Allan Hirt, Author at SQLHA

July 1, 2014

Updates – New Website, Where Is the Book?, Blogging, Training, MVP Status, and More

Hello everyone and welcome to the revamped online home for SQLHA. Besides the heavy customer workload, helping to run a company, writing the book (more on that in a bit), trying to eat and sleep every now and then, as well as all of the training/speaking, I’ve spent the past few months working with our website developer on this massive update. If you are wondering why I haven’t blogged since February, it’s because we put a code freeze on anything with the website until it was complete to ease migration. It was not lack of interest on my part – trust me. Now that the site is live, expect more regular updates from me including a review of the Microsoft Surface Pro 3!

In other news, SQLHA will be out and about over the next few months. I’ll be heading over to the UK to speak at SQLBits XII in a few weeks. I’ll be speaking all three days, including delivering a full Training Day (“The A to Z of Availability Groups”). Over the past few months I’ve done some pre-conferences at SQL Saturdays with labs to test the feasibility, but this will be the first major conference I’ll be doing a pre-con where I will also have the labs. It’s bring your own device (BYOD). I’m really excited to get back over for Bits as it’s one of my favorite SQL Server events and I haven’t been in a few years.

Ben will be presenting at IT/Dev Connections in September, and the whole SQLHA team will be attending PASS Summit 2014. I will be delivering a pre-con (“The A to Z of Availability Groups”) on November 4, and both Ben and I will be doing a regular session during Summit. As with Bits, the goal is to have my pre-con have the lab component as well. I’m working closely with PASS to ensure that this happens, but at the scale we need, we need to ensure that the Ts are crossed and Is dotted. Having a lab will change the game at a conference like Summit. I cannot wait. If that wasn’t enough, we’ll once again have The Consultant’s Corner booth along with Denny Cherry & Associates as well as Heraflux. Max will definitely be in there, so remember to say hi to him, too.

This week I was also renewed as a Cluster MVP. I never assume from year to year and it’s always an honor.

Due to popular demand, I have been locking down dates for my 4-day Mission Critical SQL Server class. I’m very humbled people want to take it! Right now there are confirmed dates for Boston (October 20 – 23, 2014), Philadelphia (March 30 – April 2, 2015), and a return to London England (September 28 – October 1, 2015). Other cities are being finalized, and I’m looking at the southern as well as the western United States for now. My goal is to have as many locked in dates well in advance so you can make your training plans for late 2014 and 2015. Also keep in mind that the earlier you register, the cheaper the class is (Boston and Philadelphia have nice discounts at the moment …).

The online plans for SQLHA University are also moving forward, so we’ll have some stuff there, too (won’t spoil all of our plans just yet in that arena, but know that we’re planning some cool stuff if it all works out). That’s my next big thing to tackle once the book is done (outside of any customer work), which brings me to the last order of business: the Mission Critical SQL Server book.

This has been my biggest personal disappointment; I’m not going to lie. I really wanted it to be done and out by now, but given everything on my plate, it just isn’t complete yet. Most of my books have taken anywhere from 6 – 12 months to complete, and this one is appearing to be no different. This one is also larger than nearly every other one, complicating matters. Trust me when I say I want it done arguably more than you guys want it in your hands!

I knew when I started down the self-publishing route there would be bumps in the road. Nearly every one has been eliminated at this point. The biggest problem now is quite literally time. My plan was to have time to complete primary writing of it in May and June, but we have been working on a big customer engagement and that hasn’t left me much time or energy to work on the book. I sleep very little as is. This isn’t an excuse, just reality. Anyone who has ordered the book is also a customer, and I take that very seriously. Things are stabilizing a bit, so the reality of what I’m looking at is to finish writing this summer, have it edited, made pretty, and hopefully out and done well before PASS Summit. Editing and production are unknowns at the time, but fingers crossed it will all go smoothly. Remember I’m also having this reviewed (it’s not just me writing it), so I need to ensure I get at least a few reviews in on each chapter to know I’m not only technically correct, but I haven’t missed anything. There’s a process. I will not put out a crap product, but I also know it needs to get done and in your hands. You paid for it, you deserve it.

I know an apology may not cut it for some of you – and I truly am sorry about this. I know this to be true, but I really am being totally up front here; I have no ulterior motive. If you’ve read my other books, you know what’s coming. If you’ve subscribed to updates, don’t worry. I’ll take care of you. I am a man of my word on this.

There’s also upside to this: SQL Server 2014 content is definitely in now. Maybe not everything, but that’s what the updates will have and once the base is done, I’ll be updating the content hopefully on a pretty regular basis. v1 is always the hard part.

So I’ve been busy … and so has SQLHA! I’m very proud to work with Max and Ben here, and can’t wait to see everyone on the road over the next few months.

February 6, 2014

Farewell, Sony Vaio

Today is a bittersweet day for me. No, it’s not because my class in London is concluding (more on that in an upcoming post). Today, Sony announced that they are selling the Vaio division. While it looks like the company buying it, Japan Industrial Partners Inc., will pick up some of the business and people (I guess somewhat like when IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo), it is the end of an era.

Before you say, “It’s just a PC, Allan,” I have a sentimental relationship with Vaios. I’ve also had a love-hate relationship with owning them, too. The first laptop I truly lusted after was the Vaio TR as well as the still enviable X505 which was thin before thin was even cool. It’s still a wonder to behold. My first Vaio (which I still have) and UMPC was the U70P (see Sony’s old site in Japan here) 10 years ago. It’s still, like the X505, a marvel (I’m using its keyboard with the Tap 11 today). It was certainly ahead of its time and to this day remains one of the favorites of any laptop I have ever owned. Heck, one of my music players – the VGF-AP1L – was Vaio branded. It sounded great and had this cool touch interface, and it had a color screen which was unusual at the time.

Since then I have owned a VGN-SZ90 (which I wrote Pro SQL Server 2005 High Availability on), a VGN-Z90 (the Z that kicked off the modern line) which boasted one of the first proprietary RAIDed SSD configurations, two Gs (my favorite ultraportable PC ever if I was honest with myself), the Vaio Duo 11, a Vaio Pro 13, and finally, the Vaio Tap 11. [As an aside, I love how Sony has maintained all of those old sites …]

The Z90 and the Pro 13 were really the only ones I never bonded with in any way. The Pro 13 I would argue is still one of the best ultrabooks made but I didn’t love the keyboard; as someone who does a lot of writing, that was an issue. Sony unfortunately these past few years couldn’t always deliver the specs I wanted – enter the Panasonics I’ve owned from Japan.

Sure, Sony’s laptops could be expensive (especially if you ordered them from Japan as I often did; the Pro 13 and Tap 11 are from the US, though). They had one thing most PCs did not have: a bit of style. The Japanese models – until recently anyway – had higher specs or different options you couldn’t get outside of Japan … but they offered US keyboards. The U70P, SZ, Z, and Gs were all Japanese. Think about your average ThinkPad – black, square, businesslike – boring. Do they do they job? You bet, but when one wants their laptop to look a bit better, outside of Apple, people thought Sony. In fact if stories are to be believed, Apple wanted Sony to run OS X.

While my daily driver is not the Tap 11 today, I will always have fond memories of some of the marvels Sony produced when it came to laptops. When you see a boring Lenovo, Dell, or HP, remember what Sony once gave us. Sometimes unusual, often flashy, not always practical, but they did some cool stuff. Rest in peace, Sony Vaio.

December 29, 2013

Wherefore Art Thou Mission Critical SQL Server Book?

Hello everyone. As we are closing in on the end of 2013, I wanted to update everyone on the status of my new book Mission Critical SQL Server which you can find all of the information about here. If you haven’t figured it out, the book is not done. My hope was to have everything done by the end of this calendar year (2013). I put this on the order page which I will update in the next few days:

NOTE THAT THIS IS A PREORDER. THE BOOK WILL BE DELIVERED LATER IN ~~2013~~ 2014.

I could sit here and make 1,000,000 excuses like nearly two months straight on the road from mid-October to mid-December (Charlotte for PASS Summit 2013, Australia, Seattle, Washington D.C., and Chicago for example), customer work, and so on, but the reality is that doesn’t matter to you. You want the book especially if you preordered. I truly am sorry it’s not done, but believe me when I say my intentions were paved with gold. The truth is I need to sleep and eat and at times, not think about SQL Server. You may not think so, but I find it incredibly difficult to write when you’ve just spent 8 hours delivering training. My brain needs a break. That said, things are back on track and I’m in the final stages of finishing another chapter which will be uploaded for those who purchased the Alpha content, with many more started or in flux and will be delivered over the next month or two. The book is not dead, it’s very much alive and well.

What I am now shooting for is to be content complete by about mid-February and then things will progress from there. Remember that it’s not just as simple as me writing; I have reviewers and then there’s incorporating comments and editing. Finally, I need to take all of the final raw product and make it pretty (indexing, production ready, etc.). I’m shooting for late Q1 of 2014 as a new target date. It may be slightly later than that but I don’t anticipate it being outside of that scope. I’m gunning hard for it. Self publishing is not easy, folks. The first one is always the learning curve and I’m in the first speedbump phase.

There is some upside to all of this: you’ll get more Windows Server 2012 R2 content and depending on when SQL Server 2014 releases, that will be the first set of updates (assuming you subscribed to them) post-RTM. It feels weird saying RTM in context of a book, but that’s what it is: a milestone.

I also realize that those of you who were early adopters and bought the updates or Alpha content to date may be a bit disappointed. I know that, and for that I apologize. When you see the Alpha content I hope you’ll be pleased. As for those who purchased the updates, don’t worry. I’ll take care of you. You’ll see an e-mail from me soon if you purchased that option.

So that’s the update. Stay tuned, the best is yet to come.

