RDA Blogs - Business Intelligence and SQL Server: Virtual PC Tips - Using SYSPREP

 

Virtual PC Tips - Using SYSPREP

Virtual PC is useful for creating development and test environments where a number of server products are required. Take for instance setting up a development environment for a BI engagement. You may need SQL Server 2005, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, MOSS and possibly even Performance Point. If your development environment consists of a single laptop, Virtual PC is something you want to check out. As an aside you can get decent performance when running 2-3 Virtual PCs with 4 GB of RAM.
Microsoft has a tool called SYSPREP which you can use to clone an existing VHD file that you've prepared. This allows you to create a Virtual PC image that you can make a copy of and use. SYSPREP can take care of generating a computer name and a unique SID so that you won't "collide" with existing Virtual PC images.
I'll provide an example of using SYSPREP with a Windows 2003 Server Virtual PC Image. Open the Deploy.cab file on the Windows 2003 Server CD from the Support\Tools folder (just double click in Windows Explorer). Extract the contents to a folder (e.g. C:\DEPLOY; highlight the files in Deploy.cab, right click, then select Extract). When you are running a Virtual PC image, you can click the CD menu option, select Capture ISO Image, and point to your Windows 2003 Server .iso image file; then use Windows Explorer to access the Deploy.cab file.
Run Setupmgr.EXE (from the folder where you copied the Deploy.cab contents) to create an "answer" file; you'll proceed through a series of dialogs that record your answers to certain configuration questions to be answered when you launch a VPC that you created by copying a sysprepped VHD file. The dialogs are pretty self-explanatory; make sure to select Sysprep Setup on the Type of Setup screen.
After running Setupmgr.EXE your Virutal PC will shutdown. At this point delete the .VMC file and save the .VHD file. You will no longer launch the Virtual PC image; when you want a new Virtual PC you create a new virtual machine and use a copy of the .VHD file. The first time you launch a new Virtual PC image, SYSPREP will do it's magic and you'll have a working VPC image.

RDA Blogs - Business Intelligence and SQL Server: Virtual PC Tips - Using SYSPREP

Andrew Fryer's Blog – Report Designer back in SQL 2008?

A really cool tool out of MS SQL 2008 that didn’t get released is Report Designer, even with some of the Analysis Services limitations it has.  Even though it isn’t released yet, you can still get it.

The good news is that you can now download the RC1 version here.  The really good news is that it has got some wizards and loads of other stuff in it to make using it a lot more friendly.  It’s also a standalone .msi which you can then deploy to your users as needed, although I believe it will eventually be a click once application like Report Builder v1 in SQL Server 2005.

I will be having a play with over the next few days and I will be sharing that in a future post.

Andrew Fryer's Blog

Partnercasts - BI

 

Expert Recommendations on Positioning & Selling Business Intelligence

The Business Intelligence space offers one of the hottest growth areas for our partners. With Microsoft’s suite of BI offerings, you are equipped to make the most of this opportunity. Join Joanne Pinter, Senior Marketing Manager for partner Readiness, Business Intelligence and Guy Weismantel, Marketing Director of Business Intelligence as they share recommendations on how to position and successfully sell BI. A must listen for any partner looking to expand their solution base!

WMA | MP3 |
To save to your computer, right click and choose 'save target as…'.

Partnercasts

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – Learning Portal – Second Shot offer

 

Free e-book offer: Get a free offer of excerpts from Introducing SQL Server 2008 by Peter DeBetta.

E-learning offers:

Collection 6187: What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (includes three free clinics)

Clinic 6258 AE: New Features of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

Get a free second chance to take your certification exam if you do not pass it the first time

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – Learning Portal

Comparison of SQL 2008 vs Oracle

Comparison of SQL 2008 vs Oracle

http://neilwood.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/sql-server-2008-versus-oracle-11g/

Download details: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Advisor

 

Brief Description

Download the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Advisor. Upgrade Advisor analyzes instances of SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 to help you prepare for upgrades to SQL Server 2008.

Download details: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Advisor

Be_Lead Blog : MSDN Forums Offline Reader now available! (CTP)

I have been looking for something like this since Microsoft moved off the newsgroup model.  Web-based forum browsing is painful.

