I am very fortunate to have been accepted as a Friend of Red Gate for a second year! If you're not familiar with "FoRG", Friends of Red Gate work with the Red Gate development and product teams to provide feedback on existing products, new tools, and feature enhancements. You can also find us speaking at …

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Last week Microsoft announced that they will be retiring their TechNet Subscriptions service. This is very disappointing and will profoundly affect myself and many others. What Is TechNet? If you're not familiar with TechNet, it's a program Microsoft offers that contains "Resources and Tools for IT …

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Being a DBA and data professional doesn't mean I always work with SQL Server – sometimes I'm not working with databases at all. We've recently acquired some new storage at work (aka Daddy Warbucks bought us a new SAN) and I've been charged with moving things to it. Some aspects of this are easier than others and there …

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If you've been following my blog, you'll know that I've written quite a few posts about the wonders of cloud backups and why you should be doing them to protect your precious data and memories. This doesn't just apply to personal computer use – businesses should be taking advantage of offsite backups as well. Large …

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After working with data day-in and day-out for a while, it doesn't seem unreasonable that thinking about the domain and appropriate datatype for storing a set of data would become second-nature. I know it's that way for me. Sadly, I can't say the same for one of the banks I do business with, which shall remain …

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Take a moment to think about the really important passwords you use – maybe for your computer at work, email, financial information, or even the 'sa' account on SQL Server. How many characters long are they? Are they really all that difficult? Are they: Dictionary words? Words with a few numbers or symbols substituted …

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Note Picasa Web Albums no longer exists, as that offering has been replaced by Google Photos. I'm leaving this post up for posterity and to show what Picasa Web Albums were like, as well as my opinion of them at that time. This is the fourth post in my series on cloud backup solutions. Previous posts were: Disaster …

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Note Jungle Disk no longer exists, and is now known as Cyber Fortress. I'm leaving this post up for posterity and to show what Jungle Disk was like, as well as my opinion of it at that time. This is the third post in my series on cloud backup solutions. Previous posts were: Disaster Recovery Strategies for the Home A …

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Note MozyHome no longer exists. I'm leaving this post up for posterity and to show what it was like, as well as my opinion of it at that time. In a previous post, I talked about disaster recovery strategies for the home and promised reviews on the services I use. Today I'll take a look at Mozy. I've been a satisfied …

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I think all of us who sit in front of a computer for a living have a few free programs that we're particularly fond of. Here's what I'm liking as of late. Notepad++ My favorite general-purpose text editor. Along with pretty much anything else, I find myself writing a lot of T-SQL code in here and then copying/pasting …

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