UPDATE 7/2014 – see https://sqlha.com/updates-new-website-where-is-the-book-blogging-training-mvp-status-and-more/

December 16, 2013

Announcing SQLHA University

SQLHA is proud to announce the opening of SQLHA University. SQLHAU is going to be the training wing of SQLHA which will be delivering not only in-person classes such as Allan’s Mission Critical SQL Server one, but online classes and seminars both on-demand and live. Most of our classes, including the online ones, will even have labs that may be available to you not only during the class, but after, too! It’s not just Allan, Ben, and Max – we’ve lined up some of the people you all know and love to work with us under the SQLHA University banner. Both Denny Cherry (blog | Twitter) and Grant Fritchey (blog | Twitter) are already on board and we are already talking with others, too. SQLHAU will be your one-stop shop for some of the best SQL Server training around. Look for online courses starting to roll out during Q1 of 2014.

SQLHA University logo

For more information, see Allan’s blog post which has his thoughts and the back story of how all of this came to be and why this is so different than a lot of other stuff out there (which is all pretty good, too).

December 16, 2013

The SQLHA University Backstory

Hello everyone! Long time no speak. Now that I’m back from Chicago and delivering my last class for the year, I can catch up on quite a bit – including working on the book. I know I’m a little behind on that but I promise it will be done soon. I’ll give more updates on that soon in another blog post; this one is about something completely different.

It’s no secret I do a lot of training and public speaking; I always have. I wanted to get into the online side of things but because my training is not your garden variety stuff, I did not just want to do something quick, down, and dirty only to regret the results later. There is a lot of great SQL Server training out there, and I definitely did not want a “me too” kind of thing, either. The genesis of SQLHA University, also known as SQLHAU, started in the fall of 2012. I had just converted my 3-day Mission Critical SQL Server class to a 4-day with labs. Not just any labs, mind you – I went for broke and did something stupid. I crafted it so that one of the labs (the one for clustered instances of SQL Server) had three different levels – Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Everyone I’ve talked to over the past year has said to me I’m crazy for doing it, but think it’s cool.

Why did I put all of that extra work on myself? Well, if you’ve ever taken some classes there is just one lab for everyone. Yet within one class, everyone is at a different spot. Advanced users may be bored, and newbies overwhelmed. So I came up with a way to get students to the same point but taking different paths. I’m really proud of that work. The problem, however, is that it depended on physical hardware. That has been the crux of my pain for the past year – everywhere I’d deliver it despite giving out minimum requirements, the experience was always different. Setup sometimes was a nightmare. I needed to find a better way, which is how all of this started.

The logical step was to find somewhere online to host the VMs. Azure or Amazon EC2 are not the answer; I needed somewhere that got the ‘training’ side of things for labs. Lo and behold I found a company who specialized in this in the springtime of 2013. I only initially looked at it as for my labs, but it was a platform that could do more. I was impressed with the demos I saw, but timing was not right to go forward then. I wanted to get the work done by the Melbourne and Sydney classes in October and November but that also wasn’t meant to be. I finally got things all squared away for the delivery of Mission Critical SQL Server last week in Chicago. Before unleashing this on the world and as part of a bigger initiative, I wanted to use it in a real setting with students to see how they would like it; they loved it. I also needed to get the branding just right (see the logo below). Needless to say, here we are with the announcement of SQLHAU.

SQLHAU logo

Why do I care so much? First of all, the training platform I chose will allow us to deliver not only labs, but on-demand as well as live training or seminars. We own all of our own IP (which is important to me), and there are lots of things the platform gives us that we can grow into and expand our offerings. One of the key differentiators with the platform we chose is that the labs for most – but not all classes depending on how complex they are – can be made available to students after they walk out. That is a huge advantage. Potentially labs could be available for up to six (6) months after the class. I can also provide students with ongoing learning such as new labs and scenarios we could never cover in a 4-day class. We’re sorting out how all of that will look like for our classes and what those types of options will cost (and trust me, they’ll be reasonably cheap), but imagine starting out as Beginner and over time working your way up to Advanced. Also, forget about setting up your own virtual environment – this one is done for you already. It’s an incredible advantage. The possibilities are nearly endless with this capability available to us. Heck, I can do a hybrid in-class and online delivery. Look for a lot of innovative hopefully coming from us through SQLHAU.

As we were developing the SQLHAU concept, I thought, “Why not let others be part of it, too?” We’re not territorial over here at SQLHA; there’s plenty of room for everyone out there since people learn differently. I figured why not start by inviting others who want to put great stuff out there and love to teach. Hence us inviting our friends Denny Cherry (blog | Twitter) and Grant Fritchey (blog | Twitter) who most of you know and love already. We’re also working with others to get them on board as well, but I think that’s a pretty fantastic start. It’s not going to be all high availability classes, either 🙂 First up will be Grant’s course on backups which we’re planning on having labs as well. I can’t wait to see what he does!

If you couldn’t tell, I’m thrilled to finally let the cat out of the bag. We almost did it at PASS Summit in October, but everything didn’t line up right for that to happen. Good things come to those who wait.

What classes would you like to see at SQLHA University? Who else would you like to see under our SQLHA University banner? Let us know either by contacting us or in the comments below.

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