August 2011 - Posts

• Get Out Of Dodge–Migration Resources

  { This article also appears on The Regular IT Guy } As part of the TechEd Session I did at TechEd NorthAmerica with all of its video Switcher issues AND to keep the resources flowing on this topic - I have put together this resource blog post including embedded video screencasts of each of the demos. The original presentation pace was fast (too fast) - so here you can grab a Pint / Coffee and watch the demos at your leisure. TechEd New Zealand and TechEd Australia - here's dome demo love for you too. Get Out Of Dodge: Upgrading to Server 2008 R2 X64 View more presentations from Rick Claus. Demo 1 - Migration Tools install Demo 2 - Active Directory Migration (link to AD Migration Session) Demo 3 - DHCP Migration Demo 4 - Print Server Migration Demo 5 - File Server Migration Demo 6 - Certificate Server Migration Additional Resource Links to Migration Guides. Migrate Server Roles to Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server Migration Tools Installation DHCP Server Migration: Preparing to Migrate Print Services Migration Guide File Services Migration: Preparing to Migrate Certificate Services Upgrade and Migration Posted Tuesday, August 30, 2011 10:01 AM from Canadian IT Professionals | 0 Comments

• Register Now for TechDays 2011!!

  It’s here!  It’s live!  You can now register for TechDays 2011 in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver!!  We are really excited about the great sessions you will  be able to attend grouped into the following content areas: Communications & Collaboration featuring sessions on SharePoint 2010, Office 365, Exchange 2010, and Microsoft Lync Server 2010! Cloud Computing & Online Services with sessions on Windows Azure, SQL Azure, Office 365, Windows InTune and more! Development Practices and Architecture with content on how to integrate test and QA into your processes, the best ways to leverage development methodologies, writing secure code, and many more to help you and your team become more efficient. Developer Tools, Languages, and Frameworks that includes sessions on Visual Studio 2010, MVC, IE9 & 10, HTML5, Silverlight, .NET framework and so on. Virtualization & Private Cloud where you’ll learn about the best way to use Hyper-V and System Center products to create your private cloud infrastructures, and ensure they are running optimally. Security, Identity & Management where IT Pros can dig into integrating on-premise and cloud infrastructures, how to monitor any size environment with System Center 2012 and protect it with Forefront, as well as integrating third-party components with your Microsoft-based environment. SQL Server and the Microsoft Data Platform featuring content on SQL Server code name “Denali”, our upcoming release, creating great business intelligence applications by integrating SQL Server with SharePoint, and extending your data platform into the Cloud with SQL Azure and SharePoint Online. Windows Client and Windows Phone where you will learn about all the newest developments in Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7 “Mango”, as well as how to develop applications for and deploy Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 in your environment. Beyond the sessions you’ll be able to attend, you can also try the technologies you are learning about in instructor-led and self-paced hands-on labs, ask questions of speakers and experts at the Microsoft Showcase, as well as interact with sponsors and Partners in the Partner Pavilion!  It promises to be a great experience. So don’t wait!  Register now!  As an added incentive, if you are one of the first 300 people to purchase a ticket to TechDays 2011, we will provide you a complimentary TechNet subscription after you attend TechDays 2011! So what are you waiting for!  Register for the city nearest you today! Damir Bersinic, TechDays Canada Program & Skills Manager Posted Tuesday, August 30, 2011 6:00 AM from Canadian IT Professionals | 0 Comments Filed under: TechDays_ca, TechDays_Prime

• “The SQL Guy” Post #5: SYNONYMously Reference SQL Server Objects

  Continuing on a topic that includes some more content aimed at DBAs and developers, this week we’ll look at how SYNONYMs can make your life easier.   What would you do when an object that is referenced in several places and in several databases (Stored Procedures, Functions, etc.) is being moved to a different database or is being renamed due to a new object naming policy? Think of how much work this change would generate for you? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to take care of these changes automatically? Friends, let’s welcome Synonym to the SQL Server features family. A synonym is an alternative name (think of it like an alias) for objects in SQL Server that provides a single-part name to reference a base object that uses long object names,  a two-part, three-part, or even for-part names object names. Synonyms can reference objects that exist on local or remote servers. They provide a layer of abstraction to protect client application from any changes made to the name or the location of the base underlying object. The binding between a synonym and its underlying object is strictly by name only which means the underlying object can be modified, dropped or dropped and replaced by another object. You can also perform any DML operations on a synonym which actually gets performed on the underlying table. Synonyms can be very helpful in the above scenario. Once you create synonyms for objects, you can move or rename your base object without affecting its reference or use. Synonyms can also be used for creating short-cuts for long object names or the object names used in four-part queries for example linked servers. (ex: ServerName.DatabaseName.OwnerName.ObjectName) SYNONYM can be created on the following object types: · User Tables (permanent and temporary) · Views · Stored procedures (TSQL & CLR) · Extended Stored Procedures · Replication Filter Procedures · Assembly Aggregate Functions (CLR) · Assembly Table Valued Functions (CLR) · Scalar Functions · Inline Table Valued Function, etc. Let’s now look at some of the examples on how to use synonyms in SQL Server.   CREATING A SYNONYM FOR LOCAL OBJECT CREATE SYNONYM CUST_ADD FOR ADVENTUREWORKSLT2008R2.SALESLT.ADDRESS; GO --QUERYING THIS SYNONYM SELECT * FROM [CUST_ADD] GO --DROPPING THIS SYNONYM DROP SYNONYM [CUST_ADD] GO CREATING A SYNONYM FOR LINKED SERVER OBJECT CREATE SYNONYM CUST_ADD FOR SQLTIPS.ADVENTUREWORKSLT2008R2.SALESLT.ADDRESS; GO --QUERYING THIS SYNONYM SELECT * FROM [CUST_ADD] GO --DROPPING THIS SYNONYM DROP SYNONYM [CUST_ADD] GO INSERTING A ROW USING A SYNONYM INSERT INTO [CUST_ADD] VALUES ('ONE WAY' ,'MICROSOFT WAY' ,'REDMOND' ,'WASHINGTON' ,'USA' ,98052 ,NEWID() ,GETDATE()) GO Posted Tuesday, August 23, 2011 8:57 AM from Canadian IT Professionals | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL Server

• Just how far will we go to get awesome TechDays 2011 content?

  Oh - about 32,990 kms – based on the exact flight paths for a round trip from Ottawa – Vancouver - Auckland/New Zealand – Gold Coast/Australia – Sydney/Australia – Vancouver – Ottawa.  Based on my sessions I’ve presented at TechEd North America, contacts at the Australian and New Zealand editions reached out to see if I’d be interested in presenting down under. After much back and forth with internal policies, expense paperwork and convincing my Boss – we hammered out a deal. How does this help with TechDays Content? Well – both conferences will have top notch content from top speakers from around the world. I’ll have the opportunity to evaluate sessions on Virtualization, Office365, Azure, client deployment, collaboration – you name it. I’ll be bringing the best from down under back up north to Canada as candidates to included in the Session Selection process that is already underway. Have a peek at the New Zealand catalogue and Australian catalogues to see what’s on. Leave your requests in the comments or send me at tweet with the #techdays_ca hashtag or drop me an email. While I am not auditing sessions – I’ll be blogging on new announcements and cool stories / technologies from down under AND I’ve got some pre-blogged posts on some virtualization topics that are in the queue. Stay Tuned! IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn Check out my about.me profile! Posted Monday, August 22, 2011 1:41 PM from Canadian IT Professionals | 0 Comments Filed under: TechDays_ca, Rick Claus, TechEd 2011

• TechDays 2011 Session Submissions Now Open!

