Content type: Best Practices

Published 
3 min read

Automated Backup & Automated Patching Best Practices 

We recently released the Automated Backup and Automated Patching features. These features automate the processes of backing up and patching your SQL Virtual Machine to provide an added level of convenience for your VMs. We’d like to outline some best practices for these features to ensure that you get the most out of these features.
Published 
1 min read

Azure HDInsight Clusters Allows Custom Installation of Spark Using Script Action 

Apache Spark is a popular open source framework for distributed cluster computing. Spark has been gaining popularity for its ability to handle both batch and stream processing as well as supporting in-memory and conventional disk processing. Starting today, Azure HDInsight will make it possible to install Spark as well as other Hadoop sub-projects on its clusters.
Published 
1 min read

The ins and outs of Apache Storm – real-time processing for Hadoop 

Yesterday at Strata + Hadoop World, Microsoft announced the preview of Apache Storm clusters on Azure HDInsight.  This post will give you the ins and outs of Storm. What is Storm? Apache Storm is a distributed, fault-tolerant, open source real-time event processing solution. Storm was originally used by Twitter to process massive streams of data from the Twitter firehose.
Published 
2 min read

Using SSDs in Azure VMs to store SQL Server TempDB and Buffer Pool Extensions 

A common practice on-premise to improve the performance of SQL Server workloads is storing TempDB and/or Buffer Pool Extensions (SQL Server 2014) on SSDs. The former improves the performance of workloads that use temporary objects heavily (e.g. queries handling large recordsets, index rebuilds, row versioning isolation levels, temp tables, and triggers).
Published 
3 min read

3 reasons to get certified at PASS Summit 2014! 

PASS Summit 2014 is right around the corner!  Register by September 26th 2014 to take advantage of the PASS Summit discounted pricing.  PASS Summit is not only a great opportunity to attend the highest rated technical sessions but it’s also one of the best times to get certified. Why should you get certified at PASS Summit 2014? 1.