I’m pleased to be able to announce that the 2nd edition of Securing SQL Server is going to be available soon.  It’s just been made available for pre-order on Amazon.com.  The second edition comes in at about 350 pages (according to Amazon, I don’t actually have a copy of it yet) while the first edition came in at about 270 pages so there has been a LOT of material added to the book.

While a lot of the new information is focused on SQL Server 2012, there is also a lot of new material which relates to older version of SQL Server including chapters on SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services, information on Instant File Initialization, EXECUTE AS, Database Firewalls, SAN Security, Actual Data Security (no idea how this got missed the first time around, but that’s to Brent Ozar for pointing it out).

As far as the SQL Server 2012 information you’ll find updated information about the SHA2 hashing algorithms, Securing AlwaysOn Availability Groups, Security and SQL Server Clustering, Security and Contained Databases and a lot more.

If you already have a copy of the 1st edition I encourage you to take a look at the second edition as well.  I know that it’s really soon for a second edition of a book (the first edition just came out February 2011, but this new edition comes on the release of SQL Server 2012.

Hopefully you pre-order you copy today.

Denny

P.S. Yes this edition will be available for the Kindle as well, that takes a little time.  As soon as I know that it’s been posted for the Kindle (usually happens a little after Amazon gets the physical books) I’ll post another announcement here.

P.P.S. If you visit my SecuringSQLServer.com site I’ve updated everything there for the new edition.  You can always find the old edition listed on the Other Books page on that site or on the Books page on mrdenny.com.

The prizes which they announced are:

• Bronze Member Badge: Sticker and ITKnowledgeExchange t-shirt
• Silver Member Badge: $25 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Gold Member Badge: $50 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Platinum Member Badge: $100 Amazon.com Gift Card

• