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An Introduction to Database Sharding With SQL Server
One of my favorite consulting questions to ask when dealing with a scalability problem is, “If you could change the system design with the knowledge you have today, what would/wouldn’t you change and why?” Sometimes it’s best to ask this question on a one-on-one basis with different developers, DBAs, report writers, and…
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Meet the New Old Guy on the Head Geek Team
Growing up in the suburbs of Seattle, WA, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was like most everyone else’s experiences. Dad worked as an analog computer engineer for a Boeing subcontractor and Mom was a homemaker. If you visited my house back then, you would notice one big difference from other homes in middle-class America.…
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Another Look Back
Many of us are getting back to work after a few weeks of relative quiet (or for those of us with large families, at least a week of quiet from work-related issues). And as we're catching up on emails and updating our TODO lists, a look back may help us plan how best to move forward. Last week, Head Geek Lawrence Garvin…
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AppStack or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Eat More Cake
I like cake. Most people do, I suppose. And that’s why I use cake as an analogy in my classes and presentations whenever I talk about users, data, and performance. See, there are many, many layers of cake between users and their data. Some layers are thicker than others, some more delicious, and some more important. But…
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Favorite IT Metaphors,Sayings and Aphorisms
In my Linkedin Profile, I write that I’m a fan of “elaborate IT Metaphors” yet, in a very literal way, I’ve never actually written a list of my favorites. Listing out my favorite IT metaphors, sayings, aphorisms and such is risky. Too much pithiness, and I risk not being taken seriously. Too much cynicism and no one wants…
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Converting Physical Database Servers to Virtual Machines
I’m in the middle of tough project right now, a large client is trying to convert a large number of physical SQL Servers to virtual machines. They’ve done most of the right things—the underlying infrastructure is really strong, the storage is more than an adequate, and they aren’t overprovisioning the virtual environment.…
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A Stratagem For Obtaining Funding For Your Projects
My name's Rick Schroeder, and I've been a member of Thwack since 2004. I manage a health care network of 53,000+ computers across three states, and I've been enjoying using SolarWinds products like NPM, NCM, and NTA to proactively manage "Pure Network Services" across my organization. In my environment "Pure Networking"…
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Hands-On With SolarWinds Sandwich Monitor 1.0
https://www.youtube.com/embed/DEL-ASGOh3Y?rel=0 Finally out of Beta, today we’re releasing our newest Inventory Management product, SolarWinds Sandwich Monitor. This addition to the SolarWinds product line will allow you to monitor and manage IT Consumables Inventory across your enterprise. Administrators finally get…
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Are You Pi Shaped?
We’re well into 2015. How is your year going - and how are you preparing for the rest of your career? Earlier this year, four of us got together and had a great talk about technology predictions for 2015. One of the things I talked about was becoming a “Pi-shaped expert.” You might ask, “What’s a pi-shaped expert?” Well,…
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Would You Rather Captain the Queen Mary or the Titanic?
A Guide to Navigating Around the Deadly Icebergs that Threaten Virtualized Databases When it comes to virtualized workloads, databases can be in a size class all to themselves. This and other factors can lead to several unique challenges that on the surface might not seem all that significant, but in reality can quickly…