  Are you passionate about technology?  Do you have a desire to share your knowledge with your developer and IT Pro peers?  Is there a story that you feel you need to share with the rest of Canada?  If you answered YES to any or all of the above questions, you’re in luck!!  TechDays Canada 2011 is looking for individuals who have a story to share and want to deliver a session in one or all of the cities we will be visiting this year – Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal.  We are accepting session submissions using the form you can download from the SkyDrive share here.  It will tell you all about the submission and selection process, the technology areas that will be the focus of TechDays Canada 2011, as well as how to submit your session.  Actually, it’s pretty easy – just tell us about yourself and what you want to talk about. Don’t wait!  The call for sessions closes on August 31, 2011 so get your submission in early.  Also, tell your friends who also have a story to tell. Posted Thursday, August 18, 2011 7:41 PM from Canadian IT Professionals | 0 Comments Filed under: TechDays_ca, TechDays_Prime

• “The SQL Guy” Post #4: SQL SERVER NOW SUPPORTS COMPOUND OPERATORS

  Saleem Hakani switches gears a bit to talk about how to make code more efficient with compound operators in SQL Server 2008.  Enjoy! Do you miss the ability to use the compound operators the way you would use them in other languages? Wouldn’t it be nice to provide a shorter syntax for assigning the result of an arithmetic operator? SQL Server 2008 introduces Compound Operators that allows you to perform the operation on the two operands before assigning the result to the first operand. For example: if variable @var1 equals 50, then @var1 += 50 This will take the original value of @var1 (which is 50), and adds 50 and sets @var1 to that new value which will be 100 in the above case.   OPERATOR ACTION += Adds the value to the original value and sets the new value to the result. -= Subtracts the original value and sets the new value by subtracting original with the new one. *= Multiplies by an amount and sets the original value to the result. /= Divides by an amount and sets the original value to the result. %= Divides by an amount and sets the original value to the modulo. &= Performs a bitwise AND and sets the original value to the result. ^= Performs a bitwise exclusive OR and sets the original value to the result. |= Performs a bitwise OR and sets the original value to the result. Here are some examples that use Compound Operators in SQL Server: Addition using Compound Operator Subtraction Using Compound Operator Multiplication Using Compound Operator DECLARE @Var1 int = 10; SELECT @Var1 += 10; SELECT @Var1 as 'Value'; --Returns 20 DECLARE @Var2 int = 10; SELECT @Var2 -= 5; SELECT @Var2 as 'Value'; --Returns 5 DECLARE @Var3 int = 10; SELECT @Var3 *= 10 ; SELECT @Var3 as 'Value'; --Returns 100 As you can see from the above scripts, it becomes easy to perform an operation on two operands before assigning the result to the first operand. Posted Tuesday, August 16, 2011 8:00 AM from Canadian IT Professionals | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL Server

• Security Bulletins for the Regular IT Guy #33, August 2011

  Over pints Pierre Roman, Bruce Cowper and Rick Claus decided they would put together a concise and timely podcast each “Update Tuesday”. The object is to keep it simple by letting you know in plain non technical language what the updates are, what they resolve and why you should care. As always - if you have suggestions on making it better - please pass on your comments. Mail Rick directly  – rick.claus@microsoft.com Direct Download: Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)   Disclaimer: This podcast was produced with the best information available to us at the time of recording. Your primary source for all things Security Bulletin related should always be the Microsoft Security Response Center blog. Bulletins discussed for July 12th, 2011: MS11-057 - Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (2559049) MS11-058 - Vulnerabilities in DNS Server Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2562485) MS11-059 - Vulnerability in Data Access Components Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2560656) MS11-060 - Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Visio Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2560978) MS11-061 - Vulnerability in Remote Desktop Web Access Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (2546250) MS11-062 - Vulnerability in Remote Access Service NDISTAPI Driver Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (2566454) MS11-063 - Vulnerability in Windows Client/Server Run-time Subsystem Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (2567680) MS11-064 - Vulnerabilities in TCP/IP Stack Could Allow Denial of Service (2563894) MS11-065 - Vulnerability in Remote Desktop Protocol Could Allow Denial of Service (2570222) MS11-066 - Vulnerability in Microsoft Chart Control Could Allow Information Disclosure (2567943) MS11-067 - Vulnerability in Microsoft Report Viewer Could Allow Information Disclosure (2578230) MS11-068 - Vulnerability in Windows Kernel Could Allow Denial of Service (2556532) MS11-069 - Vulnerability in .NET Framework Could Allow Information Disclosure (2567951) Podcast Participants: Rick Claus Additional Technical Show Notes: Recorded in Rick’s Home Office with a good old cup’o joe PodSafe music from PodSafe Music Network @ http://music.podshow.com/. Artist: Derek K Miller, song - “You’re the Big Sky - rock guitar instrumental”   IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn Posted Tuesday, August 09, 2011 10:29 AM from Canadian IT Professionals | 0 Comments Filed under: Security, Podcast, Rick Claus, Security Bulletins Podcast

