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SQL Server 2008
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On the heels of the Windows Server 2008 announcement, Microsoft also announced an upgrade to their SQL Server product. SQL Server 2008 carries with it some significant improvements in terms of security, continuity, BI, and performance; however, most businesses will not see a compelling reason to upgrade from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008. The more likely scenario is for the companies who are still on SQL Server 2000 to skip SQL Server 2005 and directly upgrade to SQL Server 2008. In this article, I will focus on performance and security improvements introduced in SQL Server 2008.
Performance
One of the more interesting features in SQL Server 2008 is the Resource Governor. You can establish priorities and limits on different types of utilization. For example, you can stop the headache of a certain person running one of those reports that always seems to take the entire system down. SQL Server 2008 will throttle back resources by assigning a lower priority to that type of workload.
Database mirroring performance is also increased in low-bandwidth implementations by introducing log stream compression. If there are efforts underway within your organization to upgrade bandwidth to accommodate database mirroring, SQL Server 2008 is definitely worth a close look at saving those recurring bandwidth costs.
In addition to log stream compression, data compression has been introduced to decrease the size of SQL Fact Tables. Because of compression, there will be an increase in CPU utilization, but overall performance will increase because the number of IOPS (input/output per second) will be greatly reduced.
Security
External Key Management and Transparent Data Encryption make SQL Server 2008 a much more secure environment for businesses with stringent compliance needs. External Key Management allows for more secure authentication directly to the underlying database. Transparent Data Encryption provides data privacy on the disk from unauthorized users. TDE even extends into backups allowing for secure backups and restores.
Also included is built-in auditing that goes beyond the simple logon/logoff events. Auditing can now be done on data through TSQL (be wary of performance hit) per database. Once again, this is extremely helpful for organizations facing a variety of compliance requirements.
SQL Server 2008
If your organization is evaluating a migration to SQL Server 2008, please contact us today for assistance custom-tailored to your environment.
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