Posts made by PhlipElder

@scottalanmiller said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@phlipelder said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

Hi friends.

I am working on building a new physical server to replace one which is running older versions of Windows and SQL server, plus it is almost out of storage space so this needs to be done sooner than later.

This SQL server is running a 3rd party application and they currently only support up to SQL 2016, so that's what I have to install - not 2017. And it's going to be SQL 2016 Standard Edition running on Windows 2016 Server Standard with 16 cores.

I spent a while researching SQL sever licensing to try and get an idea of how much it's going to cost. I haven't dealt with SQL server licensing yet.

First, I assumed that I would still have to purchase SQL Server 2017 core licenses with downgrade rights. So looking on the SQL Sever Pricing page, it looks as though Standard - per core price is $3,717 (2 pack). So if my server has a total of 16 cores, this is going to cost about $29,736 to cover SQL licensing.

Then I checked over on CDW just to get an idea of prices and things and I had the idea to search "SQL 2016" when I found this: SQL Server 2016 Standard - license - 16 cores - with Server 2016 Standard for like $1,900.

Is this even applicable to what I'm doing or am I missing something? It does say in the technical details "BIOS locked (Lenovo)" but I have no idea what that refers to. But other than that, it looks like it's licensing SQL Server 2016 for 16 cores and bundled with Windows Server 2016. Surly this can't be correct... or is it? If it is actually what I would need to be covered, I would purchase it, of course.

Otherwise, can someone help me get an idea of what I should be paying for SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition for 16 cores if not the cost I initially calculated ($29,736)? And I don't think we'd do the server + cal licensing as we have about 80 users and 100 or more systems which would connect to the SQL server.

Simple rule of thumb to ask your Microsoft licensing rep for the following:
First option is license + CALs that allows internal access only with unlimited instances on the server and unlimited cores:

• SQL Server Standard License
• SQL Server Standard User CALs (80 Users)

Second option is per core with a minimum of 4 to purchase:

• SQL Server Standard Per Core 2-Pack (2x)

In the Per Core scenario we can license for the number of physical cores to use and delimit that in SQL Studio Management. When it comes to audit, a snip of that setting that only allows the four threads should be just fine.

So if you license + CAL, do you have to cover all users AND computers?

If you license by user you cover users. If you license by device you cover devices.

Well what constitutes as a device? I mean, users use a device to connect to the SQL server... so wouldn't I have to cover both? I don't get it.

That is never how Microsoft CALs have worked.

ok, I finally re-read the overview.. makes sense again. We have a pretty even user/device ratio with slight fluctuations in both over time. I suppose we'd just do user CALs..

There is almost no reason for anyone in the normal, day to day, business world to use device CALs.

Agreed, this is super specific niche stuff normally reserved for manufacturing shift work.

We have a few clients that run two or three shifts across one or more facilities. A shared device by two or three peeps per day is about the only time we've ever deployed Device CALs.

@scottalanmiller said in Unable to Connect to Hyper-V 2016 Remotely:

Not sure what fixed it. Found a fresh Windows 10 host. Made sure it was COMPLETELY updated. Installed the Hyper-V Tools fresh. Fixed a DNS entry for the server in question. Turned off the firewall on the Windows 10 client. And then it connected. Not sure which piece was the fix(es).

Watch for an updated version of RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools) as some updates may tweak things that require the RSAT tools to be updated.

@scottalanmiller said in Unable to Connect to Hyper-V 2016 Remotely:

Hyper-V 2016 14393 (Latest Build)

We can reach the server via RDP, but that is all. No cools like vmconnect, WAC, or the Hyper-V manager can talk to the server, so we can't see the consoles of running VMs (or do much of anything.) We can manage the machine via PowerShell, but nothing else.

We get some RPC errors, but we have restarted the RPC service, and we've disabled and re-enabled the Remote Management system in Hyper-V, but to no effect.

Any ideas how to regain access to the box?

Restart-Service "Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management" -Force

@dbeato said in Veeam drops the ball, exposes 440M Customer E-mails:

@phlipelder said in Veeam drops the ball, exposes 440M Customer E-mails:

https://www.veeam.com/executive-blog/veeam-data-incident-resolved.html

I did not see anything about it in our Partner communications until this thread and I sent a quick question to our rep. The above was their reply.

And you didn't get the email?

No. I just went through all of our Veeam correspondence with nothing about it there.

@scottalanmiller said in Online Schools vs Traditional Universities:

@phlipelder said in Online Schools vs Traditional Universities:

I went to a college that was seeking accreditation in their respective field. It's not an easy process and it's not inexpensive. If the authority is legit, here in Canada or the US, then the school has paid * a lot* of money and proven that they have the chops to provide a good education to those obtaining their degree.

