Ellis - Getting started with SQL server 2014 administration : optimize your database server to be fast, efficient, and highly secure using the brand new features of SQL server 2014

Gethyn Ellis is a SQL Server consultant and trainer with clients in Europe and North America. His client base includes both public and private sector clients that range from large financial firms to departments of the UK government. Specialized in database administration, virtualization, and performance, he has been involved in several large projects that involve migration of large SQL Server estates to the latest version of SQL Server and also migrated that infrastructure to a virtualized platform. He is also an instructor with Learning Tree and teaches several courses on the Learning Tree SQL Server curriculum. You can follow Gethyn's blog at www.gethynellis.com.

I would like to mention a few people here. My Mum, Lynda, and dad, Ron Ellis for encouraging me to write this book. My sister, Katheryn, and brother-in-law, Gareth Lewis, who have just given birth to twin boys. I would also like to mention my niece and two new nephews, Carys Gwen, Iwan, and Efan Lewis. Last but not least, I also wish to mention my two golden retriever dogs, Seth and Jake. While I wrote this book, these two helped me dearly by providing necessary distractions from the writing process by demanding regular long walks.

Brenner Grudka Lira has been a data analyst and DBA at NeuroTech since 2012. He has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a post graduate degree in Project Management, both from the Catholic University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil.

He also has experience in building and modeling data warehouses and has knowledge of SQL Server and MySQL database management. At present, he is dedicated to the study of project management and database tuning.

He has already reviewed the books Microsoft SQL Server Denali Integration Services: An Expert Handbook and Oracle BI Publisher 11g: A Practical Guide to Enterprise Reporting , both published by Packt Publishing .

David Loo is a senior software development professional with over 25 years of experience in both software development and people management. He is respected for his ability to focus teams on service excellence and for designing and implementing practical process improvements and solutions. He is always on the lookout for ways to contribute his knowledge and experience of software development, team building, and developing best practices.

Richard Louie is a Business Intelligence developer at Redwood Trust, a residential and commercial mortgage investment firm. He has extensive experience in Oracle and Microsoft SQL for ETL, SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, and VB.Net. He is an ASQ Green Belt certified professional and is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine, in Information and Computer Science. He has reviewed the book Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development , Packt Publishing .

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Preface

SQL Server releases seem to be coming thick and fast these days. Since SQL Server 2005, there has been a new release nearly every two years. Most of the new features have had a business intelligence focus since SQL Server 2005. There have been some features that the production DBA that looks after transaction systems would have an interest in, such as the AlwaysOn Availability Groups feature introduced with SQL Server 2012. This new release of SQL Server has some great new features that will capture the attention of the database administrator "in the trenches". You will learn how to improve the performance of your transactional databases by utilizing the new In-Memory OLTP features. Cloud has been a buzz word for a quite a long time, and SQL Server 2014 allows closer integration with the cloud using Microsoft Azure. You can create complete virtual machines with SQL Server installed in Microsoft Azure or you can simply store your database files in the Microsoft Azure cloud.