environment too.

Comparing Email Management Systems that Protect Against Spam, Viruses, Malware & Phishing Attacks

This is not SQL Server related, more kind of Business Continuity related! 

What's the best email management system for your business? What system is the most effective with virtually no downtime and is also easy to manage? Read this white paper to find out. Osterman Research surveyed organizations using Barracuda Spam Firewall, GFI Mail Essentials, McAfee GroupShield for Microsoft Exchange, Sunbelt Software Ninja Email Security and Symantec Brightmail to find the system that performed the best in:

• Managing anti-spam systems
• Managing anti-virus systems
• Managing attachment filtering systems
• Managing anti-phishing systems

Dowload this white paper to find the results. Make sure your business has the best email management system available.

How to find which version of Analysis Services you are running?

Using SELECT @@VERSION statement you can get simply get information of SQL Server you are running , when connected to that SQL Server instance. What if to know same for the Analysis Services components, we don't have such an easy way to find out!

I mean there isn't a straight way to find out, but using few statements you could get it, by using following fashion:

Analysis Services 

From the Start menu, point to Program Files, point to SQL Server 2000, point to Analysis Services, and then click Analysis Manager. 
 

• In the Analysis Manager tree, right-click the Analysis Servers node, and then click About Analysis Services. 
   
  
• Use the following table to determine which version of Analysis Services you have. 
    
  Also you can use MSMDSRV.EXE file by looking at properties of this file from Windows Explorer.

Further you can refer to the SSAS_OperationsGuide for more information.

Protect Against Internet-Based Threats

While the Internet has become a necessary tool for business and also provides a vast array of options for personal use, it does have a dark side. Over the past several years, the Internet has become an increasingly dangerous place to work and play, with viruses, Phishing, Pharming and malicious web sites. This white paper will examine technologies that will help guard against Internet-based threats, such as:

• Software that identifies, analyzes, and categorizes applications and protocols.
• Honey Pots which are unpatched computers that are intentionally placed on the Internet so they can become infected – allowing the evolution of a particular attach to be monitored and tracked.
• Honey Clients or fully patched computers that actively visit different web sites in an attempt to become infected, thus identifying threats before they become active.
• Web Data Mining - machines actively looking for sites that contain known infections and/or have attributes and /or activities that are suspicious.

Register now to ensure your company’s data and users are protected.

Your Disaster Recovery plan is only as good as the backup systems at its foundation?

So how does your DR plan look like when it comes to reality? And you know the stats aren't pretty when it comes to business success rates after a disaster has hit.

Make sure your data backup and DR plans are in check to avoid becoming a statistic when disaster strikes. Watch and listen to what our experts recommend for sound backup and DR strategy in these 3 Videocasts:

*Building a DR Plan   

*Improving Backup Operations   

*How Archive and Encryption Impact Backup

  

Software licenses - don't miss the bus, more important for an Audit

Managing software licenses is a difficult job that is only going to get more complicated. Most organizations today face a number of serious challenges in this arena, from the complexity of vendor licensing models, to cost overruns, to missed deadlines, to missed business opportunities and lost productivity because employees don't have access to key applications. Not to mention the Pandora's Box of preparing for audits and regulatory compliance issues.

This Web seminar will take a close look at the basic best practices for preparing for audits and compliance with regulatory bodies, and help attendees learn how having visibility and control over software license usage can help them find their way through the thicket of complexity that is modern software license management. Attendees will learn ways their organizations can better handle these problems and how to choose a solution that best fits their needs.

There are many flexible benefits added to volume licensing with the products, so do not take any risk by ignoring this simple requirement.