——————————————————————————————————————-

In a previous tip, I described how to load mass storage drivers during the Windows Server 2008 installation process. However, many administrators may come across situations where a driver load becomes a challenge due to hardware and environment configurations.

Windows Server 2008 makes this process a little more flexible. Here are various ways that a driver can be passed into the setup program.

• IDE floppy disk: I’m going old school here, but the Windows Server 2008  setup can read from the floppy drive during the installation process.
• USB floppy drive: The Windows setup can read from a USB drive, or the computer’s BIOS will enumerate the floppy drive as an A:\ drive. It’s somewhat of a cover song of the old school approach.
• USB flash drive: The Windows Server 2008 install will recognize USB storage devices, and you can have the driver located on the removable media.
• Map a network drive: Yes you can! This is a little more advanced, but if you boot the server from a Vista PE bootable environment, map a network drive, and then run the setup.exe program interactively from a network location that you copied from the Windows Server 2008 DVD, you can browse to another network resource for a driver for the mass storage controller. This is especially beneficial if the Vista PE boot environment can be booted from a CD instead of a DVD, which is helpful for servers without a DVD drive. (For more information about Vista PE, read this TechNet article.)
• Place the driver on an existing file system: If you can boot the server currently, make a drive partition of NTFS or FAT, you can put the driver on that drive and ensure it is available to the Windows Server 2008 install. Don’t make it available on the C:\ drive, but some location at the end of the drive. If you need to resize your drives after installation, no worries — Windows Server 2008 makes that quite easy as well with new sizing tools.
• Additional optical drives: If your server has a DVD and a CD drive, you can make a simple disk that has the driver files contained there and browse to that location during the Windows Server 2008 install.

The list goes on, but this will cover most of the common scenarios for interactive Windows Server 2008 installations.

If you’ve had to get creative on passing drivers based on server equipment configuration, share your experiences in the discussion forum.

Stay on top of the latest Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 tips and tricks with our free Windows Server newsletter, delivered each Wednesday. Automatically sign up today!

——————————————————————————————————————-

The midmarket, the space somewhere between the mom and pop shop and a multinational conglomerate, is quickly becoming the sweet spot for many companies.  A great number of organizations fit the midmarket mold; they aren’t small businesses that can take advantage of products aimed at the small business market, but neither are they huge organizations with hundreds of IT staff, each specially trained to perform a single particular task.  Instead, IT personnel in most midmarket companies wear many hats and have to have a deep understanding of many areas and products.

Microsoft has designed the Essential product line with this space in mind.  Windows Essential Business Server is essentially a number of disparate Microsoft products wrapped up and sold as a single package for business with up to 300 PCs.  This PC limitation is a hard license limit.  If you have more than 300 PCs in your organization, Windows Essential Business Server is not for you.

Essentials also includes a revamped installer process and management console, both which will be discussed in my next post.  In this post, you’ll learn about what makes up Windows Essential Business Server and what is required to make it run.

Windows Essentials Business Server is slated for a November 12 official launch.

What’s included?

There are two editions of Windows Essentials Business Server available: Standard and Premium.  Both editions include Windows Server 2008, System Center Essentials 2007, Exchange Server 2007, ISA Server, and Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server.  The Premium edition adds SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition to the mix.

How is it deployed?

Microsoft intends Essentials to be deployed in a three-server scenario for the Standard Edition and a four-server scenario for the Premium Edition.

• Management Server: Windows Server 2008 with AD and System Center Essentials 2007.
• Messaging Server: Windows Server 2008 with AD, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Forefront for Exchange.
• Security Server: Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, and ISA Server.
• (Premium) Database Server: Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 Standard.

All servers in the Essentials setup are 64-bit systems.  Remember, Exchange Server 2007 is a 64-bit only system, so the 64-bit nature of Essentials makes sense.

What’s required?

As is always the case, Microsoft has some recommendations regarding the hardware that should we used with Essentials.

All servers must include processors capable of supporting 64-bit operating systems.

For single-core servers, a 2.5GHz or faster processor is recommended.

For multi-core servers or multiple physical processors, each core or processor must run at 1.5Ghz or better.

On the RAM side, Microsoft recommends that you equip the management and messaging servers with at least 4GB of RAM and the security server with at least 2GB.

When it comes to storage, RAID is highly recommended and Microsoft also suggests that you separate the operating system and application partitions on different physical disks.  In the management and messaging servers, Microsoft recommends at least eight physical disks, with two used for the operating system (RAID 1) and the remaining six for application data (RAID 5).  Whenever possible, use 10K RPM or fasters disks.