• “The SQL Guy” Post #3: THE POWER OF SQL SERVER 2008 CENTRAL MANAGEMENT SERVER

  Here is another great article from Saleem Hakani of the SQL Server product team at Microsoft.  Enjoy! Imagine this: Your manager has asked you to find out the available disk space for all the drives from SQL Servers in the production environment and you have 6800 SQL Servers that are spread in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. After an hour, your manager comes back and asks you to get a list of all the databases from the production environment that has Simple Recovery Model and Full Recovery Model option set. There are at-least 50 databases in each of the production servers. Again after an hour your manager asks you to find out the service pack level of all production SQL Servers. He wants all this information at the earliest. What will you do? At the outset, these requirements seems to be lot of work as you will need to connect to 6800 servers and gather all the information your manager has requested. However, SQL Server has made our lives much easier with the introduction of a new technology called “SQL Server Central Management Server” WHAT IS CENTRAL MANAGEMENT SERVER? Microsoft introduced an innovative new feature in SQL Server 2008 called Central Management Server that allows you to administer and manage multiple servers from one central location. This is a very powerful feature that makes SQL Server 2008 very easy to manage thousands of servers with less efforts and overhead. Transact-SQL statements and Policy-Based Management policies can also be executed at the same time against servers registered in Central Management Servers. Central Management Server can only work with Windows Authentication. However; servers registered within Central Management Servers (servers that need to be managed) can be registered using SQL Authentication or Windows Authentication. HOW TO USE CENTRAL MANAGEMENT SERVER? From SQL Server Management Studio, On the View menu, click Registered Servers and expand Database Engine and then Right-Click Central Management Servers, and select New to register a server as Central Management Server. Once you have registered the Central Management Server, Right-Click on the Central Management Server and register all other SQL Servers that you would like to manage. If you have a list of servers in a file, you can also import the server list to register all the servers in central management server. With the power of Central Management Server, you can now query multiple servers at the same time. The results returned by the query can be combined into a single results pane, or can be returned in separate results panes. The results set can include additional columns for the server name and the login name that is used by the query on each server. THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND § You must be a member of SYSADMIN or SERVERGROUPADMINISTRATORROLE role in MSDB database to manage servers using Central Management Server. § You can load a list of servers from an xml or text file by importing all the servers in to Central Management Server § I recommend that you create separate Server Groups within Central Management Server (Ex: Production, Development, Test, etc.) to prevent queries from being run on servers that you don’t want to run on. § The connections maintained by a Central Management Server execute in the context of the Windows Authenticated user therefore, the effective permissions for the executing user on the registered servers might vary. § You can configure the results/output of a Central Management Server to Add a Login Name, Server Name, and/or Merge Results of all the servers in to result-set. SOLUTION Now you have learned about Central Management Server. How difficult would it be to gather the information your manager requested you in the above scenario: (It will now be just matter of minutes) Once you register a Central Management Server and Register all the production servers within Central Management Server, Right-Click on the Central Management Server and Select New Query and execute the following commands: Task 1: Exec Master..XP_Fixeddrives; This command will provide you with a list of Server Name, Drive and Available Disk Space from all production servers. Task 2: Select Name, Recovery_Model_Desc from Sys.Databases Where Recovery_Model_Desc in ('SIMPLE','FULL'); This command will provide you with a list of Server Name, Database Name and the Recovery Model of the database from all production servers. Task 3: Select @@VERSION; or Select SERVERPROPERTY('ProductVersion'); This command will provide you with the Server Name and their version from all production servers. With the introduction of Central Management Server in SQL Server 2008, you can now efficiently manage thousands of SQL Servers in the enterprise and increase employee productivity. Posted Tuesday, August 09, 2011 8:00 AM from Canadian IT Professionals | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL Server

