Free Tools for the SQL Server DBA Part 2

Welcome to the second edition of "Free Tools for the SQL Server DBA". It has been a while since the original article was published in May 2007. Since that time, the number of free tools for SQL Server has continued to grow even though some have disappeared. This article covers tools not included in the original article.

All tools listed are free with no known expiration date. In order to download them, some sites will require you to register which might result in a phone call or e-mail from the vendor. Some tools are free versions of vendor's purchasable software with features disabled. While others tools are on par or better than what you can purchase.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tools/64908/

Database Indexing Development Lifecycle...Say What?

This is the first article of a series where I’ll be exploring Indexing Guidelines. Having appropriate indexes on your database is critical in making sure your application is retrieving records quickly. However, having too many indexes can also slow down your application. In this series of articles, I hope to help you understand how to determine what columns you should consider for indexes, and how those columns should be used in indexes to optimize performance. In this first article, I will be discussing the indexing development lifecycle.

Using SSIS to zip files and email the zipped files

This article makes use of global variables throughout and shows how they can be used in SSIS, you can adapt these to make a package that can be made as flexible as you want. The package described here zips all files in a folder to a single archive zip file.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Integration+Services+(SSIS)/64028/

Pre Check List for 64 BIT SQL Server 2008 Cluster Installation

The purpose of this document is to help in the installation of SQL Server 2008 with tips and guidelines that I have found to work well in my environment. During installation I found missing information that was important for the successful installation of SQL Server 2008 (64 bit) on a Windows 2008 (64 bit) operating system in a cluster.

ReverseDOS - spam filter for ASP.NET sites

ReverseDOS is a very simple HttpModule that checks various parts of incoming requests against a list of crap that you don't want pushed on to your site. If ReverseDOS detects a match, it attempts to stall the requesting client for a number of seconds (specified in a .config file). During this loop, which uses virtually no server resources - and only a tiny smidgen of bandwidth, ReverseDOS checks every .3 seconds to see if the client is still connected. If the spammer disconnects, good riddance. If the spammer sticks around, they're finally rewarded with the Response Headers - containing an HTTP 403 - Access Denied Response Code. (Awwwhh tooo bad...)

http://www.angrypets.com/tools/rdos/

Microsoft Hyper-V Networking and Configuration - Part 1

In the first of a series of articles on Hyper-V Networking, Nirmal explains Hyper-V networking and VLAN tagging, and shows how to set up a Virtual Network switch. Once this is done, the Hyper-V Virtual Network Switches can be used to connect unlimited no. of Virtual Machines.

http://www.simple-talk.com/content/article.aspx?article=884

Upgrade Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010

In this article, the first of two in which Jaap describes how to move from Exchange Server 2003 straight to Exchange Server 2010, he shows what is required before moving mailboxes from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2010. He shows how to upgrade Active Directory, install both Exchange Server 2010 and certificates, and set up the Public Folder replication.

http://www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/exchange/upgrade-exchange-2003-to-exchange-2010/?utm_source=simpletalkExchange&utm_medium=email&utm_content=UpgradeExchange-20091221&utm_campaign=Exchange

Part II here.