If you add a database server to the mix, make sure that you storage system can handle the load that you intend to place on the database.  Separating the operating system and database files is standard good practice on database servers.

Microsoft updates SQL Server on a pretty regular basis. It’s newest version, SQL Server 2008, includes some new features not found in older versions.  Here’s a list of some of them.

———————————————————————————————–

In a previous article, I took a look at some cool new features included in SQL Server 2008.  Recently, the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) version of SQL Server has been released which means that it is time to look at some additional new features that have been included in the product.

Filestream Storage

As the name may suggest, Filestream enables the storage of unstructured data such as documents and videos.  This feature integrates with the NTFS files system by using the nvarchar(max) data type to store data on the file system.  This feature is great for when you’re currently storing documents inside of your SQL Server system that are larger than 1 MB and fast read access is important.

Sparse Columns

Sparse columns are very similar to other types of database columns, except that they are specialized and optimized for null values.  If you have a table that holds a lot of NULL values, first consider your table design.  If your design is solid or cannot be altered, then your table may be a candidate to take advantage of sparse columns.  The rule from Microsoft is to consider using Sparse columns when 20-40 percent of the values in a column will be NULL.

New Date & Time Data Types

Prior to SQL Server 2008, there was no way to native data type to store time related data.  Time data was only available as part of the datetime (or smalldatetime) data types.  With SQL Server 2008, TIME is a separate data type, able to hold time values such as ‘23:59:59.9999999′.  Along with the new TIME data type, there are additional data types such as datetime2, which holds additional nanosecond data and the datetimeoffset data type, which can hold datetime data that is timezone aware.

Spatial Data Types

Two new data types are included in SQL Server 2008; geometry and geography.  These data types hold information regarding the physical location and shape of geometric objects, which allow for applications to be built that are geographically aware.

Dependency Reporting

Reporting dependencies has never been consistent or reliable in SQL Server.  The difficultly is that when objects are added, modified or dropped, special actions must be taken by the database engine to ensure that the dependency chain is correct.  In 2008, new dynamic management views are included keep track of these dependencies so that reliable reporting can be done one these objects.

Advanced Auditing Features

SQL Server 2008 includes several new features that facilitate the auditing of data.  These features include a new Auditing feature that allows you to easily create customized audits of database engine events.  Change Data Capture, while not auditing specific, makes data changes typically used for loading a data warehouse easily available in an easily used format.  SQL Server 2008 also includes a Data Collector feature that allows the DBA to gather and compare data that is gathered from several different sources.

Policy Based Administration

This is one of my favorite features of SQL Server 2008.  This feature allows a database administrator (DBA) to easily and uniformly set policies across servers that ensure system rules are met.  These policies can be rules such as simplifying administration tasks, preventing unauthorized system changes, making sure code compliance is met, ensuring best practices are met.

TSQL Intelli-sense

SQL Server Management Studio 2008 includes Intelli-sense which is a familiar feature in other Visual Studio products.  This feature presents a popup box when typing SQL statements to give options to choose columns from tables that are involved in your queries.

Central Management Servers

This feature allows the database administrator (DBA) to administer multiple SQL Servers easily and efficiently.  These servers allow for multi-server queries and for policy based management policies to be executed against multiple servers at the same time.

Compound Operators

This form of syntactic sugar is present in many other programming languages such as C++ or C#.  Consider the following TSQL statement.

SET @x = @x + 1

Using compound operators, the above statement can be rewritten in the following manner:

SET @x += 1

This statement, while not groundbreaking, takes TSQL a step forward in the evolution of programming languages.

Transparent Encryption

As data becomes more and more sensitive, the ability to keep the data secret becomes more important.  SQL Server 2008 includes the ability to encrypt data stored in the database transparently, which keeps you from having to alter applications to take advantage of the feature.  This feature prevents unauthorized users from reviewing the data even if they have the backup files.

More to Come

Today I took a look at some great additional features included in SQL Server 2008.  In the following weeks I will take a more in-depth look at each of these new features so that when you do decide to upgrade your database system to SQL Server 2008 you are equipped to hit the ground running in implementing these new features.

——————————————————————————————————————- 

Do you not have a full-time DBA to keep Microsoft SQL Server databases running according to industry standards and best practices? Sometimes even DBAs want to test their SQL Servers against various best practices.

In the past, you would have to tweak your SQL Server settings manually to find the ideal configuration. Now, Microsoft has released a tool called the Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer. With this tool, you can test and implement a combination of SQL Server best practices and then implement them on your SQL Server. I am going to go over how to install the tool and show you how it works.

