14Jan 2009 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

Microsoft Concept Center

Misc
During my recent visit to the Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham, Rich Crane gave me a tour of the facility. It included a room, I think he called the Concept Center. It was a little theatre type of arrangement around a series of work areas or work styles. Microsoft uses the room for demo's that go WAY beyond some silly PowerPoint slide show. Here are a few pictures I took while I was there. [gallery order="DESC" orderby="post_name"]
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14Jan 2009 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Lab at Microsoft

Tools
I got an invite to take part in a lab at the Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham. I took advantage of it. I'll use this post to describe the experience so that anyone else with the opportunity will know what to expect.  [caption id="attachment_333" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="They knew I was coming"] [/caption] First, you recieve a very explicit set of pre-requisites. You need to install the SQL Server Upgrade Assistant, a tool that Microsoft licensed Scalability Experts to create for them. You have to run this against a small database, >25gb. The tool backups up all the databases from the server (so you need to put it on to a test box, rather than try to move an entire production system worth of databases). It then starts a trace that captures all the…
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