• “The SQL Guy” Post # 2: USING THE MIRROR DATABASE FOR REPORTING/QUERYING PURPOSE

  Before I get to the meat of this blog post, I have to acknowledge the fact that the technical content of “the SQL guy” blog posts is the work of Saleem Hakani from the SQL Server product team at Microsoft.  Saleem is a wealth of information and I find his posts of great value that I want to share them with you.  Thanks Saleem!! Now, onto the topic at hand… How many times have you thought about using the Mirror database for some read activity or for reporting purpose? SQL Server currently doesn’t support reading the data directly from the mirror database (SQL Server Denali will be supporting this feature). However, even with the current version of SQL Server, you can still read the data from the Mirror copy using Database Snapshots. WHAT IS A DATABASE SNAPSHOT? Database snapshot is a static, read-only, transaction-consistent snapshot of a user database as it existed at the moment of the snapshot creation. You can create Multiple Snapshots of the same database but they must all reside on the same server instance. Database Snapshots are primarily used for reporting purposes however, you can also use them for reverting changes (due to user errors, accidently deleting data or objects, etc.) to the state it was in when the snapshot was created. USING DATABASE SNAPSHOTS WITH MIRRORED DATABASES In the database mirroring environment, Principal DB interacts with all the users and the mirror database only receives transaction log records from the principal database as the mirror database in a DBM session will be in a “RECOVERING” state.  With the introduction of SQL Server 2005, a new feature was added called Database Snapshots. And you can now use this feature to create a database snapshot from the Mirror database for reporting purpose. You can direct all client connection requests to the most recent  database snapshot created from the Mirror database. If you are looking for updated data in your snapshot database then you will need to create new snapshots of that database periodically to get the latest data from the mirror database. KEEP IN MIND: You can create a database snapshot on the mirror database only when the database is fully synchronized. Also, having an excessive number of database snapshots on the mirror database may decrease the performance of the principal database. Therefore, it is recommend that you don’t create multiple database snapshots of the same mirror copy. You should delete the old copies and keep the current one for reporting purpose. WHAT HAPPENS DURING A ROLE SWITCH? If role switching occurs, the database and its snapshots are restarted by temporarily disconnecting users. Afterwards, the database snapshots remain on the server instance where they were created, which would now become the new principal database. Reporting users can continue to use the snapshots after the failover. However, this would place an additional load on the new principal server and if performance is a concern in your environment than it is recommended that you create a snapshot on the new mirror database when it becomes available and redirect your clients to the new snapshot, and drop the database snapshots from the former mirror database. HOW TO CREATE A DATABASE SNAPSHOT OF THE MIRROR DATABASE Let’s create a snapshot on the mirror database called MSSOLVE. Make sure you are connected to the mirror database instance when you create this. CREATING A SNAPSHOT DATABASE OF MSSOLVE MIRROR DB USE MASTER GO CREATE DATABASE MSSOLVE_SNAPSHOT_0629 ON ( NAME = 'MSSOLVE_Data', FILENAME = 'E:\MSSQL\DATA\MSSOLVE_SNAPSHOT_0629.ss' ) AS SNAPSHOT OF MSSOLVE; GO Once you successfully create the database snapshot, you are now ready to use the new snapshot of the mirror database for querying/reporting purpose. WHERE CAN I VIEW THE NEWLY CREATED  DATABASE SNAPSHOT? You may wonder why the newly created database snapshot doesn’t appear in the database list in management studio. That’s because database snapshots are listed under Database Snapshots folder right below the System Databases folder in Management Studio. In the object explorer of Management Studio, connect to the instance of Microsoft SQL Server and expand “Databases” and then expand “Database Snapshots”. HOW TO DROP A SNAPSHOT DATABASE? You can drop the database snapshot the exact same way as you would any other user database using the Drop Database command. DROPPING A DATABASE SNAPSHOT DROP DATABASE MSSOLVE_SNAPSHOT_0629 Posted Tuesday, August 02, 2011 8:00 AM from Canadian IT Professionals | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL Server