After downloading this tool from Microsoft’s Web site, you simply run the BPASETUP Windows Installer Package. The installer does a check to make sure you have the correct .NET Framework version installed. If you do not have this installed, you will be directed to Microsoft’s Web site to download it. In addition to having the correct .NET Framework, you must also have Internet Explorer 6.0 or later. You can install the SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer on any of the following platforms:

• Microsoft Windows XP
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
• Microsoft Windows Server
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003
• Internet Explorer 6.0 or later

Once you begin the installation and verify the .NET Framework version, you will be prompted with the welcome screen and then asked to accept the license agreement. Once you have accepted the license agreement, you can choose your SQL Server name, database name, and authentication mode (Figure A).

This information is used to create the Best Practices database in your SQL Server, shown in Figure B as sqlbpa. After you enter this information, the installer finishes the installation and you are ready to work with the product.

——————————————————————————————————————- 

In today’s workplace, stealing information doesn’t require a covert Special Forces team: It is often done by an employee armed with a 5 GB USB flash drive. And your unsecured, unencrypted network invites a hacker to compromise a server or workstation holding sensitive data.

But you dont have to be vulnerable. There are plenty of options available today for securing/encrypting your data and many of these options are just overlooked.

Encrypting your data does not have to be an expensive rollout like moving from NT 4.0 to Active Directory. There are many types of encryption, from complete encryption at the enterprise level down to the often overlooked encryption of an individuals workstation. With so many options, your perfect solution is surely available.

I believe encryption is as important as a firewall. You wouldn’ leave your network unprotected by a firewall — we all know that’s as foolish as just giving a hacker your enterprise or domain admin password. Nor should you leave your sensitive data unencrypted; encryption ensures that your data is secure.

But how, specifically, might encryption be useful to you?

When you send an email of sensitive information, encryption provides security that no unauthorized parties have access to your data. If your password is encrypted, it cannot be duplicated by anyone else so it ultimately proves your identity when you sign on to a computer or use a smart card or an RSA device.

When you sign an email with an encrypted signature, the email cannot be changed or modified without changing the digital signature. Using digital signatures provides you with proof that a document has not been compromised.

Encryption can be used for email exchange as well as to encrypt documents on your hard drive. Encryption is used when logging onto a system, SSL connections on the web, and on anything that is sensitive within your business model.

Just as you have a disaster recovery plan, you should also create an encryption plan for your organization. Make it corporate policy to digitally sign every email. Configure encryption over your remote connections. Use encryption technology to encrypt the entire contents of your hard drive.

With the amount of data being too frequently compromised, not having an encryption plan for your company is security suicide. 9/11 was a disaster recovery wake-up call for many companies who lost everything because they didn’ have a plan in place; many companies quickly got their acts in gear after the fact to have disaster recovery sites configured.

Not having an encryption plan may not quite stop you dead in your tracks as failure to have disaster recovery did for some, but it could cause your stock to fall, profits to decline, and peace of mind to be shattered. Do yourself a favor and configure an encryption plan for your company today.

——————————————————————————————————————-
Starting with Windows Server 2003, administrators have been able to redirect the server’s console to a remote desktop session. This is referred to as session zero, and it is invoked like this:

mstsc /v:servername /console

Now that we’re accustomed to this connection opportunity, Windows Server 2008 has removed the session zero connection option.

While the console redirection was a nice way to connect to a server when the existing two sessions were in use, it had its limitations. The number one problem with session zero is interactive device driver installations that occur via a plug and play enumeration of multiple devices. This most frequently occurs when adding multi-port serial adapters, a USB hub with multiple ports, or any other device that has a controller and subsequent individual devices. The root device would install correctly, but whenever the individual ports were enumerated, this functionality would not work correctly via a console redirected remote desktop session.

True console access is still best served by device extension mechanisms (such as a keyboard/video/mouse device), hardware controller (such as the Dell DRAC, HP iLO, VNC, pcAnywhere, DameWare), or other products that do a true console redirection.

If you attempt to connect to a Windows Server 2008 system with the /console parameter, it will ignore that option and pass the session on for a connection.

For the newest version of the remote desktop client software (6.1), the /admin parameter is a new feature, but it doesn’t really change much based on how administrators have used remote desktop over the years. These changes are outlined in the Microsoft KB article 947723.

Stay on top of the latest Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 tips and tricks with our free Windows Server newsletter, delivered each Wednesday. Automatically sign up today!

————————————————–

New to SQL Server 2008 is the native ability to compress database backups. This great new feature results in a smaller (sometimes much smaller) backup file, which saves disk space, and can lessen the time latency involved in some disaster recovery schemes, such as log-shipping.