Paid a lot of money, yes. Proven that they provide a good education, not a chance. By that logic, all accredited schools provide a good education, yet we know that is the farthest thing from reality. Most of the worst schools are accredited, most that are not end up failing as they don't get grants, scholarships, or recognition. Accreditation truly means nothing, other than they paid to get the stamp of approval from a business selling them (non-profits make money like anyone else.)

Phoenix, WGU, all others of their ilk, all accredited. The incredibly terrible level of education that easily passes accreditation is staggering.

Or to think of it another way...

We only consider schools that are accredited to be colleges. Therefore, if accreditation means something, it means all colleges are good. Which we know can't be true. In reality, most are horrible. Some are good, certainly. But many are bad. If any are bad, that means accreditation isn't the bar making them good.

This is one of the reasons we home school our kids. We can do a much better job at preparing them for life than the public school system can. Then, when it comes time for them to move on to the trades, technical colleges, or university (meh IMNSHO) they'll be able to sift through the chaff and shine on their own merit.

It's really not that much different for anything. I've worked for contractors that went to the "School of Good Enough" and even one that said, "We're like doctors, we bury our mistakes".

When I was in the trades working my way towards a journeyman's ticket as a mechanic with a focus on high-performance it was the same. It wasn't hard to tell who was who and what they were about.

I know of no industry, both worked in or been a part of in some way shape or form, that does not have their share of "Good Enough-ers".

But, boy oh boy, when I come across someone that shines, puts in the 115%, and makes it known that they are truly putting it in by the work they are doing I will go out of my way to compliment them.

Most of us that put in the 115% don't hear that kind of feedback very often.

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@phlipelder said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

Hi friends.

I am working on building a new physical server to replace one which is running older versions of Windows and SQL server, plus it is almost out of storage space so this needs to be done sooner than later.

This SQL server is running a 3rd party application and they currently only support up to SQL 2016, so that's what I have to install - not 2017. And it's going to be SQL 2016 Standard Edition running on Windows 2016 Server Standard with 16 cores.

I spent a while researching SQL sever licensing to try and get an idea of how much it's going to cost. I haven't dealt with SQL server licensing yet.

First, I assumed that I would still have to purchase SQL Server 2017 core licenses with downgrade rights. So looking on the SQL Sever Pricing page, it looks as though Standard - per core price is $3,717 (2 pack). So if my server has a total of 16 cores, this is going to cost about $29,736 to cover SQL licensing.

Then I checked over on CDW just to get an idea of prices and things and I had the idea to search "SQL 2016" when I found this: SQL Server 2016 Standard - license - 16 cores - with Server 2016 Standard for like $1,900.

Is this even applicable to what I'm doing or am I missing something? It does say in the technical details "BIOS locked (Lenovo)" but I have no idea what that refers to. But other than that, it looks like it's licensing SQL Server 2016 for 16 cores and bundled with Windows Server 2016. Surly this can't be correct... or is it? If it is actually what I would need to be covered, I would purchase it, of course.

Otherwise, can someone help me get an idea of what I should be paying for SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition for 16 cores if not the cost I initially calculated ($29,736)? And I don't think we'd do the server + cal licensing as we have about 80 users and 100 or more systems which would connect to the SQL server.

Simple rule of thumb to ask your Microsoft licensing rep for the following:
First option is license + CALs that allows internal access only with unlimited instances on the server and unlimited cores:

• SQL Server Standard License
• SQL Server Standard User CALs (80 Users)

Second option is per core with a minimum of 4 to purchase:

• SQL Server Standard Per Core 2-Pack (2x)

In the Per Core scenario we can license for the number of physical cores to use and delimit that in SQL Studio Management. When it comes to audit, a snip of that setting that only allows the four threads should be just fine.

I did not realize that the license + CAL route allowed unlimited instances and/or cores. And we actually have a few other SQL Server 2008 R2 servers that need to be refreshed soon (a few are virtual and two are physical).

I could check with my Microsoft partner, who is actually also our Dell VAR... so I'm probably in need of finding a separate person who is solely a MS Partner and not a salesman.. unless I mean something other than partner.

A SQL Server License covers installation on a given physical server or guest.

This is a good place to start: http://mla.microsoft.com/

Run through Open with no SA to get a base cost for both options.

https://www.veeam.com/executive-blog/veeam-data-incident-resolved.html

I did not see anything about it in our Partner communications until this thread and I sent a quick question to our rep. The above was their reply.

@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):

Hi friends.

I am working on building a new physical server to replace one which is running older versions of Windows and SQL server, plus it is almost out of storage space so this needs to be done sooner than later.

This SQL server is running a 3rd party application and they currently only support up to SQL 2016, so that's what I have to install - not 2017. And it's going to be SQL 2016 Standard Edition running on Windows 2016 Server Standard with 16 cores.

I spent a while researching SQL sever licensing to try and get an idea of how much it's going to cost. I haven't dealt with SQL server licensing yet.

First, I assumed that I would still have to purchase SQL Server 2017 core licenses with downgrade rights. So looking on the SQL Sever Pricing page, it looks as though Standard - per core price is $3,717 (2 pack). So if my server has a total of 16 cores, this is going to cost about $29,736 to cover SQL licensing.

Then I checked over on CDW just to get an idea of prices and things and I had the idea to search "SQL 2016" when I found this: SQL Server 2016 Standard - license - 16 cores - with Server 2016 Standard for like $1,900.

Is this even applicable to what I'm doing or am I missing something? It does say in the technical details "BIOS locked (Lenovo)" but I have no idea what that refers to. But other than that, it looks like it's licensing SQL Server 2016 for 16 cores and bundled with Windows Server 2016. Surly this can't be correct... or is it? If it is actually what I would need to be covered, I would purchase it, of course.

Otherwise, can someone help me get an idea of what I should be paying for SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition for 16 cores if not the cost I initially calculated ($29,736)? And I don't think we'd do the server + cal licensing as we have about 80 users and 100 or more systems which would connect to the SQL server.

Simple rule of thumb to ask your Microsoft licensing rep for the following:
First option is license + CALs that allows internal access only with unlimited instances on the server and unlimited cores:

• SQL Server Standard License
• SQL Server Standard User CALs (80 Users)

Second option is per core with a minimum of 4 to purchase:

• SQL Server Standard Per Core 2-Pack (2x)

In the Per Core scenario we can license for the number of physical cores to use and delimit that in SQL Studio Management. When it comes to audit, a snip of that setting that only allows the four threads should be just fine.

@irj said in Microsoft Ignite 2018:

What workshops are you guys attending?

If you haven't booked your workshops yet, you better do it now as they are filling up fast!

Booked in to all things Windows Server 2019 with a focus on Hyper-Converged and Remote Desktop Services since we build farms.

@scottalanmiller said in Online Schools vs Traditional Universities:

@phlipelder said in Online Schools vs Traditional Universities:

The principle question to ask is: Does the online degree provider have accreditation with the granting authorities in your jurisdiction?

I don't think that that is true. All discussions around this topic are using the term "college" to mean "fully accredited regionally educational institution". That the "online schools" considered to have no merit are fully accredited just like Harvard and Yale is the base assumption that we just don't normally state explicitly. If they lack that, we don't consider them colleges at all.

WGU, Phoenix, etc. are fully accredited. Accreditation is a bar so low that it's considered a worthless standard that only exists to legally meet the qualifications of being a school so that you can put on public record that you have a degree. Anything less, and you aren't always allowed to claim legally to have been to college. Any school that touts this low bar as an achievement itself is a sign that the school is worthless.

I went to a college that was seeking accreditation in their respective field. It's not an easy process and it's not inexpensive. If the authority is legit, here in Canada or the US, then the school has paid * a lot* of money and proven that they have the chops to provide a good education to those obtaining their degree.

@pete-s said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@phlipelder I don't understand why we keep talking about SAS/SATA SSDs and RAID performance when it's a dead technology, suitable for legacy applications only?

NVMe drives are many hundreds of percent faster, have much higher IOPS, lower latency and the software stack is much more optimized.

NVMe is nowhere near as mature a technology as SAS is. The resilience that's built-in to SAS is just not there yet with NVMe. That's why Hyper-Converged is such a big thing.

Local attached storage, such as NVMe, shared out across nodes with resilience built-in at the node local storage level and up.

@jmoore said in Interviewing Candidates for a Jr. IT Systems Administrator Position- Good Questions to Ask?:

@phlipelder i was confused too. i thought you did not like people that used/wrote scripts for automating tasks.

There's a big difference between one who writes the scripts and one who runs them without digging in to the how/why/where/when/what of them.

@wrx7m said in Interviewing Candidates for a Jr. IT Systems Administrator Position- Good Questions to Ask?:

@phlipelder Ahh. I haven't worked at a place large enough to have such a tool LOL

A PSA setup is big with Managed Services Providers (MSPs).

@momurda said in Interviewing Candidates for a Jr. IT Systems Administrator Position- Good Questions to Ask?:

@phlipelder said in Interviewing Candidates for a Jr. IT Systems Administrator Position- Good Questions to Ask?:

In candidates watch out for this one that they may ask: "What PSA do you use?"

We avoid script jockeys at all costs.

What is PSA in this context?

Professional Services Automation software. It allows a support person to ask questions and follow a queue path through to an answer as one aspect.

In candidates watch out for this one that they may ask: "What PSA do you use?"

We avoid script jockeys at all costs.

Some questions around their experience in the industry, what they are passionate about in tech, and whether they have a home, existing employer, or cloud based lab and what they do with it.

It's not hard to pick out the folks that are really interested in what they are doing based on the above.

Hmm.. I usually leave the defaults on that sort of thing until I know more about the technology. Is 64K usually the default?

No. When we deploy, note that we deploy on Storage Spaces, we make sure the stack from the platters/SSD up to the OS are configured with 64KB block sizes for database driven systems. There are exceptions to the rule such as highly active IOPS setups with smaller write sizes that could push that stack to 32KB to get more IOPS out.

For setups that require fairly mundane day to day file work 128KB or 256KB (the usual default) are okay.

For archival storage or storage that hosts something like 4K video files then we'd push out to 512KB or 1024KB depending on the network fabric.

@irj said in Online Schools vs Traditional Universities:

I got into a discussion with a bunch of co-workers about online schools such as IAU or Western Governor's University vs traditional schools such as UF, WVU, etc.

A co-worker was saying that his university degree was not any more valuable to a potential employer than say University of Phoenix degree. It is essentially just a checkbox once you get experience. There was input from people with online degrees saying they were good enough, and then there is me with no degree whatsoever. We all ended up in essentially the same place, but I guess I am surprised that University degrees from decent schools dont carry any more weight than University of Phoenix...

Thoughts?

The principle question to ask is: Does the online degree provider have accreditation with the granting authorities in your jurisdiction?

We home school our kids. So, besides the "classroom" time as they get older they are getting more and more online courses to supplement what we are doing. So, we're familiar firsthand with online course legitimacy.

If we were looking at candidates that indicate a degree or college certification we'd definitely check to see if the org is accredited if we were not familiar with it.

But, there's always the simple question: What PoSh would I used to do X and Y?

@dave247 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@scottalanmiller said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@dave247 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@dustinb3403 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

OBR5 is the standard if you are going to be using an SSD

Are there any good sources that express that as best practice? I'm looking for myself now too and by the way....

There can never be a best practice of this sort. It's standard practice to start with RAID 5 for SSD due to the risk types and levels, but not on HDs for the same reason. RAID 10 tends to saturate RAID controllers with SSD, but not with HDs.

As with all RAID, it comes down to price / risk / performance. And for most deployments, RAID 5 gives the best blend with SSDs; and RAID 10 gives the best blend for HDs. But in both cases, RAID 6 is the second most popular choice, and RAID 10 is an option with SSDs.

With SSDs, you rarely do RAID 10. If you really need the speed, you tend to do RAID 1 with giant NVMe cards instead.

Yeah, sorry, I guess I shouldn't have said "best practice". I was more or less looking for some information that would help validate what Dustin said. I wanted to look into it more and educate myself as much as possible.

Well I think if I am able to go with the SSD drives, I will do a RAID 6. I am creating a few different server builds as options that display different levels of performance and cost.

Speaking of my RAID card, I am looking at the H740P which has 8GB of NV cache memory and flash backed cache. I still need to educate myself on this stuff as well because I'm not sure if this is overkill or not. My other option was the H330, which has none of that.

EDIT: Nevermind on the H330 doesn't offer RIAD 6 as an option.

NV Cache is important. Having battery backed cache means there's a maintenance item in the batteries. They wear out or outright die at some point thus impacting performance because the RAID engine will flip over to Write-Through when they disappear. Performance pain would be noticeable on rust maybe not so much on SSD depending on throughput needs.

With today's RAID engines being dual or more processors having more cache RAM is a good thing. More than 4GB of cache RAM? It depends on what the setup will be and what advanced features would be utilized such as SSD Cache add-ons if using a combination of SSD and rust.

Since this setup will be SQL I suggest running a Telegraf/InfluxDB/Grafana setup to baseline the current SQL server's usage patterns. That would give a really good big picture and close-up view to work from and extrapolate future performance needs as things grow.

Suffice it to say, we'd run with maximum count smaller capacity SAS SSDs in RAID 6 with a 2GB minimum NVRAM RAID controller. That should yield at least 15K IOPS per disk and more than enough MiB/Second throughput.

Suggestion: Make sure the entire storage stack is set up at 64KB block sizes to maximize the balance between IOPS and throughput.

Semi-On Topic: BackBlaze publishes their reliability rate for the tens of thousands of drives in their fleet.

https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html

EDIT: Which is contrary to drive manufacturer's publishing ban on said statistics AFAIR.

We have a set of Group Policy Objects that are set up at the domain level with WMI filters in place for two of the three.
The first has all of the key settings for updates that are shared across the board.
The second using a WMI filter to point only to desktop operating systems with the necessary settings in place for all desktop OS versions that we manage.
The third is for server operating systems only. It delimits to download but not update automatically along with a few other settings.

We've been using this setup since I can remember and not once have we hit servers auto-installing and rebooting. It's too risky for that to happen.