Category: Big Data Clusters

Posted on

Big Data Clusters for the Absolute Beginner

I finally presented my first tech at SQL Saturday Sioux Falls and Baton Rouge. I decided to name my session, “Big Data Clusters for the Absolute Beginner” because beginning of 2019 I *was* the absolute beginner (and I’m learning every day!) So in a way, my session is “based on a true story” :) I’m super-excited because I think it’s the future of SQL Server. Big Data Clusters are new and cutting-edge technology.

Continue reading “Big Data Clusters for the Absolute Beginner”

Posted on

Deploy SQL Server Big Data Cluster Using Azure Data Studio Notebook

Yesterday was the release of SQL Server 2019 CTP 3.2. The biggest change in CTP 3.2 is that Big Data Clusters is now in public preview. That means anyone can go download and deploy it. Prior to CTP 3.2, you had to sign up for the “Early Adoption Program”, wait until you received an email with your Docker credentials, etc. With CTP 3.2, Microsoft has actually done away with Docker credentials. You no longer need that to create your Big Data Cluster as the images needed are on Microsoft’s public repo.

Continue reading “Deploy SQL Server Big Data Cluster Using Azure Data Studio Notebook”

Posted on

How to Setup SQL Server Big Data Cluster in Azure (AKS) – Part 4

This is part 4 of the “BDC series.” You can read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here. This blog post will go into the available monitoring tools available to monitor the health of your Big Data Cluster. If you’d like to stay updated, without doing the heavy work, feel free to register for my newsletter. I will email out blog posts of my journey down the wonderful road of BDCs.

[Updated for CTP 3.2] – There are kubectl commands and azdata commands to check the health of your cluster but I will focus on the Kubernetes Dashboard for this series. I will blog about some of the useful kubectl and mssqlctl commands in later posts.

Continue reading “How to Setup SQL Server Big Data Cluster in Azure (AKS) – Part 4”

Posted on

How to Setup SQL Server Big Data Cluster in Azure (AKS) – Part 3

This is part 3 of the “BDC series.” You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. This blog post will go into creating the Big Data Cluster on top of the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster we created in Part 2. If you’d like to stay updated, without doing the heavy work, feel free to register for my newsletter. I will email out blog posts of my journey down the wonderful road of BDCs.

Before I get started I want to say that there are many ways to deploy a Big Data Cluster. There is a “Default configuration” way and a “Custom configuration” way. You can read more about the custom config way here. I will be posting blogs on the other ways to deploy a BDC but for the sake of this series I will be deploying the BDC via the default way. The BDC team at Microsoft is constantly revamping and tweaking the BDC deployment process in order to make it more streamline and easier.

Continue reading “How to Setup SQL Server Big Data Cluster in Azure (AKS) – Part 3”

Posted on

How to Setup SQL Server Big Data Cluster in Azure (AKS) – Part 2

This is part 2 of the “BDC series.” You can read part 1 here. This blog post will go into creating the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster. If you’d like to stay updated, without doing the heavy work, feel free to register for my newsletter. I will email out blog posts of my journey down the wonderful road of BDCs.

Continue reading “How to Setup SQL Server Big Data Cluster in Azure (AKS) – Part 2”

Posted on

How to Setup SQL Server Big Data Cluster in Azure (AKS) – Part 1

If you’d like to stay updated, without doing the heavy work, feel free to register for my newsletter. I will email out blog posts of my journey down the wonderful road of BDCs.

So far, Microsoft does not have a simple way to create a Big Data Cluster. It’s a bit cumbersome of a process and the learning curve is a bit steep. However, Microsoft is currently working on making it easier to deploy a Big Data Cluster via Notebook in Azure Data Studio and eventually some type of “deployment wizard.” But for now, the only option is to do it the long way.

Continue reading “How to Setup SQL Server Big Data Cluster in Azure (AKS) – Part 1”

Posted on

What Are SQL Server Big Data Clusters?

If you’d like to stay updated, without doing the heavy work, feel free to register for my newsletter. I will email out blog posts of my journey down the wonderful road of BDCs.

When I think of SQL Server 2019, I think of BIG DATA CLUSTERS. I remember first hearing the term and immediately thinking, “eh, what does that have to do with a Windows SQL DBA?” But the more I thought about it, the more I fell in love with it. And here’s why:

First: the entire market is shifting more and more towards the cloud. Whether you personally believe it or not, or like it or not, it is happening. In 3-5 years from now, majority of jobs on the market will require some level of cloud knowledge (Azure, AWS, etc.)

Second: over the past few version of SQL Server (2016+) it’s apparent that Microsoft is pushing SQL Server down the path of becoming “OS agnostic.” By that I mean it will no longer matter what the underlying OS is. Windows? Linux? Who cares? SQL Server will run on it all!

Third: Microsoft has a game plan and I want to play a part!

Continue reading “What Are SQL Server Big Data Clusters?”