My friend Lee has a good post on performance monitoring for SQL server on his blog: http://www.texastoo.com/post/2009/06/18/How-to-quickly-assess-SQL-Server-performance.aspx

My only comment is that including “Disk Queue Length” is also a good practice.  If you start seeing queues build on your drives it means they’re being overloaded and you need additional channels.  I’m not sure of a specific number to watch for, but I would think anything bigger than 1 deserves investigation.

On Server 2008 setting up perfmon is a snap, use the wizard.  Once you have a data collection set created give it a schedule so that it can run regularly so you can track performance trends over time.

If a bad situation can get any worse it just did.  Over the weekend my BizTalk server’s motherboard died.  Of course nobody bothered to call the help desk so something timely could be done about.  Nope.  Came in on Monday and found out.  Oh goody.

So it’s bad enough that the motherboard is dead.  It turns out that backups were not being performed on the server.  Admittedly we are in a UAT phase right now, but still.  But it gets better.

I developed about 90% of the solution so that part went back in pretty quick.  The other 10% was developed by a friend of mine, but he has already been rolled off the project.  Because things have been so hectic lately I didn’t get a chance to closely review his work before he took off.  So that last 10% took about 6 hours to get up and working.  In fact I ended up taking his laptop home with me so he could come over to finish the work for me.

So now I’m sitting here retesting my system to make sure we are ready to resume our pilot.  But it gets even better.  My SOW runs out on the 30^th (4 business days away) and they have not signed an extension yet.  They have nobody on staff that knows BizTalk, CRM or SharePoint.  My buddy Raja knows SharePoint but he hasn’t been extended either.  I’ll keep my imaginings to myself as to what is about to happen to my client (but seriously – it couldn’t be clearer if you wrote it in large neon letters).

Anyway, usually I stay pretty focused on the development end of the business.  But right now I think I need to do some research in to how you recover a dead BizTalk server.  Specifically, how do I deploy my projects in such a fashion that when the server dies you are able to quickly get things back up and running.

I’m pretty sure Microsoft has some white papers, and I’ll read them.  But I’m more interested in real world situations that really do occur.  Shops that don’t have regimental HQ and huge bureaucracies that slow things down while covering every possible contingency.  How does a shop like my client’s prepare itself for a disaster recovery scenario?

For the past week my CRM application has been misbehaving. Users are complaining that it is slow. We’ve not done anything lately so we’re not sure what is going on.

In the let’s waste some time (and money) department our BA decided that sitting in the call center watching the users and using a stopwatch would be a good idea. Other than providing no objective information about what the performance is, sure. Watching the users told me that they aren’t always doing what they are trained to do. But it doesn’t tell me anything really useful that will address this problem. Unfortunately I’m involved in 4 projects all at once so I didn’t really have time to address this.

Anyway, IIS logs every interaction with the web browsers. It also tells me how long it took to process a requests. Perfect. Only problem is that the log files are usually about three hundred and fifty meg! Not a job for Excel or notepad. I looked around at some of the tools available, but I don’t have budget and the free ones didn’t really do it for me.

What’s that? Blast the data in to SQL Server and use a Pivot Table in Excel? Brilliant! How do I do that?

Go here: How To Use SQL Server to Analyze Web Logs

Basically they tell you how to create a table to hold the data in the log file and then how to use BULK INSERT to read the log file. In my case my log file didn’t have the same columns as the example so I had to change the table around a bit. I also had to chop off the first few lines of the log file to get to the real data. But once that was done I was able to pull the data in without any trouble.

The result: I have real objective data and know that occasionally the system is slow. In one case it took nearly 1 minute to respond! However, a quick query told me that it was very rare for the user to get a response that took more than 3 seconds (less than .5%) but unfortunately sense you are in the application all day – you are going to get a slow response eventually.

The fun part now begins. I gotta correlate the slow responses to other things happening in the system. Go look at the EventLog, SQL Server, turn on tracing in CRM, etc. Somewhere something is happening to cause this.

Over the past six months I’ve gotten to do a lot of work with SharePoint (both WSS & MOSS). Frankly, it is a great product with a ton of features that make rapidly building business solutions pretty easy. However, it does have limitations.

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on building a SAAS solution to be completely hosted in WSS. Originally I was going to MOSS, but then I looked at the price tag. Even with BizSpark its too expensive for my tastes. My partner nearly fainted and was going to push for me to do everything in PHP.

Anyway, I’ve done further work, prototyping mostly, on the business processes we are going to automate. Thing is, the way WSS interacts with the user make the experience a bit cumbersome. Perhaps I’ve not completely groked SharePoint, but if a user is expecting an application type experience they are going to be disappointed.

I’m able to store data in lists. That is 90% of the application. But it isn’t that interesting. The application generates a lot of documents (Word Docs) which WSS will do a great job managing. But collecting information from the user is where things seem to fall apart. Workflow also seems to get a bit wonky.

In terms of UX and workflow I’m really looking for a wizard type of behavior. The user clicks a button that in effect says “I want to do business process A”. The screen refreshes with a form that collects information and then asks the user for additional information. The conversation between the application and user goes on until the end and then the documents are created. User is happy.

