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| Editorial |
Changing Hardware I've been an Intel user for most of my life. While I have owned Mac machines, and I did once have an AMD desktop for the kids, I have pretty much stuck with Intel as my CPU of choice. Certainly I've had other processors in mobile devices, but for work, I have almost always purchased servers, desktops, or laptops with Intel CPUs. I remember the time in the 80s and 90s when there were lawsuits, advertisements, and innuendo put out by the companies, as well as fans of either side. I knew people that were sure Intel was the only way to go, fervently claiming that I'd have all sorts of issues trying to run my software on anything other than an Intel CPU. Just as insistent where others that assured me AMD worked fine and Intel was an overpriced waste of money. Over the years, I've seen Glenn Gerry note that SQL Server runs better on Intel, because of the superior single-threaded performance on Intel machines. He's changed his mind recently, and talks about why in a post this week. Glenn does advocate moving to new hardware, which often can give you better performance over older hardware at a lower consumption. If you are stuck on an older 2008/2012/2014 system, perhaps a hardware refresh is worth considering. Would any of you consider moving to AMD CPUs for your SQL Server instances? Is a hardware refresh something you might consider instead of upgrading software versions? If you got a 30-40% performance increase from a modern processor over a 2012/2013 era one, would that be worth the cost of changing hardware? We know that changing hardware isn't as simple or easy as replacing one part with another. Likely you'd have a fair amount of labor to change out a bit of server hardware, even if you didn't have to change any of your storage. With the growth and advantages of the cloud, is this something to even consider these days? I don't know, though I tend to think that for most organizations, it's not worth the time and hassle to update hardware without updating software. Perhaps you feel differently, and if so, tell us why. Some of you might be like me, not even really thinking about what hardware choices are out there. You let someone else worry about the physical machines and you just ask for a certain level of RAM, a number of cores, and a certain amount of storage performance. That's how I've built SQL Servers in the past, which is really what I do now in the cloud. Steve Jones - SSC Editor |
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| The Weekly News |
| All the headlines and interesting SQL Server information that we've collected over the past week, and sometimes even a few repeats if we think they fit. |
| Vendors/3rd Party Products |
Phil Factor illustrates the 'quirks' of the SQL_VARIANT datatype and why it's best to investigate when SQL Prompt alerts you to its use. It is only safe to store data as a SQL_VARIANT, if you explicitly convert it to its true type before you use it. |
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Tony Davis describes the features and capabilities... |
The 2019 State of SQL Server Monitoring report showed how instrumental monitoring is to managing server estates. In this guide, we go further, demonstrating how monitoring can benefit your entire organization. From development to IT management, and from finance to the C-suite. Download your free copy of the guide today |
The newest version of Data Masker for SQL Server includes a new rules window with in-product guidance for choosing the right rule, and a new menu bar for fast access to the items you need. |
| Administration |
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sp_RestoreScript 1.4 is now out and ready for down... |
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| Azure Databricks and Spark |
A typical pattern in retail scenarios involving mu... |
How do you read and write CSV files using the dotn... |
| Azure SQL Database |
I am sure many missed the updates to Azure SQL Dat... |
| Azure SQL Managed Instance |
I’ve put together an initial set of Diagnostic I... |
| Career Growth and Certifications |
Watch this week’s episode on YouTube. In order t... |
Foreword: 8 years ago, I launched an email series ... |
| Computing in the Cloud (Azure, Google, AWS) |
In a recent post about creating Azure VMs using Po... |
| Data Privacy, Compliance, and GDPR |
Click to learn more about video blogger Scott Tayl... |
eWEEK RESOURCE PAGE: Why classifying various forma... |
| Database Design, Theory and Development |
The Relational Model of data management was first ... |
Click to learn more about author Thomas Frisendal.... |
| DevOps and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) |
Some of the terms in the DevOps pipeline, such as CI and CD, can be confusing. In the second article of this series, Robert Sheldon explains these terms and how they fit in the DevOps pipeline. He also talks about some of the tools you might use. |
Click to learn more about author Itamar Ankorion. ... |
In preparation for my upcoming DevOps training day... |
| ETL/SSIS/Azure Data Factory/Biml |
The post is a second part of the series. In the pr... |
| HA/DR/Always On/Clustering |
I have a client that resides in the Azure data p... |
Requirement: Remove a node from one of... [[ This ... |
| Hardware |
Corsair has introduced its first 32 GB unbuffered ... |
Glenn Berry explains why, if given the choice, the... |
| Microsoft News |
It's looking sunny up in the cloud, with revenue j... |
Microsoft is starting to automatically update Wind... |
Microsoft's future in Germany is in question again... |
| Performance Tuning SQL Server |
Fingerless I get why these things happen. You’re... |
Everyone Loves A SQL |
OPTIMIZE FOR YOUR MOM Thanks for watching! |
| PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI |
Today Microsoft announced that it is now supportin... |
Although very simple, still I see many Power BI re... |
There are many scenarios that you might want to im... |
Adam shows how you can use the Power BI REST API w... |
This article explains the precedence of calculatio... |
Thanks for watching this week's Power BI news roun... |
| Product Upgrades and Releases |
This month sees Microsoft patch two zero-day vulne... |
If you’ve ever built a BI solution it’s likely... |
| SQL Server Security and Auditing |
The Upgrade Error messages shown in ERRORLOG was ?... |
Planning to upgrade/migrate requires a fair amount... |
| Security News and Issues |
The Zoom conferencing app has a vulnerability that... |
Hacking remains a tool of choice for influencing e... |
Is you browser extension tracking your every move ... |
| T-SQL |
There are those who argue that time doesn’t really exist; it’s just an illusion. That debate won’t keep you from storing and manipulating dates and time in SQL Server. In this article, Joe Celko discusses some of the many ways that SQL Server treats temporal data types. |
Here is a question asked to me during Comprehensiv... |
Last week a question came up about adding a column... |
My last two blogs were on understanding columnstor... |
The other day I did a post on how an OR short circ... |
When you are in charge of databases with tons of o... |
| Tech News |
The new Pohoiki Beach builds on the 2017 success o... |
| The Lighter Side |
Across the cislunar blackness, we set sail for a l... |
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| Tools for Development |
I have done a lot of writing in the last few month... |
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