Content Database Storage Provisioning for SharePoint – where’s my SQL DBA?!?!

May 4, 2011

So, you are a SharePoint Admin….

You want to create a new content Database …
It will be very large….you want it on seperate storage…

What do you need to do to achieve this?
Well, from Central Admin/Stsadm/PowerShell….

…you cannot specify which storage SQL will create the content database on (it will use the SQL instance defauts for Data and Log files)….
…you cannot specify the inital size of the content database…
…you need to find your SQL DBA….
…and your storage admin….who needs to arrange a time to create and unmask the storage….

…ever try building a house and installing a kitchen?  You need the kitchen guy, the plumber and electrician….

Well, not any more.    Our microsoft platform-focused development teams in EMC have listened and are working diligently on creating integrated, lightweight tools to help…

Announcing….. the EMC Storage Integrator Tool ….as part of a bigger Microsoft management release from EMC – life just got easier for us…

EMC Enhances Management of Virtualized Microsoft Applications

I cant say much more at this point, but I will have answers, details and demos hopefully next week….


Its been a while….

May 4, 2011

Hello folks,

It’s been a while since we last spoke but I return after spending the latter half on an exciting project as EMC’s architect of the EMC Data Computing Appliance, working closely with Greenplum’s platform team in understanding what the best balanced Data Warehousing solution should consist of in terms of compute, storage and network.

http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2010/20101013-01.htm

http://www.emc.com/campaign/global/greenplumdca/index.htm

My design did well and beat Exadata v2 in the mainstream metrics with massive scale-out ability.  22GByte/sec read bandwidth without tweaking was great to achieve.

It was an interesting exercise, working with vendors such as Brocade engineering in getting the best from all hardware.  I burn my summer on it, but I absolutely loved it.  Linux, an MPP database architecture and DW-style database architecture was a wild difference to what I do day-to-day in Microsoft land, but it wasnt hard once one has the interest to do it – and boy, was I interested in being involved in such a project, leading a supreme engineering team out of Cork to pull off a major project in a minor number of months. 

But, I’m back and am working with our Proven Solutions teams in creating real (not suggested servings) solutions for real customers on Microsoft platforms, being SQL and SharePoint centric.  VNX came out, FASTVP on Symmetrix came out, Proven Solutions teams working their socks off in generating serious whitepapers, solving serious issues – those Whitepapers will be stored in a new page found at the top of the frame, called Documents and Whitepapers.  Feel free to browse.  I will update as interesting whitepapers and solutions and demos appear…

EMC World 2011 and Tech-Ed USA 2011 are coming….back-to-back….Vegas then Atlanta – we’ll be there……

See you there….