A hard drive is a hard drive, right?  Storage has come a long way, but is probably still the biggest bottleneck in your system.  Solid State Drives (ssd) have changed the rules in terms of performance and there is new technology on the horizon to allow us to access our data even faster.

I talk with Justin Strong and Ananda Sankaran from Micron Technologies about their experiences with SSD and how organizations are using in their environments.  We also chat about some of the new technologies on the horizon for Micron.

Check out the shownotes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/11/25/ssd/ for links to topics discussed in today's episode.

I learn stuff every day.  In this episode I tackle a new subject for me and one I am hearing a lot about--BIML.  BIML is a markup language you can use to build your SSIS packages. 

I met up with Bill Fellows and Cathrine Wilhelmsen in Portland and they shared with me some insights on BIML, what they use if for, and some tips on getting started.  If you find your self doing more SSIS packages and haven't yet tackled BIML, this episode is for you!

Check out the shownotes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/11/17/biml/

Do you find you have tables and indexes that have grown really large? Are you moving around a lot more data than you used to? Are your windows for jobs and maintenance getting tighter? If you answered yes to any of these questions, partitioning may be for you!

Partitioning allows us to break a table or index down into smaller more manageable chunks.  Partitioning can enable us to perform maintenance on just part of a table or index. We can even move data in and out of tables with quick and easy metadata only operations.

In this episode, we’ll go over basic partitioning concepts such as horizontal vs. vertical partitioning, how to identify if a table is ready for partitioning, and what you need to know about your applications before you implement partitioning.

Check out the show notes at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/11/10/partitioning/

I learn things every day.  One of the great things about the SQL community is the willingness to share their learning experiences and today's episode is an example of this.  I chat with Mark Wilkinson about the SQL Server Agent--some best practices and MSX--a feature I have not used in the past. 

If you are interested in expanding your SQL Server agent horizon, this episode is for you.  Check out the show notes for today's information at http://sqldatapartners.com/2015/11/03/sql-server-agent