Showing posts with label Azure SQL Managed Instance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Azure SQL Managed Instance. Show all posts

Thursday, June 1, 2023

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 05-22-2023 Microsoft Fabric Launch & Moving Home Offices

 Hello Dear Reader!  Sorry this is so late, moving houses has gotten me a bit behind this week.  I will do better next week!

As you may have heard last week Microsoft Fabric was officially unveiled to the world.  As a part of this launch we had a few extra live videos as a part of the larger Digital Event that happened in conjunction with Microsoft Build!  We have a ton still to come on Microsoft Fabric and there will be LOTS of videos so stay Tuned!

Also as I previously mentioned, we are moving.  This weekend was a very seminal moment for me.  On Friday after 4 delayed installation attempts the internet was installed in the new house.  That can only mean one thing to me.  Time to move the office.  Once I move the office, I'm working there.  So this weekend I packed up everything, moved it, and set up the office.  From here on out I'm in the new house!

I'm really excited.  While it will not show up on the videos, the ceilings are really high.  I've had pictures, awards, mementos from over my career that have often been packed up in a closet. For the first time I have space to put it all out and it's really kinda awesome.

Lot's of feelings go into this move.  The house we are leaving has been very good to us.  This is where we all truly became the family we are today, went through some very difficult and painful moments, high school for both my boys, COVID, elementary school for my daughter, the kids started dating (something I'm still not sure I'm ready for), some brilliant wonderful happy moments, game nights, movies nights, movie premieres, and BBQ's.

Cheers to you old house, thanks for the memories.... and I hope we get some of our deposit back!

Ok Dear Reader, onto the content.

MONDAY 5-22-2023

On we released my latest video USE Azure Managed Identity to Backup Azure SQL Managed Instance to Blob Storage, NOT SAS Tokens!!


In this video I demo how easy it is and discuss why you should be using Managed Identity instead of SAS tokens to perform your Azure SQL Managed Instance COPY_ONLY backups.  This was a lot of fun to make and a great video


WEDNESDAY 5-24-2023

On Wednesday Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @neeraj_jhaveri) and I presented an Introduction to Microsoft FABRIC!! How to Enroll, How to Opt in, How to build a Data Warehouse!! 



My love for Neeraj has never been a secret the man get's a big introduction on everyone of our Tuesday Azure Data Community Round Tables, and the fact that we got to break the news of Microsoft Fabric meant the fireworks were flying!  We covered how you enroll, towards the end we covered how Power BI Admins make sure to opt into the preview, and I showed how to create a Data warehouse and ingest data!

THE PRE-SHOW

As if that wasn't enough the Tales from the Field team was all together myself, Neeraj, Josh Luedeman (Twitter| @JoshLuedeman), Andres Padilla (Twitter | @Nodestreamio), & Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) were joined by Adam Saxton (Twitter | @AwSaxton) one half of the dynamic duo of Guy in a Cube(Twitter | @GuyinaCube),  Kal Yella, and the wonderful Bradley Schacht (Twitter | @BradleySchacht) joined us to kick off the Microsoft Fabric Digital Event for Day 1, with the Microsoft Fabric Digital Event Pre-Show Day 1.


We started off by finding out that the Power BI CAT and Azure Synapse CSE Team were now the Fabric CAT Team!  We discussed Day 1, feedback from customers, questions we had seen, and much more.  You definitely want to check it out!

THURSDAY 5-25-2023

As if one extra live show was JUST NOT ENOUGH on Thursday we came back to do the Microsoft Fabric Digital Event Pre-Show Day 2. Adam Saxton, Kal Yella, and Bradley Schacht from the Microsoft Fabric CAT Team joined us.  



We discussed the content from Day 1 of the Digital Event, what you could expect to see on Day 2, and we did DEMO'S!!  Make sure to check this out!


TUESDAY 5-23-2023

On Tuesday we were eagerly awaiting the announcement of Microsoft Fabric on the Build Keynote during the pre-show.  This was our first opportunity to talk about it publicly.  


