Data Gateway flow chart
Check out my post about Considerations for On-premises data in Power BI over on SQLShack
I am excited to announce that Dr Greg Low will be speaking in person at our next Glasgow SQL User Group session on the 23rd May! We had a great remote session with Paul Randal last month with a good turnout too. With new sponsors & another great speaker, this month is sure to be a great session.
Dr Greg Low is the Australian Microsoft Regional Director, and consultant. He is also a long term Microsoft MVP and one of the first of two people to be appointed as a SQL Server Master. As a speaker, Dr Low is in demand to speak at many conferences internationally. If that was not enough he hosts a very successful podcast at SQL Down under.
Take a look at my post over on SQL Shack about Managing SSRS security using PowerShell automation scripts
Myself and a few colleagues head off to SQLBits XVI in Telford today! I have quite a few sessions in mind. I just hope I can decide between a few conflicts!
I highly recommend it, following my first time last year. I met a few people that have helped & inspired me over the last 12 months. This blog probably wouldnt exist otherwise.
Ill update this post over the weekend & please drop a comment if you’re coming along!
Ive written a quick how-to over on SQL Shack on automating SSAS tabular model processing in SQL Server 2016
This is a solution I’ve had to put in place in almost all BI positions in some form or another. Its something that remains a “custom workaround” through all versions of SQL Server Reporting Services, right up to 2016.
I go into a lot of detail in my post on SQL Shack about a simple & effective way to alert on failed subscriptions using a SQL Agent job. Have a look over at SQL Shack:
News!
I’m now splitting my blog posts between here & SQL Shack. You’ll see mostly non-SQL content here. I’m still working with Powershell a lot so Ill post any handy scripts I put together here. All SQL based how-to’s and issues Ill blog about over on SQL Shack though. It’s a great opportunity to contribute to an already active site where the content should get better visibility.
For completeness though, Ill always link to articles from here.
Have a read at my first post on scaling out SSRS & the changes in 2016
Scaling out Reporting Services & changes in SQL Server 2016
Check out my first post over on @SQLShack on Scaling out Reporting Services & changes in SQL Server 2016 https://t.co/KouhSfkUXH
— Craig Porteous (@CPorteous) January 19, 2017
Ta
Here’s another handy Powershell script Ive created. It borrows components from another(credited at the bottom of the post) and expands on the repadmin functionality in the Active Directory Powershell module. The main aim of this is to keep track of members being added or removed to Active Directory groups. There is functionality to do this within AD but if, like myself, you have no control over AD administration this may help you out.
I wanted to keep track of specific groups used for reporting & SharePoint site access that may also require database access. Being notified of additions to these groups by other teams/managers would allow me to identify & fill in missing database perms before they become a problem. Ill append a few example SQL queries as I go, to show how Im using it.
Here’s a quick flow of what Im doing here:
This can be ran regularly on any schedule just through task scheduler. It will always pick up the exact date/time that a user was removed or added to a group so how often you schedule it to run depends on how quickly you want to be notified of a change.
This may be more of a perfect storm situation here, than a major concern across all SSRS Scale out deployments using an F5 hardware load balancer. Ill detail what I found & how we were able to workaround & eventually resolve this issue.
The 3 components that affected & essentially caused this issue are:
- F5 Network Load Balancer
- SQL Server Reporting Services (2014, though I believe all versions would be affected)
- VMWare Windows Server 2012 R2 Virtual machine(s)
This is something Ive put together to keep track of errors coming through the SSRS logs.
We capture the majority of priority errors through other methods but I find some still slip through if you’re not checking your log files regularly. It still baffles me that SSRS doesnt have better error monitoring/logging for subscriptions in particular. Even in 2016 we still use a custom SQL job to monitor & alert on failed subscriptions.
Here’s a quick overview of what Im doing with the logs:
