Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Getting RUN back in Windows 8

    Recently I heard a few people that note that they were really hoping the next update for Windows 8 will bring back the “Run button”, which was available in XP and Windows 7. I guess it was in Vista, but we won’t talk about that fiasco.

    I asked a question to the Intertubes and someone told me to do this:

    • Hit Windows+R
    • Pin the Run item to the taskbar.

    It’s that simple, and I tested it in Windows 8. It works well. Here’s what it looks like:

    Hit Windows+R, that’s the Windows key and the R button together. That gives you this:

    runbutton_a

    The Run dialog appears in the lower left hand corner. For me, that’s just above the IE icon (this is Windows 8, not 8.1, no Start menu button) and the last thing I ran is in there. I removed my item, but you will see what you last ran.

    Now, if you look in your taskbar, on the right side, you’ll see an icon that is the run dialog. In the image below, I’ve drawn an arrow pointing to it.

    runbutton_b

    If you right click this icon, you’ll get a menu.

    runbutton_c

    If you click “Pin”, then this icon will remain in the taskbar. You can click it anytime to get the Run dialog.

  • SQL Scripts Manager

    We have Down Tools Week multiple times per year at Red Gate. This allows various employees to spend a week on a project, working to build something new and interesting that we rarely have time to spend our limited resources on. Past projects have resulted in SQL Search, a mobile view of Simple Talk, and a number of internal tools that have proven very beneficial.

    Last year one of our developers embarked on a project for SQLServerCentral to provide a plug-in for Management Studio to allow access to the scripts on our site. This wasn’t quite complete enough to release, but when Down Tools week occurred recently, a few developers collaborated to complete this project.

    We’re releasing this Management Studio plug-in today, SQL Scripts Manager, along with our framework to build your own plugins.  You can download the tool from this link, and a link will also be placed at the top of our Scripts section at SQLServerCentral. Once you have this plugin installed, you can search for and download scripts inside SSMS, and access your briefcase without ever switching applications.

    I think this is really amazing, and I’m hoping that many of you find it useful. It’s a great way to easily access your collection of scripts from anywhere, getting the latest versions of the code from SQLServerCentral that you find really useful.

    If you have comments, suggestions, bugs, etc., please feel free to post them in this thread.

    We’ve worked hard at Red Gate to not only build useful tools that help you build software, but also teach you how to better create your own applications. We’ll have more information and more details on the framework coming soon as well, and we look forward to seeing what types of enhancements you’ll create for SSMS. If you create something really useful, send us a note and we’ll feature your tool on the site.

  • Encryption in Las Vegas – SQL Saturday #295

    I enjoy Las Vegas, usually trying to see a show of some sort when I’m there. I’ll have the chance next week, when I’m in town for SQL Saturday #295 on Apr 5. It will be a fairly quick trip for me, but I’ll see if I can find something fun to do. Perhaps Penn and Teller.

    The first SQL Saturday in Nevada (knocking another state off the master list) will be taking place and while it’s a small event, it has a packed schedule of SQL Server experts. I’ll be talking encryption and you’ll have the chance to learn Hadoop, dimensional modeling, database design, monitoring and more. It’s an amazing lineup with many out of state speakers traveling to help the SQL Server community in Las Vegas learn more. Pat Wright, Russ Thomas, Allen White, Joey D’Antoni, Jason Horner, Tom LaRock, Reeves Smith, Tamera Clark, Mike Fal, TJay Belt, David Klee and more are on the schedule.

    This will be a fun event, and I’m looking forward to this trip, even if it will be a little quick for me. I hope you’ll join us if you’re anywhere in the Las Vegas area, and please stop me to say hi if you see me.

  • Virtual Lab – New Domain User

    This is part of my series on building a virtual lab for use with SQL Server and Windows. You can see the entire series here: Building a Virtual Lab with Hyper-V.

    After the domain was up, I needed to add users. Specifically, I didn’t want to use administrator for all actions, since that bothers me. It just seems like a poor practice. I also needed service accounts. The accounts I needed:

    • sjones
    • Broncos SQL – for this SQL Server
    • Nuggets SQL – for this SQL Server
    • Rockies SQL – for this SQL Server
    • Joe – my test SQL account, without sa rights.

    I’ll probably need more, but these are good for now.

    Domain Users

    I used the script in this post, in a variation, at the command line. I didn’t need all the fields, so this is what I used.

    New-AdUser -SamAccountName "BroncosSQL" -Name "Broncos SQL" -Enabled $true -ChangePasswordAtLogon $false -PasswordNeverExpires $true -AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString "MyPassword" -AsPlainText -Force)

    Note: That wasn’t the password I used. I used a complex, 12 character, upper/lower case, numbers, etc. password.

    I repeated this for all the users.

    Domain Groups

    For the most part, I don’t need, or want, to assign extra rights for these accounts. The SQL Server setup will assign local rights, and I’ll modify if needed. However I do need to grant domain admin rights to my main account to log on and run the domain at times.

    I went back to basics, with TechNet documentation. I need the Add-ADGroupMember cmdlet to add someone. However, I also need the groups. I searched, and Spiceworks shows up again. I ran this:

    Get-ADGroup -filter * -properties GroupCategory | ft name,groupcategory

    and got this list:

    groups1

    I want to add sjones to the Domain Admins group. Using the Add-ADGroupMember, I ran this:

    Add-ADGroupMember "Domain Admins" sjones

    And it worked. I could easily log on and administer other machines with this account.