The star of these shows is, as always the content created by the Azure Data Community.  Without further ado, here it is:


Honorable Mentions

Microsoft Digital Event Pre-Show: Azure FastTrack, Power BI CAT, & Azure Synapse Analytics PG    by  Bradley Ball, featuring Adam Saxton & Bradley Schacht & Guy in Cube Twitter @SQLBalls, @BradleySchacht, & @GuyInACube

Microsoft Build 2023 Book of News 

Neeraj

Using Azure DevOps with Synapse Workspaces to create hot fixes in production environments  by Vytas Suopys Twitter @Vytas Suopys

Bradley

How to take secure, on-demand backups on SQL Managed Instance  by Zoran Rilak Twitter @zoranrilak

Andres

Building Interactive Enterprise Grade Applications with Open AI and Microsoft Azure  by Andrei Zaichikov  

Josh

Spreading your SQL Server wings with serverless SQL Pools  by Kevin Chant Twitter @kevchant

Neeraj

What Is Responsible AI? | Built In  by Ellen Glover Twitter @BuiltIn

Bradley

Junior Data Professionals The Key to Every Data Team's Success  by Abhinav Jayanty + Taylor George

Andres

How to deploy your AI model on Edge devices with Azure  by RenĂ© Bremer

Josh

Azure SQL input binding for Azure Functions   by Anuraj Parameswaran Twitter @anuraj

Neeraj

Generative AI defined: How it works, benefits and dangers Generative AI defined: How it works, benefits and dangers (techrepublic.com)  by Owen Hughes Twitter @owenrdhughes

Bradley

Reflections on My First-Ever Presentation, Fifteen Years Later  by Tim Mitchell Twitter @Tim_Mitchell

Andres

An Overview of Microsoft Azure NLP Solutions  by Lida Ghahremanlou  Twitter @lida_ghr

Josh

Using Docker on Windows with Persistent SQL Server Settings and Databases  by Josephine Bush Twitter @hellosqlkitty



WRAP IT UP

No assignments this week Dear Reader as it is already Thursday.  I will attempt to resume our normal cadence next Monday!  My hope for you is take some time, rest, relax, and think of the fact that I'm moving the heavy stuff during the hot months in Florida.  Then take an extra deep sip of that ice cold <insert beer, mixed drink, or non-alcoholic beverage of choice />.

Until next time Dear Reader and as always, Thank You for stopping by.


Thanks,


Brad

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 05-15-2023 The Graduate & the Very BIG Week

MY WILL, MY BUG, MY GRADUATE

Just a little under 18 and one half years ago, William came into my life.  There are a lot of words to describe a new baby, but the one surround Will's birth is hard to quantify.  Don't get me wrong.  Joy, happiness, elation, wonder, awe, all-encompassing-love, all of those words were there.
Holding Will's hand on day 3

Eventually.  

Will's birth was the most intense 24 hours, and then week, of my life. 

William was my third child, so having one was not new to me, but this experience was.  Whereas his brother and sister had cried loudly, been weighed, and handed over in warming blankets to be cuddled with; William was rushed away.  He was born into this world with a collapsed lung.  

While I've spoken about this, I've never written about it before.  There is a lot flooding back to me just looking at the picture on the screen. He was born just before Christmas and I've always been thankful to the nurses, the doctors, and other stall at the Sentra Hampton Roads Hospital until we moved we used to bring them cookies every Christmas Eve, remembering those wonderful people there over night with us.  

The Graduate & Family
Let me skip forward in time.  William's lung miraculously reinflated.  After 5 days the oxygen hood came off, we were able to hold him, and feed him.  He came home a bright beautiful bouncing baby boy, and grew so very fast.  We have had lots of adventures.  

My Bug, my nickname for Will, loves roller coasters and amusement parks.  I think he is the only person in the family that loves theme parks as much as I do.  For the last 15 years he has been my roller coaster riding buddy.   