Unfortunately it's just that - a reader.  No write capabilities?  The source code is available - should not be too hard to add a post link to open in a web browser. 

Yes, after many months of discussions, testing and so on, the Team with which I had the pleasure to interact with during my internship in Seattle has finally released the MSDN Forum Client (July 08 CTP) !

Be_Lead Blog : MSDN Forums Offline Reader now available! (CTP)

Speed up Web Services with the SoapDocumentMethod Attribute – Asynchronous SOAP calls

 

Here is how to do it:
[WebMethod, SoapDocumentMethod(OneWay = true)]
public void LogError(string errorMessage)
{
  DoSlowOperation(errorMessage);
}

Speed up Web Services with the SoapDocumentMethod Attribute

Andrew Fryer's Blog – SQL Server 2008 released

Probably without as much fanfare or 1st-day box-office revenue as The Dark Night, SQL Server 2008 launched today.

I hope you are sitting down, and don’t have a coffee in your hand when you read this, but SQL Server 2008 released at 17:00 GMT today!

Andrew Fryer's Blog

The launch event in Toronto actually happened prematurely in February.

Don’t expect to see it in your nearest Best Buy until they print off some CDs and boxes.

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/aaron_bertrand/archive/2008/08/06/sql-server-2008-has-rtm-d.aspx

Aaron Bertrand – VIP (Very Important Patch)

 

Very important SQL Server update

There is a patch available for four elevation of privilege vulnerabilities recently discovered in SQL Server.
From http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-Jul.mspx:
This security update resolves four privately disclosed vulnerabilities. The more serious of the vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to run code and to take complete control of an affected system. An authenticated attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full administrative rights.
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer can detect whether your computer system requires this update. The update may require a restart.
Get the update here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-040.mspx

Aaron Bertrand

SQL Server 2008 SSIS Cribsheet

Great intro to the new features in SSIS 2008.

Key takeaways:

• c#/web services within scripts
• better performance and caching
• Data Profiling
• Intelligent mapping of data types

Things I don’t get:

“The biggest advantage to this change is that you can have BIDS 2005 and BIDS 2008 installed on the same machine”

Doesn’t seem like an advantage to me to have more disk space used up, instead of a backwards-compatible development environment.

Here’s a link to the article.

SSIS 2008 Crib sheet

For things you need to know rather than the things you want to know

SQL Server 2008 SSIS Cribsheet

SSAS: Query Performance Tuning Whitepaper

 

For those of you with the assembly from the Analysis Services Stored Procedure project installed you can go one step further and use the following.

CALL ASSP.ClearCache("Adventure Works")
GO
SELECT {} ON 0
FROM [Adventure Works]

SSAS: Query Performance Tuning Whitepaper

Jesse Orosz: SQL Server Analysis Services Blog

Jesse demonstrates how to overcome the ‘double hop authentication issue’ in Analysis Services.

As you know we have run into a problem with querying Analysis Services from another computer (our desktops for example) after connecting to a secondary server.

After working on this case with MS, we have an understanding of the problem and we have a solution.

The problem is the desktops not requesting Kerberos tickets from the domain controller. This is a bug in Kerberos dll and is fixed with a hotfix by Microsoft.

Solution:

1)     A Kerberos hotfix must be installed in our desktops.

Kerberos Hotfix canbe installed from (hotfix for IA64, x64, Win2003 also exist)

2)     The linked server from secondary server to target server (cubes) must be defined with Fully Qualified domain name.

I would like to specify a couple of more points here, since they are prerequisites for this double hop authentication to work.

1)     We need to define the servers with "Trust this computer for delegation to any service (Kerberos only)" in Active Directory as opposed to “Do not trust this computer for delegation”.

2)     We need to register the OLAP service with SPN as follows for the target server

a.     Setspn.exe -A MSOLAPSvc.3/CUBESSERVER USER\svc_db

b.    Setspn.exe -A MSOLAPSvc.3/CUBESSERVER USER\svc_db

Jesse Orosz: SQL Server Analysis Services Blog