SQL Server 2022 introduces a new feature to enable application-consistent snapshot backups. TSQL Snapshot Backups enable the SQL Server to control the database quiesce without external tools. Using TSQL Snapshot backups enables instantaneous restores, independent of the size of data, for a database, group, or server backups, including point-in-time recovery. When you use this feature, it freezes I/O. You’ll see a record like this in your error log when you execute the command ALTER DATABASE TestDB1 SET SUSPEND_FOR_SNAPSHOT_BACKUP = ON.

Welcome back to the third installment of our blog series on using the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2. In this post, we’ll learn how to retrieve performance data from FlashArray and Cloud Block Store. Here, you’ll uncover the intricacies of extracting performance data across several object types, including Volumes and Hosts. We will dig into the object model that exposes crucial performance insights. Moreover, we’ll delve into the realm of performance analysis, addressing common customer questions such as:

Welcome back to the second installment of our series on using the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2. In this post, we’ll dive into working with object data using Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2. When it comes to manipulating data in PowerShell, the ability to effortlessly pipe objects and their associated data between cmdlets is a game-changer. However, when it comes to Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2, there’s an even more efficient way to handle this.

Welcome to our blog series on using the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2. In this series, we will provide you with practical insights and examples on how to harness the power of the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK2 to enhance your storage management capabilities. Throughout this series, we will cover a wide range of topics, including performance data gathering, snapshot management, performance bottleneck identification, and resource management within your FlashArray and Cloud Block Store.

This post shows you how to install containerd as the container runtime in a Kubernetes cluster. I will also cover setting the cgroup driver for containerd to systemd, which is the preferred cgroup driver for Kubernetes. In Kubernetes version 1.20 Docker was deprecated as a container runtime in a Kubernetes cluster and support was removed in 1.22. Kubernetes 1.26 now requires that you use a runtime that conforms with the Container Runtime Interface (CRI).

In this blog post, I will show you how to build a hello world container-based web application in the go programming language. The reason I want to do this is because I need a very small container image to do some testing in Kubernetes. I’ll also highlight some of the pitfalls I ran into to hopefully have you some time in your learnings. Let’s build and test it locally first Before you build a container-based application, you need an application.

My new course “Securing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Clusters”, co-authored with my good friend and colleague Ben E. Weissman, is now available on Pluralsight here! If you want to learn about the course, check out the trailer here, or if you’re going to dive right in, check it out here! This course completes the learning path, Managing and Orchestrating Containers with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), that Ben and I built together.

Introduction Purity is the operating environment that runs Pure Storage products like FlashArray and Cloud Block Store. Starting in Purity 6.0, you can assign tags to objects. This post shows you how to perform some basic tagging operations for volumes. What’s a Tag and Why Do I Care? A tag is a key/value pair that can be attached to an object in FlashArray, like a volume or a snapshot. Using tags enables you to attach additional metadata to objects for classification, sorting, and searching.

Last week I purchased a shiny new MacBook Air with an M2 processor. After I got all the standard stuff up and running, I set out to learn how to run SQL Server containers on this new hardware. This post shows you how to run SQL Server on Apple Silicon using colima. Colima is a container runtime that runs a Linux VM on your Mac. This Linux VM runs using the Virtualization framework hypervisor native in MacOS.

This post introduces you to the Pure Storage FlashArray OpenMetrics Exporter. It shows you how to get started quickly using Docker Compose so you can monitor your Pure Storage FlashArray environment. I implemented this in Docker Compose since that handles all the implementation and configuration steps for you. It specifically configures Prometheus’ data source and a Grafana dashboard for monitoring. Tip: If you’re building a persistent monitoring solution, I suggest using a dedicated Linux server running Docker Engine (Server) for Linux.