Last Thursday he graduated from High School.  Roller coaster riding buddy indeed.  That first hill was a big one.  He is off to college this Fall, but it feels like only yesterday I was holding that little hand.  One of my favorite quotes comes from the Little Buddhist Handbook, "The trouble IS you BELIEVE you have time".  Yes.  That is the trouble.

Next up, we will head to college orentationnext month.  Before then we will move, because we bought a house.  We've all been doing a lot of work on it getting it ready to move in.  William is leading the way on the painting front, having painted his room and helping is younger sister with hers.  The move is officially underway, not just because of the hours of work, or mounds of things we've already moved.  No, the way I know this is I am sore in places I forgot I could get sore.

THE BIG WEEK

We talked about it last week Dear Reader, but a very big week is upon us.  Microsoft Build starts today.  On Wednesday 5/24 & Thursday 5/25 there will be a massive Digital Event that will be simulcast across the Guy in a Cube, Power BI, and Azure Synapse YouTube channels starting at 9 am PST.

One hour before we will be live on the Tales from the Field YouTube channel.  Adam Saxton (Twitter | @awsaxton) of Guy in a Cube (Twitter | @GuyinaCube), Kal Yella & Bradley Schacht (Twitter | @BradleySchacht) from the Azure Synapse PG, and of course Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri), Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), Andres Padilla (@Nodestreamio), and myself will be live.  

Here are the links to the pre-show:







MONDAY 5-15-2023
On Monday my friend Daniel Taylor released an AMAZING video.  He walked through the process of taking Ola Hallengren's SQL Server Mainteance Solutions and using them with Azure SQL Database using Azure Data Factory.  


If you have Azure SQL Databases in your environment Azure SQL Database Maintenance Plans with DYNAMIC Azure Data Factory Pipeline!!  It is one of our most viewed videos ever, and Dan is very excited to add on to it!

WEDNESDAY 5-17-2023
On Wednesday I released 5 REASONS TO USE Azure SQL Managed Instance!!  This was our first list.  I had several different videos I've made and will make on Azure SQL Managed Instance.



I don't feel like enough people are aware of the service and what it can do.  If there is an item on the list you want to see a longer video on, let me know we always love the feedback!


TUESDAY 5-16-2023
On Tuesday we had our Azure Data Community Round Table featuring content from the creators in the Community for the Community!  We had a great conversation opening the show about Mother's Day weekend and the activities surrounding it for each of us, plus a Happy belated Mother's Day to all the MOM's out there!!!



As always the star of the show is the content, so here is the content by the WONDERFUL creators by order of appearence on the show:

Honorable Mention

·         Microsoft Digital Event Pre-Show: Azure FastTrack, Power BI CAT, & Azure Synapse Analytics PG   by  Bradley Ball, featuring Adam Saxton & Bradley Schacht & Guy in Cube Twitter @SQLBalls, @BradleySchacht, & @GuyInACube

Neeraj

Scaling strategies for large scale AzureCognitive Services deployments  by RK Iyer

Bradley

·         Announcing General Availability of Azure Data Studio extension SQL Database Projects by Steve Jones Twitter @Way0utWest via @SQLServerCentrl

Andres

·         Getting started with Azure Machine LearningResponsible AI components  by Ruth Yakubu Twitter @ruthieyakubu

Josh

·         Azure Resource Inventory by Claudio Merola Twitter @ClaudioMerola_

Neeraj

·         ChatGPT + Python+ Power BI   by Gabe Araujo, M.Sc. Twitter @AIGenesis3

Bradley

·         Script to Decode SQL Server Locking and BlockingWait Resources   by Eric Blinn Twitter @mssqltips

Andres

·         Pandas, Spark, and Polars - When To Use Which?  by Martin Karlsoon Twitter @HelloKarlsson

Josh

·         A Beginner's Guide to Database Reliability Engineering by Kovid Rathee Twitter @Kovid_R

Neeraj

·         How Microsoft can help you go passwordless thisWorld Password Day by Alex Weinert  Twitter @Alex_T_Weinert

Bradley

·         T-SQL Tuesday 162 – Execution plans according toChatGPT  by Hugo Kornelis Twitter @Hugo_Kornelis

Andres

·          Getting aGrip on Data and Model Drift with Azure Machine Learning  by Natasha Savic & Andreas Kopp

Josh

·         TDE: Database Backups and High Availability  by Matthew McGiffen Twitter @mattMcGiffen



WRAP IT UP
Ok Dear Reader remember today is the kick off of MS Build.  If you haven't registered go do it, it takes a few minutes and it get's you free access to the big show.