Backup Compression

As more and more information is stored in corporate databases, storing database backups becomes increasingly important. The problem is that these backups can take up a sizable amount of disk space. There are third party tools such as SQL Backup from Red Gate software that will compress these backups for you, but you have to purchase them. SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition now provides this functionality as part of the BACKUP DATABASE statement.

It is important to note that this article solely references the new backup compression feature in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. The new SQL Server production also includes functionality for database compression, which I will outline in a future article.

In the following example, I take a look at how backup compression works, and compare the results from the compressed database against a normal full backup created in SQL Server 2008.

Getting Started

First, I will create and load a table in my database. Note that the table below contains one variable character field. This is significant in that the more character fields your database contains, the more compressed your database backup will likely be.

SET NOCOUNT ON

IF OBJECT_ID('SalesHistory') IS NOT NULL

DROP TABLE SalesHistory

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[SalesHistory]

(

[Product] [varchar](10) NULL,

[SaleDate] [datetime] NULL,

[SalePrice] [money] NULL

)

Loading data

Now I’ll load about 30,000 records into my SalesHistory table.

DECLARE @i SMALLINT

SET @i = 1

WHILE (@i <=10000)

BEGIN

      INSERT INTO SalesHistory(Product, SaleDate, SalePrice)

VALUES ('Computer', DATEADD(mm, @i, '3/11/1919'), DATEPART(ms, GETDATE()) + (@i + 57))

      INSERT INTO SalesHistory(Product, SaleDate, SalePrice)

VALUES('BigScreen', DATEADD(mm, @i, '3/11/1927'), DATEPART(ms, GETDATE()) + (@i + 13))

      INSERT INTO SalesHistory(Product, SaleDate, SalePrice)

VALUES('PoolTable', DATEADD(mm, @i, '3/11/1908'), DATEPART(ms, GETDATE()) + (@i + 29))

      SET @i = @i + 1

 END

Once I have my data loaded, I can use the system stored procedure sp_spaceused to see how large my database is. After loading the above data, my database occupies approximately 21 megabytes on disk.

EXECUTE sp_spaceused

Execute the statement below to enable the capture of the time it takes to parse, compile, and execute TSQL statements. I will use this information to compare the time involved to take a normal SQL Server backup against a compressed SQL Server backup.

SET STATISTICS TIME ON

Squashing things down

The following statement uses the WITH COMPRESSION option of the BACKUP DATABASE command to create a compressed backup on the C drive on my SQL Server computer. The compressed backups takes up approximately 463 KB on disk.

BACKUP DATABASE SalesHistory

TO DISK = 'C:SalesHistoryCompressed.bak'

WITH COMPRESSION

Note: You can also enable backup compression as the default at the server level using sp_configure and the ‘backup compression default’ option.

From the results of my STATISTICS TIME statement, I can see that the compressed backup statement took about 0.733 seconds

Moving data to Drive C

The statement below also creates a database backup on my C drive, but leaves out the compression option. This backup takes up approximately 2700 KB on disk.

BACKUP DATABASE SalesHistory

TO DISK = 'C:SalesHistoryNOTCompressed.bak'

From the results of my STATISTICS TIME statement, I see that the normal backup statement took approximately 0.618 seconds to complete.

The following statement can be used to examine the backup size information contained in the backupset system view in the msdb database.

SELECT TOP(2) compressed_backup_size, backup_size,

CompressionPercentage = 1-(compressed_backup_size/backup_size)

FROM msdb..backupset

WHERE database_name = 'SalesHistory'

ORDER BY backup_set_id DESC

There is a trade-off

You can see from the information gathered above that there is a trade-off when creating compressed database backups in SQL Server 2008. The backup size is significantly smaller, but it comes at the cost of taking more time and CPU cycles to complete the backup. These differences may be more pronounced as the size of the backups become larger. The only way to know for sure if using backup compression is the right choice for you and your organization is to try it out with your data sets.

——————————————-

Over on TechRepublic sister site News.com, Ina Fried discusses how Microsoft is building new data centers at an incredible rate. They are literally bringing servers by the container-load and setting them up in shiny new - and massive - data centers. As Ina discusses in the article, and ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley pointed out back in May, Microsoft is installing new servers at a rate of 10,000 per month.

Installing 10,000 servers a month is an absolutely astounding rate.  In a typical month, that’s 333 servers per day, 13 servers per hour, or one every 5 minutes.  Depending on how much I type, or how poor your reading skills are, Microsoft could install 2 servers before you’re done reading this entry.

Microsoft is spreading these servers around in data centers all over the planet.  There are centers going in Washington, Texas, Illinois, and Ireland. That’s on top of the centers it’s already managing.

