Azure Application Architecture Guide

I came across this useful guide. It presents a structured approach for designing applications on Azure that can scale, are resilient, and highly available. It is based on proven practices that Microsoft have learned from customer engagements.

Interesting blog posts of the last month

These are a few blog posts I read last month which i found quiet interesting.

Azure SQL 

SQL Database Fundamentals

Introducing Batch Mode Adaptive Joins

Calculate your savings with SQL Server 2016

Auto Generate Your Database Documentation

Resource Manager template reference now available

DEA 2.0 Technical preview: Release Overview – Database Experimentation Assistant: Overview

Azure Data Warehouse: Understanding the DWU, workload management, resource and memory allocation

Top 30 SQL Blogs  Websites for Microsoft SQL Server Administrators

Get ready for SQL Server 2017

Microsoft touts SQL Server 2017 as the first RDBMS with built-in AI

NoSQL

AWS Database Migration Service expands into NoSQL migrations with MongoDB & Amazon DynamoDB support

DocumentDB

DocumentDB NoSQL database security

Visualization

How Microsoft uses Power BI to run its growing cloud business

Getting started with R in SQL Server

Configuring R on SQL Server 2016 

Monitor R Services using Custom Reports in Management Studio

Deep Learning

Microsoft Updates its Deep Learning Toolkit  

Graph

Let’s Talk Graph!

The R Graph Gallery's Top 5 Most Visited Graph Themes

GraphConnect Europe! London here I come

Build a recommendation system with the support for graph data in SQL Server 2017 and Azure SQL DB

Data

Dark Data: The hidden billion dollar opportunity

The Data Readiness Strategies of AI start-ups

Book

The Data and Analytics Playbook: Proven Methods for Governed Data and Analytic Quality 1st Edition

Pre-SQLBits - Bristol SQL Server User Group - July Meeting

Monday 14 July saw the Bristol User Group meet with Brent Ozar talking on Are AlwaysOn Availability Groups Right for You? It was amazing that Brent came to share his in depth knowledge on AlwaysOn. He shared the pros and cons of what needs to be considered when creating this type of database architecture solution.

Brent has an amazing set of resources covering AlwaysOn. These are  found
http://www.brentozar.com/sql/sql-server-alwayson-availability-groups/ 

The Microsoft guides I found useful were:-

AlwaysOn Architecture Guide: Building a High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solution by Using AlwaysOn Availability Groups
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj191711.aspx

Microsoft SQL Server AlwaysOn Solutions Guide for High Availability and Disaster Recovery
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff929171.aspx

Comparison of Failover Cluster Instances and Availability Groups
The core concepts between FCIs and Availability Groups are compared in this table taken from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff929171.aspx
 

For more details and caveats see the full article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff929171.aspx

Database Landscape

Came across these excellant 2 diagrams from 2 very interesting blog posts.

“NewSQL-as-a-Service” Cloud Database

This diagram  shows where all the main database engines fit into the wider data management landscape.  Taken from http://xeround.com/blog/2011/04/newsql-cloud-database-as-a-service although the original article NoSQL, NewSQL and Beyond: The answer to SPRAINed relational databases is by Matthew Aslett which is part of the The 451 Group’s new long format report on emerging database alternatives, NoSQL, NewSQL and Beyond.
http://blogs.the451group.com/information_management/2011/04/15/nosql-newsql-and-beyond

Don’t Become a One-trick Architect
This article by Thomas Kejzer gives an historical look at architectures and data http://blog.kejser.org/2011/12/08/dont-become-a-one-trick-architect/#more-377
This is the evolutionary tree of life for data storage engines

Architectural Design issues: Scale Up and Scale Out

Scale up is about vertical scalability. This means increasing the capacity by adding more CPU and memory.

Scale out is about horizontal scalability. This means increasing the number of servers available.

Brent Ozar wrote a couple of really interesting articles

Scaling up or scaling out?
http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2011/02/scaling-up-or-scaling-out/
Scaling up of scaling out? part 2
http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2011/03/scaling-up-or-scaling-out-part-two/

Interesting analogy here
Scale Up or Scale Out your Data Problems? A Space Analogy
http://dennyglee.com/2012/01/24/scale-up-or-scale-out-your-data-problems-a-space-analogy/