On Monday we posted USE Azure Managed Identity to Backup Azure SQL Managed Instance to Blob Storage, NOT SAS Tokens!!  if you are using Azure SQL Managed Instance you want to go give that one a look, this is the way we should be doing our COPY_ONLY backups.

Today is the Azure Data Community Round Table, followed by our live pre-shows on Wednesday & Thursday.  PLUS a very special video drop this Wednesday.

We hope you get to spend some time with us this week and as always Dear Reader, Thank You for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad


Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Monitoring Deadlocks in Azure SQL Managed Instance

 Hello Dear Reader!  My lastest blog on our Azure FastTrack blog for Microsoft is live, Monitoring Deadlocks in Azure SQL Managed Instance. 

Here's a little from the blog:

To paraphrase Annie, Deadlocks ARE JUST AWFUL!  When they occur, it means one transaction was the victim and rolled back, the other succeeded.  You have a couple different ways to monitor them in Azure SQL Managed Instance.  Let's review those together. 

 

What is a deadlock?  To quote our MS Learn Documentation, "Deadlocks occur when two or more processes or transactions block each other from continuing because each has locked a database resource that the other transaction needs".  

In layman's terms a deadlock occurs when two queries are blocking one another and neither could ever complete its transaction.  Pretend two people need to use the same door.  They cannot fit through at the same time.  One must stop and let the other proceeded first.  Now add on top of that they both reached for the door knob and grabbed it at the same time, both pulling the door in an opposite direction.   

 

Instead of simply waiting, one must let go of the door knob.  In this case the door knob is a table, the hands reaching out are attempting to gain a lock.   In SQL Server, all versions of the database engine, this is accomplished by the Lock Manager it uses a process called FIFO, first in first out, to determine who has to let go.

 

In the case of SQL one transaction is a deadlock victim, it is killed and the transaction is rolled back.  So if this is occurring on your system fixing it is very important.  First you have to find out if they are occurring, and that's what we will cover in this blog post today!


To read the rest here is the link: Monitoring Deadlocks in Azure SQL Managed Instance


As always Dear Reader, Thank You for stopping by.


Thanks,


Brad




Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 02-27-2023 & Some Changes

 Hello Dear Reader!  Change is the one constant in life and over here at Tales from the Field we've been
hard at work making some changes. 

Over the last 5 months since we kicked off the show we've been experimenting with different content.  We started off with the hosting & interview show on Tuesday and the Community Round Table on Thursday.

We added a few sporadic technical videos, and then in February kicked off our MS Tech Bits every Wednesday.

We are data folk at heart, so after looking at the analytics, we were blown away!  In just one month of technical videos we had almost doubled our subscribers, and our viewership.

While we produced 2 Live Shows per week, we received just as many views and almost doubled our subscribers with one technical video a week.

Out of the Live Shows the most popular thing we do is the Community Round Table, and it is our favorite thing!  We get to talk about you and what you are doing.  We get to shine a light on new voices, wonderful established voices, or voices that you may not be aware.  Each of my cohosts brings an amazing and unique point of view to this endeavor.   I love learning new things or getting new videos to check out thanks to Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri),  AndrĂ©s Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio), Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), & Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman). 

 I guess that is another change as well.  We appreciate the efforts of Daniel Taylor so much that he is now officially part of the team!  Dan is our go-to when we've had someone out of the office and he has an amazing technical mind.  We are lucky to have him as part of our crew.

We want to devote more time to producing technical videos. So this week we are moving our Community Round Table shows to Tuesday and we are pausing the interviews.

We will continue our focus on technical content and making sure that we are rolling out a few technical videos a week.