Why so many and all over the place? Several reasons. First, the centers are located in different places to reduce bandwidth usage and latency times. Locating a major data center in Ireland for example improves service to European customers.  Users there will experience much better performance than if all of the information was pulled across the Atlantic.

Beyond that however, Microsoft needs that much equipment to support all of the Live services it offers on the web. From the Live.com search engine, to Windows Live, Office Live, and xBox Live, Microsoft has to install servers at a blinding rate to keep the services reliable and responsive.  Just to support Live Search, Microsoft uses 80,000 servers.  It’s no wonder they’re building new centers so quickly.

What would you do?

What would you do with 10,000 new servers every month?  I have no idea where I’d begin. It just seems like too big of a number to get my head around.

Take the poll below and share your thoughts in the Comments section.

 Loading …

As a DBA, you may run into an issue with disk space and it may be necessary to move the tempdb and master database. This tutorial provides you with the tasks necessary to perform this arduous procedure.

——————————————————

There have been many occasions where I found it necessary to move the database and log files to different drives to increase performance. When you want to move a typical user database to a different drive for performance or to split out the logs, you run sp_detach and sp_attach to perform the move. However, when it comes to moving the Master and Tempdb database, different rules apply. In this post, let’s walk you through the process of moving these databases.

Moving the Master Database

In the past I have had to move the master database log file to a different drive. If you ever have to perform this function, follow these rules to move the master database successfully. First, right-click on SQL Server in Enterprise Manager (EM) and choose Properties. Next, click the Startup Parameters as shown in Figure A. As you can see in Figure A, the following parameters appear in this box:

-d is the fully qualified path for the master database data file.
-e is the fully qualified path for the error log file.
-l is the fully qualified path for the master database log

Now, if you want to move your files you would remove the current entry and recreate your new entry with the correct path. For example, I am going to move the Master database log to (C:Test). At this point, I would delete the -l [path] by highlighting the old parameter and choosing remove (See Figure B). Next, I would add the following entry, (See Figure C), -l (c:Testmastlog.ldf) and click OK twice. Now, you will stop SQL Server and move the mastlog.ldf to its new location.

Note: Please make sure you move the mastlog.ldf to the location you configured in your startup parameters. If you move it to a location that is not specified in the startup parameters, SQL Server WILL NOT start.

Finally, start SQL Server and you have successfully moved your Master database as shown in Figure D.

Moving Tempdb

In order to move the tempdb database, open query analyzer and run the following query:

use master go

Alter database tempdb modify file (name = tempdev, filename = ‘E:Sqldata empdb.mdf’)

go

Alter database tempdb modify file (name = templog, filename = ‘E:Sqldata emplog.ldf’)

Go

Depending on where you are moving Tempdb is where you will specify the filename=parameter. I am going to move

the templog to (c: est) as shown in Figure E. After running the query, delete the old file after restarting SQL Server.

Moving MSDB Database

In order to move the MSDB and Model database, follow these steps. First, right-click the SQL-Server name and click properties. From the General tab, choose your startup parameters. Next, enter the parameter -T3608. Click OK, stop and restart SQL Server. After the restart, detach the database and move them to their appropriate place.

Whenever your drive space is getting tight and you need to move your system database files to different drives, following these simple procedures will allow you to move your databases efficiently and with confidence.

 ——————————————————————————————————————-

Administrators with Windows Server 2003 and prior versions of Windows Server have come to enjoy the ability to run Active Directory Users And Computers (ADUC) and other administration tools from their Windows XP-based workstations. Now Windows Server 2008 administrators running Windows Vista Service Pack 1 can use the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) to perform these remote administration tasks locally instead of taking up a remote desktop connection session to a server with the tools installed.

Microsoft provides the RSAT as a free download. It’s fairly straightforward to install the RSAT (get instructions in the Microsoft KB article 941314), but it may require a reboot or an update to Windows Installer. (You cannnot install the RSAT if you’re using Windows XP or if you’re on a system with Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2000 administrative tools locally installed.) Once you install RSAT, you must enable it for use in the Control Panel. Figure A shows the RSAT snap-ins being enabled.

Figure A

Once you enable the selected snap-ins, the local Administrative Tools folder contains the selected snap-ins for use locally. At this point, the tools are ready for use on the Windows Vista system. Figure B shows the Administrative Tools displayed.

Figure B

Note: The use of RSAT will depend more on delegated roles to usernames than the ability to do an explicit run as with administrative alias accounts.

Stay on top of the latest Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 tips and tricks with our free Windows Server newsletter, delivered each Wednesday. Automatically sign up today!