Building a Data Center
A data center is a complex beast. Is it worth building and maintaining your own? Steve has a few thoughts on a data center versus a cloud.
2025-02-05
154 reads
Hardware
The Rise of Data Centers
There is still a huge demand for data centers, both from cloud vendors and private enterprises.
2025-01-06
118 reads
The Invisible Disk
Steve sees disk drives as shrinking to the point of being invisible to most of us.
2024-09-09
310 reads
2024-06-17
222 reads
Portable Data Storage
Today Steve wonders if the technology for storage and data transfers has superseded the need for portable drives.
2024-01-15
147 reads
Building a PC
Steve has a few thoughts on building your own PC to help you with work or your career.
2022-06-10
234 reads
2021-04-28
106 reads
Will You Touch a Server Again?
Steve doesn't think he will ever work on server class machine again in terms of hardware. He wonders how many of you feel the same.
2021-02-17
136 reads
The Database Server Upgrade for Let's Encrypt
Let's Encrypt upgrades their database servers and publishes the details.
2021-02-01
120 reads
Data Analysis Without a Server
The ability to analyze lots of data on a workstation can be a way to test things without overloading server systems until you are sure your code works.
2020-08-25
130 reads
Blogs
Don’t Miss Out – SQL Server Query Tuning Fundamentals Starts Next Monday!
Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...
Monday Monitor Tips: SQL Auditing Preview
By Steve Jones
One of the features we advocates have been advocating for is a better way...
SQL Server 2025 CU1 Fixes the Docker Desktop AVX Issue on macOS
Microsoft fixed the AVX instruction issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now...
Forums
25 Years of SQL Server Central
Comments posted to this topic are about the item 25 Years of SQL Server...
The Decoded Value
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Decoded Value
Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition in Kubernetes: A Cost-Effective Alternative to RDS
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition...
Question of the Day
The Decoded Value
In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code:
DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!'; DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX); SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000))); SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded)See possible answers