Welcome to the January 2014 newsletter from Australia's leading SQL Server Consultants, Trainers and Business Intelligence specialists

The New Year singles change and new beginnings (many evolving resolutions which have already been broken). Well 2014 is no different for WARDY IT Solutions, as we are continuing to expand our practices throughout Australia. We have just moved our Sydney office to Level 5, 95 Pitt Street to accommodate our continued growth.

The New Year and 2014 also signals that SQL Server 2014 should be released sometime later this year. If you are looking to get up to speed with the next release of SQL Server then look no further than WARDY IT Solutions. To assist organisations to start preparing for the next version of SQL Server, WARDY IT Solutions has designed a one hour lunchtime overview to provide a hot-lap of some of the new functionality and benifits that will be available in SQL Server 2014. We are making this free presentation (including a free sandwich platter) available for a limited number of sessions until the 28th of March 2014. To register for this free session onsite at your workplace Contact Us today.

You can keep updated on all the latest WARDY IT Solutions SQL Server news on Facebook & Twitter:

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SQL Saturday Melbourne

PASS SQL Saturday’s are free 1-day training events for SQL Server professionals that focus on local speakers, providing a variety of high-quality technical sessions. For the first time SQL Saturday will be held in Melbourne on Saturday the 5th of April and WARDY IT Solutions are proud to be sponsoring this event. For more details about this event refer to here.

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Hortonworks Data Platform

The Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) 2.0 for Windows is now available. This is the next release of the industry’s only 100% Apache Hadoop-based distribution for Windows. If you want to learn more about Big Data solutions on Windows refer to here.

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High Availability and Disaster Recovery Design Patterns

Microsoft has released a white paper that discusses how to reduce planned and unplanned downtime, maximize application availability and provide data protection using SQL Server 2012. A key goal of this paper is to establish a common context for related discussions between business stakeholders, technical decision makers, system architects, infrastructure engineers, and database administrators. You can find this white paper here.

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SQL Server Backup to Windows Azure Tool

Microsoft SQL Server Backup to Windows Azure Tool enables backup to Windows Azure Blob Storage and encrypts and compresses SQL Server backups stored locally or in the cloud. In conjunction with in-the-box Cloud Backup in SQL Server 2014, Microsoft SQL Server Backup to Windows Azure Tool enables a single cloud backup strategy across all versions of SQL Server. You can download the SQL Server Backup to Windows Azure Tool from here.

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How Durability is Achieved for Memory-Optimized Tables

In-memory OLTP provides full durability for memory-optimized tables. When a transaction that has made changes to memory-optimized table commits, SQL Server, just like it does for disk-based tables, guarantees that the changes are permanent and can survive the database restart provided the underlying storage is available. You can find out more about how this durability works here.

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SCOM Management Pack for SSAS

A management packs for SQL Server Analysis Services 2012 is now available to download. The management pack extends System Centre Operations Manager (SCOM) to include Analysis services monitoring capabilities. This management pack can be downloaded from here.

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SQL Server Healthcheck

Does your SQL Server environment need a Healthcheck? The WARDY IT Solutions SQL Server Healthcheck is designed to review and verify the implementation of common SQL Server Best Practices. Our Database Healthcheck includes all the usage and administration aspects of a SQL Server database, ensuring that your SQL Servers are managed and operated well. Our approach is to analyse the total health of your SQL Server environment and highlight areas of concern, providing recommendations to improve the health and performance of your database environment. For more details on our SQL Server Healthcheck refer here.

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Introducing Windows Azure for IT Professionals

Microsoft has recently released a free ebook – Introducing Windows Azure for IT Professionals. Whether you’re new to the Windows Azure platform or are already using it in your business, this book has something that should interest you. This ebook can be downloaded from here.

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Free Exam Voucher

WARDY IT Solutions provides a bonus for all 5 Day Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) SQL Server training course. When you book any 5 Day MOC training you receive a FREE Prometric Exam Voucher. To take advantage of this offer contact us today.

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SQL Server Virtual DBA

WARDY IT Solutions Virtual DBA service was named one of Australia's 100 most innovative products or services for the third year running in the Anthill Magazine 'SMART 100' Index.

Something you may not know is that our Virtual DBA can be utilised for phone and email support. So, if your organisation just needs someone that they can call on for advice then why not use a Virtual DBA?

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