For clarification: my goal was to create the application without opening VisualStudio. I wanted to do everything with custom lists and workflows designed in SharePoint Designer. I’ve fussed around trying to get what I want and have determined that it isn’t quite possible. So starting tonight I’m going to create a few user controls and other artifacts to get this thing done. I’ll still use SharePoint’s lists to store data, but the UI stuff will be done via custom web-parts.

One of the frustrations is that I can just put a button or link that starts the workflow. When I need the user to fill in a form I can just put the form up. The user has to go to tasks and choose to edit the task item.

There are other things that are frustrating, but they can worked around using Visual Studio. The cool thing about this experience though is that I have a very good idea of just how really powerful WSS/MOSS is. Throw BizTalk and InfoPath into the mix and you can build some really wild solutions.

As I might have mentioned the past four months have been insane. The next few months look better. This does not mean I’m not having fun. It just means that I have a better idea of what my real priorities are. Blogging really isn’t one of them even though I say I wish it was.

Today I’m working on some SharePoint stuff for my personal business to make it easier to provision customers when they sign up for my service. I’m doing this because I’m waiting on information for the actual business processes I’m building (hint hint). The cool bit is that when I’m finished a new customer when land on the web-site, subscribe (register) and behind the scenes without me getting involved the customer will have a site created with the requested features and be able to login in within five minutes. Once SharePoint is done it will email the customer with directions and they will be off to the races. Cool stuff.

While I’m working on that I’m listening to some videos and stuff I’ve been queuing up for nearly a month. This one was really good: Tim Ferriss - Google IO Ignite - Practical Pessimism. The message delivered by Tim at the very beginning is worth thinking about. You don’t know what will happen tomorrow, so what are you waiting for?

Last night we had a massive storm blow through our neighborhood.  The amount of damage done is staggering.  We actually made it out pretty good compared to others.  Our fence is blown over, we have 3 leaks in the roof and a bit of water damage inside the house.

Our insurance company (HalHarbor) responded really fast and sent Specialty Restoration of Texas over.  They arrived at the house by 10 and got started.  They’ve got the roof covered so if we get hit we should not get anymore damage.

Some of our friends got the full on New Orleans experience.  Roofs nearly caved in, tons of water damage, standing water inside the house, wall board starting to fall off the wall.  We got seriously lucky.

For your viewing pleasure, the damage:

I want to call this one out:

In our front yard there is a bird next with baby birds in it.  The girls have been watching the nest very closely.  They were absolutely frantic during the storm because there was no way they should have survived it.  Wind was gusting well over 60mph.  The news said something about 86!  And yet, this morning the nest was there and the mother bird was in it (if you look closely you can see her, you’ll have to click and look at the original).  We were really happy to see them survive.  I hope they are a symbol for a lot of thing (like our blasted economy).

Late to the party as usual, but this video is cool:

http://lucfields.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D9C9B0AF1F893063!866.entry

I’m a tad skeptical about everything in the video being delivered in the next 10 years, but all the same – I won’t complain if it does arrive.

I get it.  Times are rough.  The media, new and old, have been beating the freaking fear drum for over a year now.  “OH, MY GOD!  WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!”.  Throw in the politics that this is GWB’s fault or Obama’s fault and it’s enough to make me puke.

Things change.  Contents move, People live and die, businesses get started and fail, economies go from bust to boom and back.  Nothing new here.  Nothing to be seen.  Move on.

I’m working with a few people who are experiencing these changes first hand.  A few of the people I find myself in the position of mentoring.  A few others I find myself just shaking my head because I really have no idea what they are about.

For the padawans my core of my coaching is this – keep moving.  Run scared if you must, but whatever you do: keep moving.  If you stop learning or get the idea that you are the master you are doomed.  The earth will open up beneath you and swallow you whole leaving no trace of you.  Keep moving.

I just read this my the Cardinal of Marketing: Graduate school for unemployed college students.  Not a student?  Wanna think that again?  Already got a full time job?  Change the course to be suitable.

The point of this isn’t necessarily the mastery of anything.  It’s the continued learning, experiences and encounters with people.  Regardless of where you are in life and what you’ve already accomplished, new experiences will help you grow more.

The past few months have been freaking nutz. I’ve had a wonderful opportunity that has been life altering. Life altering in ways that are both expected and unexpected.

The bad thing about it is that I have not made time to blog. Which has been a huge mistake on my part. Some of the stuff that I’ve not written about (yet):

• Building an integration solution with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, BizTalk, and a truckload management system called McLeod.
• Building a safety audit system using SharePoint and SSRS
• Cluster SQL 2008, Performance tuning SQL 2008 in a cluster and for 32-bit and 64-bit environments
• Setting up MOM to monitor all this stuff
• Working with difficult people, who aren’t your client.
• Coaching and mentoring people through rough spots.
• Running scared, being miserable on the job and figuring out that it is the greatest thing that could ever happen to me.
• Getting over myself so that I can move on to building a business.

Over the next few weeks I plan to address these short comings.  I’ve had such a wild adventure that I want to share.  Thing is; sharing takes time and there are so many things demanding my time right now.