Sound familiar?

“The SQL Server was performing great yesterday and all of a sudden today the performance is terrible.”

Foglight Performance Analysis has a very powerful feature that allows you compare two different properties of your SQL Server workload.  This scenarios could be:

• Comparing the performance of a database over two different time ranges. 
• Comparing the performance of a single stored procedure over two different time ranges.
• Comparing the performance of database A to database B over the same time range.
• etc…

Take a look at this short tutorial and see how the feature could help you in your environment!  Any questions, feel free to comment.

If you’ve ever been affected by a virus definition file update that’s flagged an app or a file that you use as a problem, you know how frustrating it can be.  If you haven’t, consider yourself fortunate.  There has just been a virus file definition update that has flagged some code used by our products as problematic.  RSRunner.exe is a file used by our Performance Analysis products, and is a Delphi executable we use to schedule and generate reports.  The file has been used by the client application for over 5 years without issue, but – perhaps because the name is similar to a Trojan called SRunner.exe – the file is being quarantined in some environments.  A similar issue exists with a DLL used by our SQL Optimizer product called synm.dll. We will have a comprehensive statement on this on Monday, once our development teams have completely reviewed the executable and have prepared a full writeup.

Of course you do. You’re a geek, and geeks love toys.

Ceci n'est pas une Kindle

As a vendor, it can be hard for us to get your attention.  If we want to deliver a message to you about our company and our products, we have to pay you back somehow.  We have a few choices:

• We can attach our message to something – like buying ads alongside content that you’re already reading like SQL Server Magazine.  This used to be the biggest way vendors got a message out.
• We can make the message itself useful to you somehow – like our wiki and blogs at SQLServerPedia.  You probably read those, and hopefully they make you associate Quest Software with quality and SQL Server expertise.
• We can pay you for your attention – by baiting you with stuff like shirts, posters, and Kindles.  If you’ve ever sat through a vendor presentation for the chance to win something, the vendor was paying you for your attention.

Let’s focus on that last one.  How much does a vendor have to give you to get your complete attention?  In the case of executives like CIOs, it’s a heck of a lot.  Vendors can’t just send a t-shirt to a CIO and get them to sit through a half hour demo.  CIOs make enough money that t-shirts aren’t a big motivator.

For that matter, DBAs even make enough money that t-shirts are less of a motivator these days.  In order to make shirts a successful giveaway, we’re constantly working on different shirts.  SQLServerPedia’s shirts for 2009 included Twitter quotes on the back and promoted Twitter almost as much as they did SQLServerPedia, but it paid off.  Twitter is seen as something hip and cool and new, and people clamored for these t-shirts.  That was a successful giveaway.

But back to our CIOs.  If we want to get their attention for half an hour – heck, even for half a minute – how do we do it?  Well, last year we tried a Kindle promotion.  We sent life-sized Kindle mockups made of plastic to CIOs in packages that looked like real Kindles.  When you get one of these in the mail, it’s pretty exciting – it feels like you’re holding a real Kindle.  The message on the “screen” said:

“How do you do more with less in IT?  Let us give you our read on it. Get a free Kindle2 when you meet with a Quest Expert.”

It worked great!  The placebo Kindle captured the attention of CIOs long enough to get them to read it, and the promise of a real Kindle got them to call us.

We can’t afford to do that kind of promotion for everybody (sorry, DBAs) but we CAN do drawings for Kindles.  Whenever we get a dozen or more people together, we can either give everybody something like a shirt or a USB key, or we can do a drawing for a single high-value prize like a Kindle.  On my own blog, I asked what DBAs wanted to win, and we’ve taken that feedback into account on our future giveaways.

We’re getting ready to do a round of testing of some of our software in combination with popular filter drivers, and I want your help.  If there’s any filter drivers or file drivers you run on your SQL Servers, we want to focus extra testing time on those.

You can help by filling out a one-question survey.  Thanks for your time!

The latest release of Foglight Performance Analysis for SQL Server is live on quest.com.  The new release adds support for Windows 7, and makes certain actions available by default, among other usability and performance enhancements.  For those of you who already know and use Performance Analysis, you can now easily right-click on any tabular metric display to “Select Metrics” in order to customize the list of metrics you see, and in the History view, the historical data resolution selector is on by default.  Sometimes the little things can make all the difference…and from the feedback you’ve been giving us, these are two things that should make quite a difference in the way you use Performance Analysis. 

Keep the feedback coming!  If you have any comments on Performance Analysis, don’t hesistate to provide it to your sales representative, or to participate in a conversation in the forums on sqlserver.quest.com.

Say 'hello' to my little friend!

We’re very excited to introduce a new addition to LiteSpeed brand – we’ve released LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server, which is now available with LiteSpeed for SQL Server Enterprise.  Let’s nail some questions that you may be having:

• What is LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server?  It’s a very light weight, drop and go compression and encryption ‘engine’ for SQL Server.

• Why is that important?  By offering LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server, customers who already have a backup and recovery strategy in place using their own scripts and processes can now get the compression and encryption that is offered by LiteSpeed – without changing their current backup processes.

• What’s the difference between LiteSpeed Engine and LiteSpeed Enterprise?  LiteSpeed for SQL Server Enterprise offers the full monty – a very comprehensive backup and recovery solution that provides not just compression and encryption, but also Maintenance Plan management, Object level recovery, Fast Compression, etc.  Now, LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server, as stated in the previous bullet, simply offers the compression and encryption capabilities of LiteSpeed which fits into an already established backup and recovery process.

• Can you give a brief usecase for this?  LiteSpeed Engine provides much more flexibility and choice to you as to how to deploy LiteSpeed.  For example, on your ‘mission/business critical’ systems, the full implementation of a backup and recovery strategy offered by LiteSpeed Enterprise will be very valuable.  On those less critical systems, or pre-production environments, or those databases that already have a backup and recovery plan in place, LiteSpeed Engine will be the missing piece that gives compression and encryption.

• How do I get LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server?  Currently, LiteSpeed Engine is available to evaluate by downloading from our LiteSpeed for SQL Server page on Quest.com.  Take a look – we’d love your feedback.

• Is there any other resource where we can see how LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server will work?  Yes!  We have a brief video that provides an overview of LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server and how to configure.

We’re really excited about our introduction of LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server and are confident that the flexibility now available in how you decide LiteSpeed fits into your backup and recovery strategy will blow you away.