All based on the work we are doing with customers aka friends over "in the field", answering questions, or covering topics we've had to help our friends with.  A big important part of our job is also our internal work in Azure Engineering, also technically our field.  Hence our name, Tales from the Field.

This week and next week we will be adding a treat of Monday videos and some shorts relating to interviewing for SQL DBA jobs. 

In some fun news we've had the logo refreshed, some laptop stickers made prior to SQLBits & SQL Saturday Jacksonville #1041!  If you are attending those events and want a sticker please find me and I'm taking about 200 so find me I will be happy to share them!

After SQLBits we will be working on a new channel trailer, getting the logo incorporated into our header, and adding it to our video trailers.  We really love it and the graphic designer did a bang-up job!

Ok, enough from me.  On to the Recap!


TUESDAY 2-28-2023

We had the AMAZING Vicky Harp (Twitter | @VickyHarp) on the Tuesday show for an interview.  The subject was Building a Brand.  Vicky is a Principal Group Program Manager for the Windows Developer Experience Team, Vicky has also had a hand in building some of the product, that if you use SQL Sever, you know & love.


This was a fantastic episode were we discussed the concepts of external or community branding as well as internal or building your brand inside of the company you work for.  Both of these brands are ESENTIAL to success.

We covered advice and guidance that Vicky had for people new in their careers and also for those that had been around for a while.  Make sure you check it out!


WEDNESDAY 3-31-2023

On Wednesday we launched our latest MS Tech Bits Make Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose FASTER!!I  On a personal note, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE RESPONSE!  As of right now this is the MOST watched video on our channel and it has not yet been out a week.

If you liked this video, we have some really great content planned at the channel.  We hope you will check it out if you haven't already.



THURSDAY 3-2-2023

On Thursday we had our Community Round Table featuring data from you the Azure Data Community or the community at large. 


This is always a fun show where I get to hang out with my friends and share the things we've all found interesting over the past week.  The star of that show is the content, so without further ado.


Content in order of appearance:

Neeraj

The Importance of Personal Branding to Career Growth Plus 12 Tips for Branding Success by Jessica H Hernandez Twitter @GreatResume


Bradley

DataChick's Secure Your Azure SQL Data Challenge By Karen Lopez Twitter @DataChick


Andres

How To Fix Stream Lag: 5 Reasons You are Lagging by Live Streaming Tech Twitter @tech_streaming


Josh

Announcing Azure Data Tech Groups v2.0  by Rie Merrit Twitter @IrishSQL & @AzureSQL


Neeraj

Using OpenAI GPT in Synapse Analytics by Thomas Costers 


Bradley

Programming Databases with T-SQL for Beginners by Buck Woody & Marisa Mathews Twitter @BuckWoodyMSFT, @AzureSQL


Andres

Calling REST endpoints from T-SQL by Rob Farley Twitter @rob_farley, @IrishSQL, @AzureSQL


Josh

Understanding Change Data Capture for Azure SQL Database Part 1 by Greg Low Twitter @greglow


Neeraj

Personal Branding for Students: 7 Tips You Should Know by Nate Torres


Bradley

Extracting Data from the AFAS REST API with Azure Data Factory By Koen Verbeeck Twitter @Ko_Ver


Andres

How I Built A Streaming Analytics App With SQL and Delta Live Tables by Richard Tomlinson Twitter @tomlinsonr


Josh

SQL Server 2022: Measuring Extended Events Performance Impacts by Jonathan Kehayias Twitter @SQLPoolBoy



WRAP IT UP

This week is a big week Dear Reader. We have technical content dropping this Monday and next Monday.  This Monday we have an Introduction to OpenAI by AndrĂ©s & Neeraj!  We have our Tuesday Round Table show featuring maybe your content!?!  

We have our Wednesday MS Tech Bits, this will be yours truly with an Introduction to SQL Wait Stats and we are dropping our SQL Interview shorts all this week.

Most important, Thank You Dear Reader for stopping by.


