Hodentek

Thursday, June 12, 2014

SQL Server 2014 and NIC Teaming

SQL Server 2014 now takes advantage of NIC teaming feature provided by Windows Server 2012 R2 to improve enterprise-class scalability resulting in reduced infrastructure cost and predictable
performance, the magic words (mantras) you love to hear.

What is NIC Teaming?

NIC teaming is Load Balancing ns Failover(LBFO) a feature that allows multiple network adpaterss on a computer to be placed in a team (group) for the following express purposes:

Bandwidth aggregation
Prevent connectivity loss in a network failure event

NIC Teaming architecture
Teaming architectures are pretty much the same across vendors. Baiscally two or more physical networks adpaters(nic)are connected to a NIC Teaming solution to multiplex them to one or more virtual adapters called team network adapters(tnic) as shown.

Here is a teaming solution from VMWare.

Please review this link from VMWare from which the above image is taken.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx2_NIC_Teaming.pdf
NIC teaming in VMWare EXS Server 2 supports IEEE 802.3ad static link aggregation standard.

You want some more read my other blog:
http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2014/06/sql-server-2014-and-scalability.html

Your references:
Core reference:
http://ieee802.org/3/hssg/public/apr07/frazier_01_0407.pdf

Microsoft NIC Teaming:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831648.aspx
VMWare NIC Teaming:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/support/landing_pages/Virtual-Support-Day-Best-Practices-Virtual-Networking-June-2012.pdf
CISCO NIC Teaming:
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-3729

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Microsoft Azure enters Gartner's Magic Quadrant

Last week Gartner released their Magic Quadrant on cloud vendors.

You know what?

Microsoft grabbed the Leader's position for Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure- that is IaaS
for you.

Well for Gartner IaaS is not just moving round hardware and configuring it,
According to Gartner, "Cloud compute IaaS as a virtual data center of compute,
storage and network resources delivered as a service"
Well, MSFT is also a Leader in Application Platform as Service. This makes MSFT the only
cloud service vendor with such a recognition.

Go ahead and host on Azure without hesitation.

Sunday, June 08, 2014

Universal Apps on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1

This is a good video that you should review if you are either developing or working with Apps for the the new Windows 8.1 OS.

The video from Channel 9 touches upon many of the features of the Universal Apps and Kevin Gallo speaks from his experience using Surface Pro and Nokia 1020.

Universal apps have just one solution containing both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 projects sharing common code addressing hardware platforms with different foot prints, Windows
Phone, Surface and laptops.

The audio/video is of good quality. There are lots of related Q & A's.
The answers are quite focused such as,

-Supported languages JavaScript, C#, C++, C and VB.NET.
-Action Center
-Game development
-App migration
-Mix and match languages
-Leveraging legacy apps
-WinRT Broker
-DirectX with only C or C++ and no C#
and many more.

I hear in the video that you can create Universal apps using VB as well. However, Visual Studio does not seem to have a template to create one. Perhaps you may have to create one for yourself.

In the case of Universal Apps with Javascript you have the same .js file for both of Windows 8.1 apps and Windows Phone 8.1 apps. For other supported languages also a major portion of the code is shared.

There are some differences (version) in the WinJS script file sources for 'base' and 'ui' to address features special to the devices in their default.html pages.

Since the device foot prints are different; the package manifest are different requiring developers, for example, to tailor their graphics to suit the devices. Here there is a whole lot of icons to create which may be one of the time consuming tasks in development although some general recommendations are given.

It would have been nice if the develper supplied just one image (vector/SVG) and the program create required images from it without having have to create a number of images of different sizes and scale factors.

Friday, June 06, 2014

Azure Datacenters two in Asia & now one in South America (in GA)

Do not forget to get free books on Microsoft Windows Azure.

Azure Datacenter is now generally available in Brazil. A promotional pricing is offered right now. Geo replication to South US datacenter from Brazil dictates default storage option being Geographically Redundant Storage.

Brazil Datacenter debuts after two other data centers in Asia:
http://windowsitpro.com/azure/microsoft-opens-azure-datacenter-brazil-south-region

Japan GEO
http://azure.microsoft.com/ja-jp/community/japan-datacenter-geo/

China operated by 21Vianet
http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2014/03/microsoft-launches-mainland-china-azure-cloud-data-center

This is what you should do to get your free book. Note only the first three persons (from Brazil, Japan and China) to respond will get the book.
Follow this link for book details:
http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2014/06/three-more-microsoft-azure-datacenters.html

Thursday, June 05, 2014

Microsoft Vision: Project Portfolio Management

This is a brief summary from the Project 2014 Conference in Anaheim, CA Feb 2014. This is really about consolidating Microsoft assets: Project online, Office 365, SQL Servers, Azure, Project Apps and so on and how they are going to play out in the future.

Details of Project Online here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/

There is a 1 hour long marathon video on the following site detailing the road map for project portfolio management:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Project/2014/KEY002
Here are some screen shots: