Migrating to the cloud? Start with a readiness assessment

 This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

After careful consideration you’ve decided it’s time to migrate a major on-premise software solution to the cloud. But how do you create and execute a plan to make sure your migration stays on time, on budget, and delivers on your expectations? Effective planning is critical, and it should start with a thorough assessment of your infrastructure by an experienced vendor who understands your specific objectives.

Usually available as a service engagement from a hosting vendor or, better yet, from the software vendor whose solution is being migrated to the cloud, this cloud readiness assessment is part checklist and part roadmap. It audits the entire environment so you can plan and execute an efficient and effective migration.

Why should you consider such a service? It takes the pressure off. Too many organizations attempt to go it alone, which usually means asking overworked IT staff to try to “fit it in.” Today, the average IT department is already responsible for multiple systems, often as many as seven or eight. Trying to add a project as large and complex as an enterprise cloud migration to is simply not realistic. Not only is that approach a disservice to those tasked with making it happen, it also sends the wrong message about the size and importance of the project. Future problems are usually inevitable.

A cloud readiness assessment may also help you achieve a faster time to value. Remember, when you go to a SaaS model, ROI has a completely different meaning. For example, you are no longer looking to recover your long-term capital investment, but instead, expecting to gain instant value from your new OpEx spending. A cloud readiness assessment can help you carefully plan the migration so you can achieve a faster time to value.

Finally, a vendor’s cloud readiness team can usually deliver skills and specialized expertise required for the specific solution that you or hosting provider might not have in-house. These teams are truly cross-functional, with a mix of expertise in project management, technical implementations, business processes, industry-specific insights, and more. Additionally, these teams usually have dozens, if not hundreds, of migrations under their belts.

While no one can say they’ve seen it all, these teams are typically astute and can help you identify potential obstacles – challenges you may not have been aware of – before they become unmanageable.

For example, a cloud readiness team will carefully evaluate your existing environment and document all aspects of your infrastructure that could be affected. This includes your entire architecture, including databases, applications, networks, specialized hardware, third-party interfaces, extensions, customizations, and more. Then, they create a comprehensive report that details these findings as well as their recommended action plan to achieve the most successful migration possible.

Cloud readiness in action
To better understand how a cloud readiness offering could work – and its ultimate benefits – consider the example of moving an on-premise workforce management solution to the cloud. Workforce management solutions are generally large, enterprise-level implementations that span employee-focused areas such as time and attendance, absence management, HR, payroll, hiring, scheduling, and labor analytics.

The example of workforce management is especially relevant because recent research shows that an increasing number of workforce management buyers are adopting SaaS tools. Research shows that SaaS will be the main driver in growing the global workforce management market by almost $1.5 billion from 2013 to 2018. Additionally, Gartner research indicates, through 2017, the number of organizations using external providers to deliver cloud-related services will rise to 91 percent to mitigate cost and security risks as well as to meet business goals and desired outcomes.

This research demonstrates that a majority of companies will soon be moving their on-premise workforce management systems to the cloud. But will they be successful?

They have to be. Workforce management systems manage processes and data related to paying employees, managing their time and balances, storing sensitive HR information, complying with industry regulations, and other critical functions. Errors can be extremely costly, especially if they lead to missing paychecks, employee morale issues, lost productivity, grievances and compliance, or even potential lawsuits. Failure is simply not an option.

A cloud readiness service is the perfect way to minimize these risks and maximize the results. Specifically, a readiness service is ideally suited to address specialized areas of a workforce management deployment, including:

* Data collection terminals. While many employees still refer to these as “timeclocks,” the fact is that today’s data collection devices are sophisticated proprietary technology consisting of hardware, software, and network/communication capabilities. As part of a migration, a readiness audit would assess the organization’s data collection methods. It would also provide recommendations for transitioning them to a secure network model that meets the organization’s security and performance objectives while ensuring that service is not interrupted when the switchover occurs.

* Interfaces and integrations. Like other enterprise-level technology, workforce management solutions tend to use many different interfaces and custom integrations to feed applications such as ERP systems, outside payroll systems, or third-party analytics applications. In this example, the readiness assessment evaluates the entire integration strategy, including database settings, to make sure mission-critical data continues to flow to support existing business processes.

* Customizations and configurations. Most organizations have custom reports, products, or database tables. Here, the cloud readiness service will thoroughly review existing customizations and configurations, and will provide recommendations to maintain, or even improve, the value they deliver.

When it comes to something as significant — and important — as migrating a major enterprise solution to the cloud, don’t go it alone. Investing in a cloud readiness service can help you assess where you stand today, plan for the migration, and execute against the plan. This helps free up valuable IT resources to focus on what’s really important – implementing strategic initiatives to help the business grow.

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Your next digital security guard should be more like RoboCop

Machine intelligence can be used to police networks and fill gaps where the available resources and capabilities of human intelligence are clearly falling short

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Humans are clearly incapable of monitoring and identifying every threat on today’s vast and complex networks using traditional security tools. We need to enhance human capabilities by augmenting them with machine intelligence. Mixing man and machine – in some ways, similar to what OmniCorp did with RoboCop – can heighten our ability to identify and stop a threat before it’s too late.

The “dumb” tools that organizations rely on today are simply ineffective. There are two consistent, yet still surprising things that make this ineptitude fairly apparent. The first is the amount of time hackers have free reign within a system before being detected: eight months at Premera and P.F. Chang’s, six months at Nieman Marcus, five months at Home Depot, and the list goes on.

The second surprise is the response. Everyone usually looks backwards, trying to figure out how the external actors got in. Finding the proverbial leak and plugging it is obviously important, but this approach only treats a symptom instead of curing the disease.

The disease, in this case, is the growing faction of hackers that are getting so good at what they do they can infiltrate a network and roam around freely, accessing more files and data than even most internal employees have access to. If it took months for Premera, Sony, Target and others to detect these bad actors in their networks and begin to patch the holes that let them in, how can they be sure that another group didn’t find another hole? How do they know other groups aren’t pilfering data right now? Today, they can’t know for sure.

The typical response
Until recently, companies have really only had one option as a response to rising threats, a response that most organizations still employ. They re-harden systems, ratchet-up firewall and IDS/IPS rules and thresholds, and put stricter web proxy and VPN policies in place. But by doing this they drown their incident response teams in alerts.

Tightening policies and adding to the number of scenarios that will raise a red flag just makes the job more difficult for security teams that are already stretched thin. This causes thousands of false positives every day, making it physically impossible to investigate every one. As recent high profile attacks have proven, the deluge of alerts is helping malicious activity slip through the cracks because, even when it is “caught,” nothing is being done about it.

In addition, clamping down on security rules and procedures just wastes everyone’s time. By design, tighter policies will restrict access to data, and in many cases, that data is what employees need to do their jobs well. Employees and departments will start asking for the tools and information they need, wasting precious time for them and the IT/security teams that have to vet every request.

Putting RoboCop on the case
Machine intelligence can be used to police massive networks and help fill gaps where the available resources and capabilities of human intelligence are clearly falling short. It’s a bit like letting RoboCop police the streets, but in this case the main armament is statistical algorithms. More specifically, statistics can be used to identify abnormal and potentially malicious activity as it occurs.

According to Dave Shackleford, an analyst at SANS Institute and author of its 2014 Analytics and Intelligence Survey, "one of the biggest challenges security organizations face is lack of visibility into what's happening in the environment." The survey of 350 IT professionals asked why they have difficulty identifying threats and a top response was their inability to understand and baseline “normal behavior.” It’s something that humans just can’t do in complex environments, and since we’re not able to distinguish normal behavior, we can’t see abnormal behavior.

Instead of relying on humans looking at graphs on big screen monitors, or human-defined rules and thresholds to raise flags, machines can learn what normal behavior looks like, adjusting in real time and becoming smarter as they processes more information. What’s more, machines possess the speed required to process the massive amount of information that networks create, and they can do it in near-real time. Some networks process terabytes of data every second, while humans, on the other hand, can process no more than 60 bits per second.

Putting aside the need for speed and capacity, a larger issue with the traditional way of monitoring for security issues is rules are dumb. That’s not just name calling either, they’re literally dumb. Humans set rules that tell the machine how to act and what to do – the speed and processing capacity is irrelevant. While rule-based monitoring systems can be very complex, they’re still built on a basic “if this, then do that” formula. Enabling machines to think for themselves and feed better data and insight to the humans that rely on them is what will really improve security.

It’s almost absurd to not have a layer of security that thinks for itself. Imagine in the physical world if someone was crossing the border every day with a wheelbarrow full of dirt and the customs agents, being diligent at their jobs and following the rules, were sifting through that dirt day after day, never finding what they thought they were looking for. Even though that same person repeatedly crosses the border with a wheelbarrow full of dirt, no one ever thinks to look at the wheelbarrow. If they had, they would have quickly learned he’s been stealing wheelbarrows the whole time!

Just because no one told the customs agents to look for stolen wheelbarrows doesn’t make it OK, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20. In the digital world, we don’t have to rely on hindsight anymore, especially now that we have the power to put machine intelligence to work and recognize anomalies that could be occurring right under our noses. In order for cyber-security to be effective today, it needs at least a basic level of intelligence. Machines that learn on their own and detect anomalous activity can find the “wheelbarrow thief” that might be slowly syphoning data, even if you don’t specifically know that you’re looking for him.

Anomaly detection is among the first technology categories where machine learning is being put to use to enhance network and application security. It’s a form of advanced security analytics, which is a term that’s used quite frequently. However, there are a few requirements this type of technology must meet to truly be considered “advanced.” It must be easily deployed to operate continuously, against a broad array of data types and sources, and at huge data scales to produce high fidelity insights so as not to further add to the alert blindness already confronting security teams.

Leading analysts agree that machine learning will soon be a “need to have” in order to protect a network. In a Nov. 2014 Gartner report titled, “Add New Performance Metrics to Manage Machine-Learning-Enabled Systems,” analyst Will Cappelli directly states, “machine learning functionality will, over the next five years, gradually become pervasive and, in the process, fundamentally modify system performance and cost characteristics.”

While machine learning is certainly not a silver bullet that will solve all security challenges, there’s no doubt it will provide better information to help humans make better decisions. Let’s stop asking people to do the impossible and let machine intelligence step in to help get the job done.

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Windows 10, the wish list: 10 things users are still begging for

Tabbed Windows. A customizable login screen. Tens of thousands of votes have poured in for these features and more, but time's running out for these features to make it into Windows 10's launch version.

Windows 10 is nearly baked
Although Microsoft won’t release the “final” version of Windows 10 for almost two months, we’re nearing the end. Microsoft has said it's moved most of its development to polishing Windows 10, squashing bugs and tweaking the way it looks and feels.

Throughout the process, however, Microsoft has encouraged users and testers within its Insider program to solicit ideas and feedback on Windows 10. The Windows UserVoice forums are stuffed with hundreds of feature requests, some with tens of thousands of votes.

Not all will make it to the RTM version of Windows 10 due July 29. But there’s still hope. Microsoft will continue the Insider program even after Windows 10 ships, and will continue to add updates and new features through Windows 10’s lifespan.

Windows 10 looks very different than when it was first announced, and what users want has evolved, too. So what are the features users still yearn for most? We’ll show you. But boy, the first one looks doubtful.

Iranians want access to the Windows Store
Right now, Microsoft has blocked Iran from accessing the Windows Store, due to a long-standing trade embargo against the country by the United States government.

What Microsoft apparently hasn’t realized, however, is that the embargo was partially lifted in 2013. Iranian General License D allows some hardware, software and services to be sold to customers in Iran. Google led the way by opening its Google Play Store (but only free apps) to Iranian consumers that year.

The top request by Windows 10 users, with over 55,000 votes, is for Microsoft to lift its own embargo and provide access to the Windows Store for Iranian customers. “Why are u so selfish, we have right like other people in the world, we do nothing wrong. We’re just trapped in a wrong place. Open the store please, we need to,” Souroush Askari wrote.

It’s notable that Microsoft has already made concessions to Middle Eastern users. In October, the addition of a Persian-language calendar was one of the top feature requests for Windows 10. It has since been added.

Aero Glass forever!
In October, fans of the Windows Vista “Aero Glass” scheme had managed to drum up only 1,800 votes or so. Today, the Aero Glass movement is marching boldly forward, 49,500 votes and counting at press time.

“Microsoft is forgetting that over 250 million (75 million of them on Steam alone) are using Gaming PCs capable of driving more GPU and RAM hungry OS shells like Aero Glass,” the original submitter states. “Please allow us to have the choice to use the Aero Glass you so kindly provided in Windows 8 Developer preview and took from us in RTM.”

Well, there are solutions. Glass8.eu has released Aero Glass skins for most public builds of Windows 10. Microsoft hasn’t forgotten its very vocal Aero Glass fan base, either: Windows 10 Build 10074 adds the “frosted glass” look that Aero Glass uses in some of the builds.

Add Persian (Farsi) language support to Cortana
One phrase would make over 37,500 commenters happy: “سلام, من هستم Cortana,” or “Hi, I’m Cortana” in Farsi. Like the thousands of users who pushed Microsoft to add support for Persian-language calendars, so have Microsoft’s users begged for Microsoft’s digital assistant to speak the language spoken by about 110 million people.

While a Persian-language calendar might not be that difficult to implement, we’d have to imagine that inputting the proper phonemes into Cortana, training them, and then pushing them out to users would be a far greater challenge. It’s possible that Cortana might eventually speak Persian, but most likely well after the RTM release.

Tabbed windows in Windows Explorer/File Explorer
The ability to add multiple tabs to a Web browser is a staple of Internet Explorer and the like—so why isn’t it part of Windows’ File Explorer, as well? It’s a reasonable statement, and more than 29,200 people agree with it.

“Every other OS has this feature and Windows is severely lagging behind,” according to the submission.

Note that this feature is already available for Windows 8, via plugins like Ejie Technology’s Clover2. And just this week, Microsoft’s Matthias Baer said that Microsoft is building a feature called “Quick Access” into Windows 10. It’s not the tabbed windows that users want, but it does the next best thing: It places a user-configurable list of files and folders in a reserved area of the window that users can pin and unpin.

Customize the Windows 10 login screen
Over 27,000 people have requested that users be able to put their own wallpaper image on the lock screen, just as Windows 7 used to do.

Personally, I see no need for this. I’m sort of a nature photography junkie, and Microsoft Bing scratches my itch daily with gorgeous outdoor shots. Even better, Microsoft has recently begun adding them to the Windows 10 lock screen. So while I certainly understand why users would want to be greeted by an image of their beloved Dachshund or Mr. Fluffles the cat, I can’t help but hope that Microsoft continues its trend of reminding us what’s outside our office windows.

Mondo Messaging -- including calls
In January, Microsoft wowed us all with a unified, universal Messages app that seemed to include everything: Skype messages, SMS, possibly Facebook messages, and more. It was emblematic of the unified vision that Microsoft had for Windows 10, roaming across devices as its services roamed across platforms. Unfortunately, it’s reportedly now in limbo.

Undaunted, about 27,000 people hope that Windows 10 will include a revamped app that will “‘send/receive calls, texts, Facebook Messages, play/save voicemails on desktop within one messaging conversation.” It doesn’t seem likely that you’d be able to place calls from a desktop PC (Skype excepted) but you might from a connected phone. It’s all fantasy for the moment, though, apparently.

Fix the annoying thumbnail cache deletion bug!
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Almost every time you open a folder with a huge number of images in it—my own “Downloads” folder is such an example—Windows 8 insists on reindexing virtually all of it. It takes time and can be a huge annoyance. And nearly 23,000 people agree.

The bug is still present in Windows 10. But phew! It’s officially under review. “The product development team has added new diagnostic code to detect and debug as they continue to look at the issue,” Microsoft writes. Thank goodness Microsoft is in bug-squashing mode.

Include LaTeX editor in Microsoft Office
Even though Microsoft’s UserVoice section covers Windows 10, suggestions for related apps sometimes sneak in. About 18,000 people want support for a modern LaTeX editor in Microsoft Office.

“In 2009, LaTeX was used to typeset 96.9% of publications in mathematics, 89.1% of publications in statistics, 79% of publications in physics, and its use is widespread in computer sciences, engineering, geosciences, astronomy, ecology, chemistry, biology, medicine, psycology, and political and social sciences,” the submission claims. It’s used for all sorts of textbooks as well.

LaTeX is public software, although its license includes an odd provision: Modified files must be clearly marked as such to distinguish themselves from the original. That might possibly break Microsoft’s file format. (The original license prevented any modified file from using the filename of the original file.)

Windows Update: a one-stop shop for drivers?
Why should users have to download software to update their mice? And their scanner? And their graphics card? And...the list goes on. About 17,000 users want Windows to be their Wal-mart of drivers, supplying everything they could ever hope to need. And you know, we’d agree with them.

Merge the Settings, Control Panel
Forcing users to find information in one location may be constricting for some, and comforting for others. About 17,600 people fall into the latter camp, arguing the PC Settings menu makes the Control Panel redundant, or vice versa.

And it does, really, especially because the Control Panel can sometimes add more granular options that Settings doesn’t supply. Still, both Settings and the Control Panel seem to be pretty entrenched inside the Windows operating system. We’ll see how it all plays out.

So what features would you like to see added to (or subtracted from) Windows 10? Tell us in the comments.

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Exam 70-459 Transition Your MCITP: Database Administrator 2008 or MCITP: Database Developer 2008 to MCSE: Data Platform

Exam 70-459 Transition Your MCITP: Database Administrator 2008 or MCITP: Database Developer 2008 to MCSE: Data Platform

Published: 11 June 2012
Languages: English
Audiences: IT professionals
Technology: Microsoft SQL Server 2014
Credit towards certification: MCP, MCSA, MCSE

Skills measured
This exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks listed below.

Starting 15 May 2014, the questions on this exam include content covering SQL Server 2014.

Please note that the questions may test on, but will not be limited to, the topics described in the bulleted text.

Implement database objects

Create and alter tables
Develop an optimal strategy for using temporary objects (table variables and temporary tables); manage a table without using triggers; data version control and management; create tables without using the built-in tools; understand the difference between @Table and #table; create calculated columns; implement partitioned tables, schemas and functions; implement column collation; implement online transaction processing (OLTP)

Design, implement and troubleshoot security
Grant, deny, revoke; connection issues; execute as; certificates; loginless user; database roles and permissions; implement contained users; implement cross db ownership chaining; implement schema security; implement server roles; review effective permissions; troubleshoot and repair orphaned users

Create and modify constraints (complex statements)
Create constraints on tables; define constraints, modify constraints according to performance implications, implement cascading deletes, configure constraints for bulk inserts

Preparation resources
CREATE TABLE (Transact-SQL)
CREATE USER (Transact-SQL)
UNIQUE constraints and CHECK constraints

Implement programming objects

Design and implement stored procedures

Create stored procedures and other programmatic objects; implement different types of stored procedure results; create stored procedures for data access layer; analyse and rewrite procedures and processes; program stored procedures by using T-SQL and CLR; implement parameters, including table-valued parameter, input and output; implement encryption; implement error handling, including TRY…CATCH; configure appropriate connection settings, design appropriate query paging, including OFFSET and FETCH

Design T-SQL table-valued and scalar functions

Modify scripts that use cursors and loops into a SET-based operation; design deterministic and non-deterministic functions

Create and alter views

Set up and configure partitioned tables and partitioned views; create indexed views

Preparation resources
Create a stored procedure
CREATE FUNCTION (Transact-SQL)
CREATE VIEW (Transact-SQL)

Design database objects

Design tables
Apply data design patterns; develop appropriately normalised and de-normalised SQL tables; design transactions; design views; implement GUID as a clustered index appropriately; design temp tables appropriately, including # versus @; implement set-based logic; design an encryption strategy; design table partitioning; design a BLOB storage strategy, including filestream and filetable; design tables for In-Memory OLTP

Create and alter indexes
Create indexes and data structures; create filtered indexes; create an indexing strategy, including column store, semantic indexes and INCLUDE; design indexes and statistics; assess which indexes on a table are likely to be used given different search arguments (SARG); create indexes that contain included columns; create spatial indexes

Design data integrity
Design table data integrity policy, including checks, private key, foreign key, uniqueness, XML schema and nullability; select a primary key

Preparation resources
CREATE TABLE (Transact-SQL)
CREATE INDEX (Transact-SQL)
SET IMPLICIT_TRANSACTIONS (Transact-SQL)

Optimise and troubleshoot queries

Optimise and tune queries
Tune a poorly performing query, including avoiding unnecessary data-type conversions; identify long-running queries; review and optimise code; analyse execution plans to optimise queries; tune queries using execution plans and Microsoft Database Tuning Advisor (DTA); optimise queries using pivots and utilising common table expressions (CTEs); design the database layout to optimise queries; implement query hints; tune query workloads; implement recursive CTE; implement full text and semantic search; analyse execution plans; implement plan guides

Troubleshoot and resolve performance problems
Interpret performance monitor data; integrate performance monitor data with SQL Traces; design an appropriate recovery model; optimise data files; identify and fix transactional replication problems; detect and resolve server failures; identify and troubleshoot data access problems; manage tempdb contention and autogrowth; implement Resource Governor; monitor and resolve In-Memory OLTP issues, including merge and rubbish collection

Collect performance and system information
Monitor performance using Dynamic Management Views; collect output from the Database Engine Tuning Advisor; design Extended Events Sessions; review and interpret Extended Event logs; optimise Extended Event session settings; use Activity Monitor to minimise server impact and determine IO bottlenecks; monitor In-Memory OLTP resources

Preparation resources
Database Engine Tuning Advisor
Manage the size of the transaction log file
SQL Server Profiler

Design database structure

Design for business requirements
Translate business needs to data structures; identify which SQL Server components to use to support business requirements; design a normalisation area; de-normalise by using SQL Server features, including materialisation using indexed views, distributed partitioned views, filtered and non-key column indexes and snapshots

Design physical database and object placement
Design a physical database, including file placement, FILESTREAM, FILETABLE, file groups and RAID; configure system database settings

Design SQL Server instances
Identify hardware for new instances; design CPU affinity; design clustered instances, including Microsoft Distributed Transaction Control (MSDTC); define instance memory allocation; design installation strategies, including sysprep, slipstream and SMB file server; define cross db ownership chaining

Preparation resources
Create indexed views
FileTables (SQL Server)
Failover clustering and AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server)

Design databases and database objects

Design a database model
Design a logical schema; design data access and data layer architecture; design a database schema; design security architecture; design a cross-server instance database model, including linked servers, security, providers, distributed transactions, distributed partitioned views and Service Broker

Design tables
Design tables appropriately, including physical tables, temp tables, temp table variables, common table expressions, column store indexes and user-defined table types; FILESTREAM, FILETABLE and In-Memory OLTP; design views and table values functions; design a compression strategy, including row and page; select an appropriate data type; design computed columns

Design T-SQL stored procedures
Create stored procedures; design a data-access strategy using stored procedures; design appropriate stored procedure parameters, including input, output and Table Valued; design error handling; design an In-Memory OLTP strategy for stored procedures

Preparation resources
Collation and Unicode support
Row compression implementation
Stored procedures (database engine)

Design database security
Design an application strategy to support security

Design security, including security roles, signed stored procedures, encryption, contained logins, EXECUTE AS and credentials; implement schemas and schema security; design security maintenance, including SQL logins, integrated authentication, permissions and mirroring

Design instance-level security configurations
Implement separation of duties using different login roles; choose authentication type, including logon triggers, regulatory requirements and certificates; implement data encryption, including master key and configuration; implement DDL triggers; define a secure service account

Preparation resources
Tutorial: Signing stored procedures with a certificate
Logon triggers
DDL triggers

Design a troubleshooting and optimisation solution
Troubleshoot and resolve concurrency issues

Examine deadlocking issues using the SQL server logs and trace flags; design a reporting database infrastructure, including replicated databases; monitor concurrency, including Dynamic Management Views (DMV); diagnose blocking, including live locking and deadlocking; diagnose waits; use Extended Events; implement query hints to increase concurrency

Design a monitoring solution at the instance level
Design auditing strategies, including Extended Events, Event traces, SQL Audit, Profiler-scheduled or event-based maintenance, Performance Monitor and DMV usage; set up file and table growth monitoring; collect performance indicators and counters; create jobs to monitor server health; audit using Windows

Preparation resources
KILL (Transact-SQL)
SQL Server audit (database engine)

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QUESTION 1
You need to configure the ProcessUpdateProc stored procedure to stop running in the event of a
failure of one of the UPDATE statements.
How should you modify the ProcessUpdateProc stored procedure?

A. By configuring the SET NOCOUNT to on.
B. By configuring the SET NOEXEC option to on.
C. By configuring the XACT_ABORT option to on.
D. By configuring the XACT_ABORT option to off.

Answer: C

Explanation:

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QUESTION 2
You need to design a solution to that enables the recovery of the DailyReportsTemp database in
less than one hour in the event of a storage hardware failure. Your solution must minimize costs.
What should you recommend?

A. SQL Server Failover Clustering
B. Peer-to-peer replication
C. Differential backups
D. Log shipping
E. Database snapshots

Answer: D

Explanation:

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QUESTION 3
You need to recommend a solution to meet the recovery requirements for the Manufacturing
database. Your solution must minimize costs.
What should you recommend?

A. Database snapshots
B. Transaction log backups.
C. Differential backups
D. SQL Server Failover Clustering
E. Peer-to-peer replication

Answer: A

Explanation:

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QUESTION 4
You need to address the backup issues of the Sales database.
How can you reduce the time it takes to back up the Sales database?

A. By configuring table partitioning.
B. By configuring filegroups.
C. By configure the Resource Governer
D. By configuring Copy-Only backups.

Answer: B

Explanation:

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QUESTION 5
You need to provide a group of users from the IT and Manufacturing departments the minimum
administrative rights to view database information and server state for the Manufacturing database
on MainDB1.
What should you do?

A. You should configure a Database Role.
B. You should configure a Server Role.
C. You should configure a Shared SQL Server Login.
D. You should configure a Local Security Group.

Answer: B

Explanation: