Starting today there is a new promotion available if you have Visual Studio Professional without MSDN and want to step up to MSDN.

You can step up to either MSDN Professional or MSDN Premium through this promotion.  Whats the difference?  There are a number of differences as detailed here, but the key one is that with MSDN Pro you get all the Operating Systems for development purposes.  With Premium, you get all Microsoft Server products and Office products.  For full details of the differences, check out the link.

Oh - and happy new year!

I've been waiting for this for a while. If you are looking at a comprehensive BI solution, Microsoft has the answer. 

With the release of Service Pack 2 for Performance Point Server 2007, you can now run Performance Point Server over SQL Server 2008.

From the blurb:

With this new Service Pack, customers will see improved query performance in PerformancePoint Server scorecards, support for SQL Server 2008, increased compatibility with Windows Server 2008, including support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, and more filtering capabilities for PerformancePoint Server dashboards. These enhancements boost the already robust capabilities of PerformancePoint Server 2007, enabling organizations to effectively monitor, analyze, and plan their business.

For more information on Service Pack 2, see Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 on TechNet or Office Online.

In the new year, I'll follow up with some details about Business Intelligence and where PerformancePoint fits into the Microsoft stack.

I've had times before Christmas where the work for the year is mostly done and there is not much left to do.  The office culture changes and becomes more upbeat as people look forward to a quiet break over the Christmas and New Year break.

If this sounds like you, check out these videos.  They are old videos that have been doctored and turned in to SQL Server video's that are quite cheesy.

Still, not a bad way to pass a little time.

There are a couple of promotions out at the moment around Visual Studio 2008.

Two for the price of one

If you purchase Visual Studio Team System 2008 Developer Edition with MSDN Premium, you'll also get download access to Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition.

30% off Upgrade to VSTS Team Edition

This promotion means that essentially you step up for the difference in renewal fee.  If you have Visual Studio Professional with a MSDN Premium subscription you are eligible to receive a 30% discount when you purchase a step up license for VSTS team Edition (that is one of the Development, Test, or Architect Editions).

This promotion will end June 30, 2009.

30% off Upgrade to VSTS Team Suite

If you've got one of the Team Editions already (Developer, Test or Architect) and want to upgrade to the full suite which includes all the tools, you can get a 30% discount when you purchase a step up license for VSTS Team Suite.

This will also expire on June 30, 2009.

If you are considering your Visual Studio options, these are worth knowing about.

Geekzone.co.nz is one of the busiest IT websites in New Zealand, and Mauricio is finalizing the upgrade of SQL Server 2008 (from SQL Server 2005) on a new Windows Server 2008 based Hyper-V server.  Mauricio was happy to do a Q&A with me to cover off why he moved to SQL Server 2008, how he'd deployed his server and approached the migration, and I thought I'd post his responses here.

Features

What are the key benefits you’ve seen for Geekzone by upgrading from SQL Server 2005 to 2008?

Overall performance increase, security and resiliency are the main benefits we’ve noticed since upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

What features of SQL Server 2008 are you taking advantage of?

At the moment we are in the last steps of working in the implementation of a mirroring strategy and improving security by applying encryption to the entire database.

What is your favourite feature of SQL Server 2008?

I really like the database encryption, which is transparent for my application – no code changes are required to take advantage of this feature. And it instantly improves database security with only a few simple steps.

Virtualization

What is the deployment configuration you used for Geekzone?

We have recently received a new HP DL360 G5 server to be used as a host, replacing an aging server. On the old server we had Geekzone running as a single instance with both the database and IIS 7 server in the Windows Server 2008 environment.

We decided to maximise the use of the new hardware by deploying Geekzone as a virtual machine, keeping the number of roles on the host hardware to a minimum – in this case the new server is running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition with the Hyper-V role only.

Even though we deployed the new Geekzone virtual machine with an increased 4GB RAM, we still had enough spare memory on the host to deploy a couple of other servers that much needed a new home.

Why did you choose to virtualize your database server?

The ease of administration, single point for backup, maximum use of the available memory, disk and processor resources all played a role in this decision.

What has the performance of SQL Server been like in a virtual environment?

It exceeded all our expectations. The virtual machine running Geekzone outperforms the dedicated hardware we have used until recently, even though it is sharing the same host with another three servers playing different roles in our organisation.

We current serve about 1.5 million pages a month, plus a much bigger number of RSS feeds, and moving servers allowed us to immediately deploy new services to our users, such a Geekzone to Twitter integration that we had planned for a while.

Migration

What was your migration strategy?

I had a new virtual machine created from scratch that completely replicated the features used on the Geekzone servers, including a copy of the IIS 7 configuration file and database. We had this virtual machine running on a test server in our offices for about three weeks, while the new HP server was being deployed.

Once the new hardware was in place, I used the Lights Out administration module to configure Windows Server 2008 Enterprise edition and load the Hyper-V role.

With all the tests completed I just had to export the virtual machine to an external HDD and ship it to the datacentre. The virtual machine was then copied to the new hardware and imported through the Hyper-V management console.

On the date we had set for the migration it was just the case of briefly stopping the SQL Server at a quiet time of the day, move the files to the virtual machine, swap the IP addresses and let the world connect to the new server. It all took less than five minutes.

Why did you choose this migration strategy?

Even though it involved a brief interruption of the service we thought it would be adequate since our more hardcore users were informed beforehand . The testing period before the deployment gave us time to learn new features of Hyper-V, what we could expect in terms of administration, backup routines, etc.

How did the migration go? What issues did you have to deal with along the way?

The migration happened as planned, on a Tuesday at 2am which is our easiest time of the week. Many of our readers contacted me to comment how much faster they felt Geekzone was in the days after the migration.

Summary

How would you summarize your overall experience with SQL Server 2008?

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 exceeded my expectations when it comes to ease of migration, performance and administration. Although you expect some work to be done when migrating existing databases, the impact of those changes was minimal.

A big thanks to Mauricio for taking the time to answer these questions!

If you have deployed SQL Server 2008 and have a story to share, contact me!

I've had a number of customers asking about the availability of BizTalk 2009 and whether they can get on the tap program, and unfortunately the answer has been no.

However, today we have opened up a general beta of BizTalk Server 2009.  Download the beta from the connect site.  Customers and partners are encouraged to begin developing and testing solutions on this feature complete beta, and to provide feedback for the final release due in the first half of 2009.

In addition, today we are also making available some updated Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) guidance and making available the BizTalk RFID Module and BizTalk Standards Pack.

If you are considering trying out BizTalk 2009, I'm interested in talking to you.  Feel free to contact me and let me know what you are up to.

TPC-E is a database performance benchmark that was ratified about two years ago and first had results posted against it about 18 months ago.  Sure, its the new kid on the block in terms of performance benchmarking, TPC-C has been around for years and it's tried and true.

But TPC-E represents a more realistic benchmark for the average company to implement.  Even IBM agrees that it is a more realistic benchmark than SQL Server.

Charles Levine has recently asked the question (along with Brian Moran from SQL Server Magazine) have asked "Where are IBM, Oracle and Sybase?

I'm not going to comment further save to say that TPC-E seems to be the benchmark to use - so what is holding back the other RDBMS vendors from posting results?

I encourage you to read Brians speculation here, along with Charles's here.  The mystery is intriguing...

Many of you will know that SQL Server 2000 went out of mainstream support in April 2008.  It is now under Extended support, meaning that issues requiring non-security hotfixes will no longer be fixed (there is a 90 day window after mainstream support ends where a special agreement can be puchased to have these fixed - but this has also now expired).

You can still purchase support from Microsoft for issues experienced with SQL Server 2000, however, these are likely to be cost prohibitive. Full details of SQL 2000 support are available from here.

SQL Server 2005 Support

One thing that many people don't realise is that mainstream support for SQL Server 2005 is also just over two years away from expiring (mainstream support is five years from general availability).  This means that if you are considering deploying SQL Server 2005, it is well worth considering 2008 instead.  There is no price difference, the architectural differences are minimal and there are loads of benefits.

Check out the SQL Server 2005 Support lifecycle here.

For more details of the difference between mainstream and extended support see question 3 in this FAQ.