Thanks,


Brad

Monday, February 20, 2023

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 02-13-2023

Josh & myself at Antman & the Wasp Quantumania
 Hello Dear Reader!  It's the Presidents Day holiday today in America. With it comes a 3 day weekend.  To celebrate Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), myself, and our families went to see Antman & the Wasp: Quantumania over the holiday weekend.   

Despite the poor reviews on Rotten Tomatoes the movie was great.  Once again proving why I'm not a movie critic, and why I don't understand how movie critics have a job.  Have no fear, there are no spoilers here.  It was an exciting action-adventure with a really good family theme, and a surprisingly happy ending with a heavy bit of foreshadowing.  I enjoyed it so much I saw it the next day with my oldest son and it was just as enjoyable as it was the first time.

We headed over to visit family for dinner on Saturday, while Sunday was a nice lazy today I am using my
day off to learn a little more about video editing, pre-posting our next two MS Tech Bits , and learning about end screen YouTube pages.  My wife does not have the day off so I'm on dinner duty tonight!


"So Balls," you say "what's for dinner?".


Excellent question as always Dear Reader!  I have some ribeye steaks defrosting in the refrigerator.  I plan to make a homemade chimichurri, put half on the steaks, and vacuum seal them, then sous vide them, before finishing them off on the grill to get a nice char on the exterior.  But enough of us all getting hungry before lunch, let alone dinner, lets head off to the recap!


Tuesday 2-14-2023

Valentines Day kicked off with the Batman of Guy in a Cube (Twitter | @GuyInACube), Mr. Patrick LeBlanc (Twitter | @PatrickDBA) himself!  We had a great conversation about how to Manage Work Life Balance.  Part of that conversation has to involve admitting that we have not always done a good job of managing work life balance. 



Often it is times of trial and error, life, and loss that teach us that we have to do better.  On Thursday, our good friend Lonnye Bower (Twitter | @ilovesql) challenged us to call it a Life-Work balance, but I'm getting ahead of myself.



Wednesday 2-15-2023
First off thank you Dear Reader for the reception of our MS Tech Bits!  This is quickly becoming some of our most viewed content.  This past week was no exception.  In less than a week this has become our 2nd most viewed MS Tech Bits!



I'm working with some friend on the Azure SQL MI PG and we have videos that we will be cross posting helping people to further understand one of my favorite products Azure SQL Managed Instance.  In this video we show how to backup and restore a SQL MI DB from a SQL MI Instance and restore it on a SQL Server 2022 instance.

We do this in an unencrypted manner, but it is completely possible to do this in an encrypted manner.  We will cover that in a future video.  



Thursday 2-16-2023
On Thursday we kicked off our Round Table with our good friend Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) sitting in for Josh Luedeman.  Dan joined AndrĂ©s Padilla (Twitter | @Nodestreamio), Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) to review the AMAZING CONTENT created by you the ccommunity!  



As I mentioned earlier Lonnye challenged us to stop referring to Work-Life balance and instead say Life-Work balance.  Bravo to Lonnye for pushing us to be better!


Here is the content in the order of appearance on the show:

Neeraj

Bradley

Andres

Dan

Neeraj

Bradley

Andres

Dan

Neeraj

Bradley

Andres

Dan



WRAP IT UP
This week is the week Dear Reader!  Christmas in February, our Elfster show is happening.  Who got who?  What gifts did we each get?  We will finally find out Tuesday 2/21/2023 at 1 pm EST.  This will be a packed show, and it looks to be a lot of fun.

On Wednesday we have another great MS Tech Bits that will drop.  This time AndĂ©s and Neeraj are back for the first of what will be a series of videos teaching you how to use BICEP to deploy Analytics Pattern 1 for Azure Synapse Analytics using our Analytics in a Box GitHub repo!

Thursday we will be back with the Community Round table, potentially featuring your content!

Ok, time to rest up while I can.

Oh, one other thing.  We broke a milestone and it is all thanks to you Dear Reader.  We offically hit over 100 subscribers on our YouTube channel!  Thank you so much for joining us on this ride.

And as always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad