I really like my new laptop, the Panasonic CF-S9 from Japan (i5-540, 8GB of memory, 12.1" widescreen, 8 - 12 hour battery life, under 3lbs - yes, under 3lbs). I don't always say that as I fall out of love with laptops pretty quickly. Is it perfect? No. I've definitely got some gripes with it. Disk speed is not one of them. Stock, it came with the new Toshiba 256GB 2nd generation SSD that supports TRIM (THNS256GG8BBAA). The Toshiba R600 I bought last year has the Toshiba 1st generation 512GB drive (THNS512GG8BBA) which does not support TRIM. One of my concerns in the switch was overall capacity - taking a step back since I have a lot of VMs. The 512GB SSD was pretty fast, and truth be told, all of my laptops since about 2005 or 2006 have all had SSDs. But the one thing anyone who runs VMs knows is that I/O is king. The 256GB that came with the Panasonic was pretty quick, but not the fastest. I say that knowing it gave me a Windows Experience of 6.7 for disk, which is nothing to shake a stick at.

So to expand capacity, my original goal was to add USB 3.0 externally via an ExpressCard on the Panasonic. Unforuntately, Panasonic put a PCMCIA (cardbus) slot in the CF-S9, and even with an adapter, I couldn't get my USB 3.0 ExpressCard to work. I tried an eSATA PCMCIA card and I got worse than USB 2.0 speeds, so Panasonic's PCMCIA controller officially sucks. The lack of ExpressCard support and the poor PCMCIA implementation is my biggest disappointment with the Panasonic.

Why all the fuss? I bought the 256GB Crucial C300 CTFDDAC256MAG-1G1 - the new king of the SSD speeds in 2.5" drives. It would be a waste of money cripple it with USB 2.0 speeds. Thankfully Panasonic didn't make it near impossible to get the internal drive out (like Sony does with many of their models ... speaking from experience, I have a very love-hate relationship with higher end Sony laptops). Just unscrew two screws, and carefully get the drive out.

I used Paragon Partition Manager 10.0 Professional (bought; not a freebie) to clone the Toshiba to the Crucial (4 hours since I was using an external USB 2.0 enclosure), popped out the Toshiba, put in the Crucial, and with fingers crossed, powered on the Panasonic. Success!

I re-ran my Windows Experience, and disk went up to a whopping 7.6. 7.6! Not too shabby. I can tell the laptop has a bit more snap to it as well. The increased write speeds do make a difference. Check out my CrystalDiskMark scores now:

It is not a drive for those who are on the fence about SSD - there are much cheaper options if you want SSD. With SSDs it's not only about SLC vs. MLC, but it has nearly everything to do with how the SSD manufacturer has optimized its controller. Compared to the original SSDs I was using in the 32GB sizes back on my old Vaio VGN-G1 from Japan, the speeds are amazing to see how far the technology has come.

And I will tell you this as someone with a history with SSDs in laptops - they don't significantly add to your battery life. Maybe 30 minutes, or at most, an hour, but I'd say about 30 minutes. What you do gain is a lot of silence, have less heat, and I love the fact it has no moving parts so if you accidentally jar your laptop, the drive head won't fail. The only SSD failure (knock on wood) I had was on my Sony Vaio VGN-Z90 from a couple of years ago which had a proprietary RAID system, and this Crucial is pretty much faster than that.

Hope this helps some of you wondering about SSDs and whether they are worth it. Like anything, it depends. You do get what you pay for. Just because you may get an SSD doesn't mean it's going to be better than that traditional hard drive. Like many do in the SQL Server world, they go for capacity over speed and/or reliability. Know what your tradeoffs are.

On May 13 and May 20, Ben DeBow and I will be giving two days worth (six sessions) of webinars dedicated to the topic of consolidation with SQL Server. There is no requirement to attend both days, and you can do just one, or both. These webinars are not free, but are great value for the money and your boss does not need to send you anywhere - you can view them right on your computer screen! The cost for a single day is $99, or $178 for both (a savings of $20).

The six sessions we'll be doing are:
May 13 - Part I
11:00 am ET: SQL Server Consolidation Basics
1:00 pm ET: Gathering Information to Make Consolidation Decisions
3:00 pm ET: Applications and SQL Server Consolidation

May 20 - Part II
11:00 am ET: Considerations for SQL Server Consolidation
1:00 pm ET: Approaches for a Consolidated SQL Server Architecture
3:00 pm ET: Administering and Maintaining a Consolidated SQL Server Environment 

Each session will be about 75 minues with a live Q&A with both of us. For more details on each session and to register:

Part I Only http://elearning.left-brain.com/event/sql-server-consolidation-part-1-elearning-series.aspx?code=EP2905A1
Part II Only http://elearning.left-brain.com/event/sql-server-consolidation-part-2-elearning-series.aspx?code=EP2905A2
Both Days (with the $20 Savings) http://elearning.left-brain.com/event/sql-server-consolidation-parts-i-and-ii.aspx?code=EP2905AC

As if that wasn't enough to keep me busy, I've got more going on. Besides working on a few whitepapers which I hope will be released in the next two months as well as customer engagements, I'll be on the road quite a bit. Here's where you can catch me at public or semi-public events besides the webinar:

TechEd North America 2010
I'll be spending time in the SQL Server booth (and probably the Windows Clustering one as well), but the main reason will be my session DAT407 "Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008: Failover Clustering Implementations". It will be on Thursday, June 10th from 5 - 6:15 PM in Room 276 (subject to change, I'm sure; check the site and guide when you get there). I know it's late in the day and most likely before the attendee party (update: it is; actually this is arguably one of the last sessions of the conference), but I hope to see you there and your brains are ready for 75 more minutes of content!

Microsoft Certified Master - SQL Server
I was recently honored with being asked to give one day of sessions at the upcoming May rotation for the Microsoft Certified Master - SQL Server certification. That day is May 14th, so if you're in the rotation, I'll see you there.

I'll actually be on the West Coast quite a bit (mainly in the Pacific Northwest and California) in May and June (outside of TechEd, of course), so if you've got a user group that needs a speaker and I'm in town, let's see if we can't coordinate. Click the Contact link above to get in touch.

Puget Sound SQL Server Users Group
Since I will be in the area, I do plan on trying to attend the Puget Sound SQL Server Users Group meeting if my schedule permits on May 12th. I am not going to be speaking if I go; I'm rarely around to just attend user group meetings anywhere. So feel free to say hello if you spot me!

It's 3:11 AM here and I just got my first Vmware demo environment with vSphere 4 (i.e. ESX 4.0) configured to show vMotion. Having set up both Live Migration and now the aforementioned vMotion, I can tell you that I much prefer the setup under Hyper-V. Just getting vSphere installed (pretty simple using its GUI Setup) and configured (not straightforward ... maybe it's my unfamiliarity with the server-based Vmware products, but it is not intuitive like Vmware Workstation is) took me the better part of today to figure out all of the little nuances. OK, sure, I could have probably read some docs (which I wound up referencing), but setting up clustering and then Live Migration is just easier.

I also didn't like the fact that vCenter needs a 32-bit ODBC connection to work (it uses a SQL Server backend), and it does not install the latest SQL Express version (if you choose not to use an existing instance with an appropriate DSN). That means those of you on later versions of Windows (read: Windows Server 2008 R2) will have to patch immediately. I wound up configuring vCenter Server under a Windows Server 2003 R2 VM.

As for the actual features - vMotion and Live Migration - they do essentially the same thing (migrate a virtual machine from one hypervisor host to another while keeping it up and running). They both work well.

The one major advantage of vSphere + vMotion at the moment is that I can demo it live on my laptop; my Live Migration stuff has been captured from a setup I did about a month ago when I had access to hardware. If you're wondering why, it's because the VT-x extensions that enable things like virtualization are not emulated in VMs (and if you think about it - it makes sense; virtualize a virtualized environment isn't a normal use of the technology). Both Microsoft and Vmware do not emulate VT-x. To do vSphere, it seems like Vmware does something special under the covers. I hope MS does something similar because I'd love to demo Live Migration "in the flesh".

Having said all of that, it'll be interesting to see how I get along with vSphere now that I have it set up. Since many customers of mine are invested in vSphere/ESX for their virtual environments, it's clearly in my best interests to have a good working knowledge of setting it up. I know DBAs probably won't be doing most of what I do, but this work I'm doing right now helps in conversations with the other groups (especially the guys setting up the VMs). I'm not new to Vmware - I've been using Workstation for nearly 10 years with a lot of success, and I used Vmware Workstation 7 to set up this new vSphere 4/vMotion environment.

I have yet to play with any of the other virtualization products since quite honestly, my customers really only talk about Vmware or Microsoft. The others don't come up in conversation. If you're using one of the other ones, I'm not denegrating your choice - do not take it that way. It's just that I'm not seeing it out there, much like the most common storage vendor I see at customers is EMC. There is other stuff, too - IBM, some HP, a Hitachi here and there - but EMC seems to be ubiquitous. All I care about is ensuring you have the right configuration no matter what hardware/software choices you make.

OK, off to get a few hours of shuteye and back to the grind in the AM to finish up some stuff before I head to Tokyo!

Well, it's official - the website just went up. Can't hide it anymore ... I'm delivering a 3-day masterclass on consolidation and virtualization at World of Windows Server in Singapore as well as delivering two sessions (although the current website shows two different, it is going to be a two parter on clustering). I'm very exicted and honored to have been asked to do this.

If you don't live in Singapore or can't get there (hey, what's a few thousand US dollars to take a little excursion to Singapore at the last minute - just ask ask your boss!), I do plan on delivering the masterclass and possibly expanding it to four or five days. Or not. I've spent a lot of time over this past month in content development (official v1 of my Windows Server 2008/SQL Server failover clustering class and this upcoming delivery in Singapore), and am going to assess it after I'm done to see if any tweaks are needed. I can promise you that whether you come to Singapore or see it in a town near you, it'l be a lot of fun, technical content, and information.

Contact me if you want to know more!

I've been talking about it for awhile, but it's finally here - my update of the old SQL Server 2000 consolidation whitepaper. It just went live less than an hour ago.

The basic info including the link to the download of the Word document can be found here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692366.aspx

or you can just download the Word doc from http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/B/D/DBDE7972-1EB9-470A-BA18-58849DB3EB3B/SQLServer2008Consolidation.docx.

I hope you find it useful!

The answer: 4.
1. Failover Cluster Manager
2. Move-ClusterVirtualMachineRole PowerShell cmdlet (part of the failover clustering cmdlets)
3. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2
4. Move-VM PowerShell cmdlet (part of the SCVMM 2008 R2 cmdlets)

At the end of the day, how you perform a Live Migration is going to depend on how you like to work - GUI or command line, and then it's down to preference under those. Not everyone will deploy SCVMM, so what you get natively with Windows Server 2008 R2 in Failover Cluster Manager and its PowerShell cmdlets.  

It's been a busy month between client work, travel, playing bi-weekly with a big band, and the holidays ... as well as getting ready to go into the studio to start my first new album in 10 years in a week! First, the updates:

• Thanks to the folks at SQL Saturday in Redmond - I had a lot of fun and the audience was great. Even though I was the last session of the day, people still stuck around.
• The consolidation paper is finally in edit, and we're on track to have it out for PASS assuming no road bumps.
• It looks like I'll be speaking in Singapore in December ... more info as it gets solidified.
• Hard to believe PASS is less than a month away! Hope to see some of you in my session.
• I'll get back to the promised post on DTC very soon.

• Ben DeBow and I will be doing a 6 part series on consolidation for Penton media early next year (similar to the six I did earlier this year for SQL DBAs). Again, stay tuned for more details. It will be a lot of fun to work with Ben on this, as he also has some really great experience with some large customers who have done consolidation. Maybe if we're crazy enough we'll attempt to write a book, but don't hold your breath :)

Now for some technical content ...

Hyper-V, Virtualization, and Live Migration
I've been playing around a lot lately with Hyper-V, and I have to say I'm impressed. I'm well documented as a VMware Workstation guy, but I've had some issues with it and Windows Server 2008 R2. On a lark, I decided to dual boot my laptop with Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 (I'm still at RC; haven't had time to upgrade to RTM and with all of my speaking coming up, I'm leaving my configuration alone!). Interestingly enough, I find that W2K8 R2 consumes a bit less in the way of resources than Windows 7. But I digress.

I set up what I usually do in VMware - a demo cluster - and it was a breeze. The Hyper-V Manager tool is very straightforward. I like the editing of VMs a bit better in VMware's tools, and the only real negative I have with Hyper-V at the moment is that you can't (or maybe I'm missing something) drag and drop from your hard drive into the VM. One nice improvement over VMware is that I can cleanly shut down a Windows guest from the management tool. So I'd say both at this point are equally as good for my purposes, and for production, I would say MS has really caught up in the virtualization race. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years with the various hypervisors and where they take things.

One of the best features of W2K8 R2 and Hyper-V is Live Migration. Live Migration is the ability to take a virtual machine (which is running on a Windows failover cluster) and move it with no downtime to another node in a way that minimally impacts performance. SQL Server fully supports Live Migration. Unfortunately, what I can't do on my laptop is demo Live Migration, and it's a killer feature (and for SQL Server). The reason? You can't enable virtualization in a VM (either Hyper-V or VMware). It just isn't practical to schlep extra hardware and disks around everywhere, and I can't count on having an Internet connection everywhere (nor can I necessarily rely on being able to get to my home machines if I have it configured). As someone who talks about clustering a lot, it puts me in a difficult spot. So right now I'm doing some work in a location where someone has graciously allowed me to configure this setup using a real SAN, and I'm documenting the heck out of it (including caveats) for Live Migration and SQL Server. Whether that winds up being a whitepaper for MS, or something I do on my own, it'll get out there. It'll be a nice companion to the paper MS already has on SQL Server and Hyper-V.

iSCSI
iSCSI is becoming more prevalent both in my use of it for demos and at client sites. However, realize that there are a few "gotchas" that you really do need to take into account. I will still maintain that using more traditional disk architectures for a production SQL Server implementation that is mission critical is arguably better in many cases, but that really isn't my decision in the end. Just be aware of what iSCSI means for SQL Server. I've seen iSCSI work really well for SQL Server deployments, too, but it all boils down to planning.

1. Remember that with iSCSI, chances are you're probably using a NIC, not a dedicated iSCSI HBA (which would be better). On a cluster, you must use a dedicated NIC in addition to the Public and Private NICs; iSCSI traffic can't share either.

2. You are now dependent on your network for your I/O. Remember that SQL Server needs guaranteed writes. What happens if your network dies? Make sure your network infrastructure is robust and architected properly. This means things like dedicated networks for iSCSI so the traffic isn't going out with the rest of the network traffic, redundant switches and such, etc.

3. Using NICs means some processor overhead. Account for that in your server sizing.

4. Test, test, and test some more. Make sure you not only run tests to see what the I/O capacity is from a hardware perspective is, and then run your workload. Know where the system will be stressed out. You may even want to try some more basic tests (like a file copy - I've seen that choke some iSCSI systems) before you attempt to test your workloads. This rule also applies to standard SANs, but is even more important with iSCSI.

I taped my session with Richard and Greg for RunAs Radio yesterday. We spent most of the hour talking about clustering with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, with a bit of other stuff (virtualization and speaking at conferences) thrown in for good measure. They're working hard on getting it ready, and I'm told it'll be the next show posted which is next Wednesday, April 22, 2009. I'll blog again when it's posted, but I wanted to give everyone the heads up. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did doing it yesterday.