"Did You Read It" for February, 2012

This blog post mentions some of the most interesting articles that I have read recently, with a little bit of my commentary on each article.

This more-or-less monthly posting is a little light on content this month since my spare time has been occupied with SQL 2012, Windows 8 (client and server), openfiler (after an unfortunate experience with FreeNAS), VMWare ESXi, PowerCLI and my new (to me) dual socket, dual core Xeon 5150 workstation. Now, I just need the cost of hard disks to get back to where it was a year ago.

 

(As an aside, you need to patch ESXi 5 in order to get Windows 8 to install directly as an ESXi guest and boot properly. I would hold this against ESX if Windows 8 would have installed and booted as a VHD on my trusty Windows 7 laptop. That doesn work either. Since I needed to learn how to patch my standalone ESXi host anyway, having to download and install the patch could be seen as a postive thing.)

 

Generally speaking, I'm very impressed with ESXi. I am not impressed with Windows 8.

I had intended to go to the SQL 2012 Roadshow at Microsoft in Malvern, PA last week but I woke up with a fever at 2 am on the day of the event, so it didn't happen. I am signed up for the online "Launch Event" that occurs on Wednesday the 7th. I haven't done anything quite like this online and it seems like an all-day thing, so I'm not sure how it will play out.

 

I read this article about XEvents profiling versus "old school" profiling. It's always good to have numbers, even if YMMV. It helps to keep the marketing people honest, if nothing else.

 

I noticed this article on PowerShell and Active Directory. I am not an AD guy and I haven't actually watched the demo, but anything that helps get PowerShell into people's heads is a good thing. IMO. (I've been using PowerShell since before the 1.0 RTM and I think that PowerShell (and OneNote) are the most underrated things made by Microsoft.)

I read this article on Nosql versus more traditional thinking. As always, hard problems are hard. When technology makes those hard problems easy, we will invent new hard problems to deal with.