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The Scary DBA

I have twenty+ years experience in IT. That time was spent in technical support, development and database administration. I work forRed Gate Software as a Product Evangelist. I write articles for publication at SQL Server Central, Simple-Talk, PASS Book Reviews and SQL Server Standard. I have published two books, ”Understanding SQL Server Execution Plans” and “SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled.” I’m one of the founding officers of the Southern New England SQL Server Users Group and its current president. I also work on part-time, short-term, off-site consulting contracts. In 2009 and 2010 I was awarded as a Microsoft SQL Server MVP. In the past I’ve been called rough, intimidating and scary. To which I usually reply, “Good.” You can contact me through grant -at- scarydba dot kom (unobfuscate as necessary).

Azure First

Microsoft has been pretty clear about their commitment to the entire Azure infrastructure. The updates to Azure come out on a massively accelerated schedule. Because of this, they’re doing lots of code on lots of things that may, one day, end up in your full blown SQL Server instance, but… Read more

2 comments, 333 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 17 June 2013

Praise and a Suggestion for AlwaysOn

One of my favorite additions to SQL Server 2012 is the Availability Groups, referred to as AlwaysOn. These things are awesome. It’s basically shared nothing clustering at a database-by-database level. You can set up a series of secondary machines that will enable you to failover a database in the… Read more

1 comments, 111 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 10 June 2013

Helping Database Administrators

Let’s be honest. Database administration is not all that tough. Set up your backups. Test them. Get consistency checks on line. Some maintenance routines for statistics and maybe for fragmentation are also helpful. Set up security. In most of the important ways, you’re done. Sit back, monitor the whole thing… Read more

4 comments, 879 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 4 June 2013

Using PowerShell to move files to Azure Storage

I was searching all over the place to try to find out how to move files into Azure Storage. Most of the examples I could track down were for API calls through C#. There were very few examples using PowerShell, and most of those were for older versions of Azure.… Read more

1 comments, 155 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 3 June 2013

Microsoft Teched 2013 Keynote

Welcome to Teched 2013

We’re starting off with some type of James Bond video. Chase scene with a really cool car. Not quite French Connection, but good. OK, that was, if a little ballsy, “you’ll never crack it” Jeez, how to upset people. And the car from the video drives… Read more

1 comments, 152 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 3 June 2013

Painting the US Red

We are bringing Red Gate, through the free SQL in the City event, to the United States again this year.

This event has been hosted in London multiple times, Los Angeles, New York, Austin, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston. It’s a fun day of training, presentations, and networking, all done… Read more

4 comments, 133 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 29 May 2013

SMO vs Invoke-Sqlcmd in Azure

I’m working on a series of Powershell scripts for the pre-conference seminars on Windows Azure SQL Database that I’m going to be giving at TechEd and the PASS Summit. One of the things I want to do is script out a full backup process (one that’s consistent with transactions)… Read more

2 comments, 134 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 28 May 2013

A Little Azure Fun on Friday

You know how we’ve always heard that sp_msforeachtable and other similar undocumented functions may not be supported in future versions of SQL Server? Have you tried running something like this on any of your Windows Azure SQL Databases yet:

EXEC sp_msforeachtable 'select ''?'', count(*) from ?'

Try it out.

Read more

3 comments, 120 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 24 May 2013

PASS Summit 2013 is Looking Cloudy

No, this isn’t some complaint about PASS or the Summit. This is an announcement that not only will I be speaking at the PASS Summit, but I’m speaking about Azure… a lot.

First up, I’m going to be doing an all-day pre-conference seminar specifically aimed at getting you into Azure.… Read more

4 comments, 107 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 22 May 2013

Microsoft Lync Through the Web

Get an invite to a Microsoft meeting? Are they using the new Lync interface? And, you don’t have a paid Office365 account do you? So, you click the link, figure it’ll open a web browser and off you go, right?

Wrong.

Instead it opens up a Lync app that you… Read more

2 comments, 138 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 21 May 2013

Azure does Powershell too

Or, I guess it might be more appropriate to say that Powershell does Azure. Regardless, there are a set of commandlets for Azure and Azure SQL Database. Here’s the link to get you started and the basic documentation. After that, it’s a little tricky to know for sure what’s required.… Read more

2 comments, 442 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 20 May 2013

Book Review: Business in the Trenches

I’m trying to improve.

That’s at just about everything too. I know I don’t know enough or have enough skills to always get things done in an efficient manner, so I’m trying to learn more. One way is by reading, a lot. I’ve read a number of management and leadership… Read more

0 comments, 138 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 9 May 2013

How to Tell Your Windows Azure SQL Database Moved

The very concept of the Windows Azure SQL Database (WASD) is predicated on the up-time created by having three active copies of your database. Should there be a hardware or software failure that would cause the primary replica to go down, your database gets moved to one of the secondary… Read more

8 comments, 492 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 7 May 2013

Windows Azure SQL Database Backups

You can get backups of your WASD databases. But, if you want them to be transactionally consistent, you need to do a little extra work. This video (with bad lighting at the start) shows how to get the job done.

Read more

4 comments, 278 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 4 April 2013

Execution Plans in Azure SQL Database

Microsoft has stated pretty clearly that they’re putting code on Azure first, ahead of the desktop. Which makes one wonder when we’re going to start to see some of this cool stuff within SSMS. What cool stuff you ask? Well, let me explain. Let’s start with a query:

SELECT	m.MovieName,…

Read more

5 comments, 983 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 25 March 2013

Laws You Break at Your Peril

Laws of Thermodynamics

TANSTAAFL

Gods of the Copybook Headings

All magic comes with a price

Winter Is Coming

My adult years started with a pretty thorough education in physics thanks to Uncle Sugar and the Navy Nuclear Power School. The laws of thermodynamics were carved into our brains (along with… Read more

7 comments, 217 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 20 March 2013

Star Trek and the Death of IT

GAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

I feel slightly better, but only slightly.

I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix just to unwind my brain and relax a little. Instead of relaxation I found myself pacing back and forth in front of the television, gesticulating wildly, with a string expletives coming out… Read more

8 comments, 264 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 18 March 2013

Time to Chat

The greatest part of my job is that I get to travel all over the world to present different technical sessions. But, it’s not the presentations that make it cool. It’s the fact that I get to meet people. I get a chance to hang out with my #sqlfamily. I… Read more

0 comments, 248 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 11 March 2013

Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices: Chapter 17

I jumped at the opportunity to write a chapter for this book, Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices, because of all the fantastic people writing and the topics that were covered. I reviewed Chapter 12 a few weeks ago and I’ve been meaning to get this chapter, Big Data for… Read more

0 comments, 339 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 4 March 2013

It Is Your Fault

I earned my nickname. I’m proud of it. I am the Scary DBA. I don’t really like to advertise my other nickname, Rant (get it, Grant shortened to another word). I earned that one too. I’m not proud of it at all. I got that one because I sometimes don’t… Read more

10 comments, 274 reads

Posted in The Scary DBA on 27 February 2013

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