2013-04

Keeping Microsoft Products Up-to-Date

I posed a question to one of our new starters the other day: Would you rather have 6 months experience in SQL Server 2012 or 8 years experience in SQL Server 2005? I asked him this in response to his surprise that we seem to use the latest versions of all the Microsoft products: Windows 8, TFS 2012, Visual Studio 2012 (including the new BIDS version), SQL Server, Windows Server 2012… the list goes on. Certainly it benefits us employees as we get exposure to the latest software. But the policy to upgrade to the latest SKU’s of Microsoft products isn’t for the benefit of the employees,it’s just a bonus. And, though it may look like the company is on the bleeding edge of IT, that ’s also not really the case either. It may be up to date, but certainly not bleeding edge. Other than access to the latest features, there are two main reasons why it makes sense to upgrade the latest version:

2013-04-23

TFS Build Server Stack

Based on a previous post about TFS Build Server Best Practices,I thought I’d share the stack I install and a few of the steps that I go through to get the build server working. Obviously your experiences will be different to mine, and I don’t recommend that you follow this to the letter unless you have a similar set of solutions to build. I’m also going to assume you have Windows Server installed and your build service up and running, there are plenty of blogs and MSDN articles that show you how to set this up.

2013-04-02

2013-03

Unknown Unknowns: Windows Server 2012 Power Saving

So, you’ve got your brand new Windows Server 2012 configured, you’ve got all your power saving methods switched off through the UI, and all the BIOS power saving features are turned off, powering your new box to the best it can get. There’s only one problem; you keep on losing network connectivity! Why is this? We were recently working on a new cluster, and after doing the customary checks to ensure all saving features were switched off I spoke to one of the sys admins to verify that everything had been done.

2013-03-28

2013-01

SQL Server 2012 Unknown Unknowns

Last year saw the release of both SQL Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012. Both bought significant updates, including changes to High Availability and Disaster Recovery for SQL Server 2012, and a focus on PowerShell and Server Core features for Windows Server 2012, not to mention improvements to Hyper V, which could lead my company to virtualize the only boxes in our company that are still physical, namely the database and SSAS boxes. So before we make this leap it’s important to hear from those who have experience and can pass it on. Apart from reading MSDN and trying out a few labs, there are a couple of user groups that I will be attending:

2013-01-31