Blog Roll - List of blog post and script contribution

Greetings of the day!!

I am getting frequent emails with questions why I do not write as often I used to write earlier. I know, I got very few blog posts since 2013; the reason was that I had some personal commitment that kept me busy to take time off and make a blog post. However I tried to keep the moment by posting couple of blogs every year but that's on the another blog space - my employers blog space at http://www.pythian.com/blog/author/goswami/ . I have also contributed some scripts to Technet Script Gallery.  Below is the list of the blog post I made last year and the Script Gallery.

I am determined to post at least couple of entry each month now, I would appreciate your support as always!!

Links to the blog posts

Date	Title	URL
Jan 5 2016	SQL Server 2016 – AlwaysOn Basic Availability Group	http://www.pythian.com/blog/alwayson-basic-availability-group-sql-server-2016/
July 31 2015	SQL Server and OS Error 1117, Error 9001, Error 823	http://www.pythian.com/blog/sql-server-and-os-error-1117-error-9001-error-823/
July 9 2015	Reading System Logs on SQL Server	http://www.pythian.com/blog/reading-system-logs-on-sql-server/
July 20 2015	Reading System Logs on SQL Server - Part 2	http://www.pythian.com/blog/reading-system-logs-sql-server-part-2/
Sep 30 2015	Import / Export Multiple SSIS Packages	http://www.pythian.com/blog/importexport-multiple-ssis-packages/
July 28 2014	Unexpected Shutdown caused by ASR	http://www.pythian.com/blog/unexpected-shutdown-caused-by-asr/
Jan 23 2014	Script to Collect Database Information Quickly	http://www.pythian.com/blog/script-to-collect-database-information-quickly/

Links to the Technet script Gallery

Date	Title	URL
Nov 22 2015	Script to Collect ALL Database Information wtih VLF Count	https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Script-to-Collect-ALL-82664699
May 3 2013	Collect Cluster Information using TSQL	https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/COLLECT-CLUSTER-INFORMATION-9a75e4a7
Mar 9 2013	Configure Auto Growth in Fixed MB	https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Configure-AutoGrowth-in-f4f3d7d1
Jun 26 2015	Script to Monitor Database Mirroring Health	https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Script-to-monitor-database-0f35c5d7
Jun 26 2015	Script to Monitor AlwaysOn Health	https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/TSQL-for-AlwaysOn-Health-6aae827d

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Virtualization – a way to reduce IT Costs!

A month ago I and my friend were discussing IT budget, and it becomes very interesting when we started discussing virtualization. Let me brief you the case: with the growing business usage of IT infrastructure increases and that increases the usage of energy and space. Apart from this, there is another side; are those resources getting utilized at optimum level? Well, at some cases yes but in most of the cases it doesn't - source.

One would think if this really requires? I would say, yes, it is required. Let's take an example here; company Ax Inc is managing its 200 servers at its datacenter at Bangalore. Let's say a single server which utilized at 60% consumes 350 watts, now let us calculate -:

Unit	Rate	Amount
Up to 100	2.90	290
101 to 200	3.60	360
201 to 300	4.20	420
301 to 400	4.45	222.5
Above 401	4.70	-- NA --
Bill generated for single server		1292.5

                                   (Figure 1)

Further, calculating this amount for 200 servers would make 258500/- INR per month (US$ 5609.45 per month, as of 23-Feb-2010 according to CurrenciesDirect). If we also consider the bill for cooling systems and miscellaneous expenses it would be much more. In addition, add licensing costs, resources which manage and maintain this IT Infrastructure will add some extra burden.

Is there a solution for this? Yes, there is a solution for this – Virtualization. Virtualization is great technology which helps us to utilize our IT infrastructure at the max and lower down the costs. You must be wondering how this can be possible, and if it is; how to implement this solution!!!  As I said above, our discussion was turned very interesting – the solutions are to implement "Virtualization". Virtualization – a methodology of dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments, by applying one or more concepts or technologies such as hardware and software partitioning , time-sharing, partial or complete machine simulation, emulation, quality of services, and many other.

There are bunch of benefits that are attached to with implementing Virtualization, and related product i.e. lowering power consumption, ease of deployment, maintenance and updates, and consolidation. Let me brief you about each.

Lowering power consumption: As I shown you in the above calculation in figure 1, 200 servers would generate whooping electricity bill - 31,02,000/- (2585000*12) annually. This is just an example and that to without considering cooling system.

Now, if you have hardware with Hyper-V you will be able to have your multiple servers on it. You can even host with Linux. And, naturally with lower numbers of servers your electricity bill goes down significantly.

Ease of Deployment: With the use of Microsoft Virtual Server Manager, System Center Virtual Machine Manager you will be able to optimized your physical and virtual resources.

• Centralized virtual machine deployment and management
• Intelligent placement of virtual machines
• Integrated performance and resource optimization
• Fast physical to virtual and virtual to virtual conversion
• Leverage and extend existing storage infrastructure
• Scriptable using PowerShell
• Live migration
• Hot add/remove of VHDs, pass-through disks
• Server consolidation

Maintenance and Updates: The real beauty is that it makes administrator's life easy. With the use of System Center Configuration Manager and Operation Manager you will be able to easily do our maintenance and updates easily.

• Comprehensive application and service level monitoring
• Update management
• Software distribution
• Operating system deployment
• Ease of Backup

Conclusion: Virtualization helps a lot to save energy by consuming less power, save resources, and make IT administrator's life easy by server consolidation, deployment of patches and updates and even migration. As I have said in my previous post about embedding security to your product or piece of code, you may have the same tight security mechanism implemented with Virtualization- refer the document. Microsoft's own websites like MSDN and TechNet which has 1~3 million hits a day runs 100% on Hyper – V.

Cumulatively all this effort saves a lots of money by reducing IT costs, this makes real sense to me because it makes my life easy and as IT cost is down my client is happy with the solution.

Further reading:

Videos:

Monitoring .NET and Web Applications with System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

Selecting the Right Candidates for Virtualization

Consolidation and Rapid Provisioning

Physical and Virtual Server Management

Application Virtualization Cost Reduction Study

Virtual Labs:

TechNet Virtual Lab: Introduction to System Center Essentials 2007

TechNet Virtual Lab: System Center Operations Manager 2007- Introduction

TechNet Virtual Lab: System Center Operations Manager 2007- Advanced Topics

References:
http://www.mybengaluru.com/resources/2248-Bangalore-Electricity-Tariff-Hike.aspx
http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/docs/SPECpower-Methodology.pdf

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Embed security and secure your data

Security!! A word – that everybody want, whatever it may for - a life, money or a job. In an IT world this term is often used, and asked by the client, the customer or the end user because it is closely attached to the information they are providing or storing or exchanging with each other. It can create a chaos if an ounce of the information is leaked or spread publicly; refer the case about classified US Military info available, reported in July-2007 by Network World.  

So, what we really have to care about that every piece of work that we do should be secure - by default, and this applies to every technology. That means whatever we work on, we should follow and implement the security policies to build the robust and secure product. Recently, I was researching about security and I found a link about Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL). It is since 2004 that Microsoft has made SDL mandatory to follow for its entire product range.  I would advise you to follow the same when you make a product for a business environment, communication software such as messenger or dealing with the sensitive information. 

Since 2004, most of the product from Microsoft has built-in features to tighten security. This applies to SQL server as well; you can see that SQL Server 2005 has great security features i.e. you can enforce password policy on your database server to ensure that the passwords that your users are crating are strong. Apart from this   now it is not necessary to assign system administrator rights to run profile, the only permission user requires is ALTER TRACE to run profiler. You may refer my article on how to secure SQL server for more pointers.

Microsoft publish security bulletin every month which will give advice you if you required installing any patch on your system. And to make this procedure easy for Windows operating systems and Office product Microsoft is offering Security Compliance Management Toolkit Series. Also to keep your system free from Viruses or malware Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) toolkit is useful.

So, all in all we all should be more cautious when we are dealing with sensitive data and should improve by following SDL.

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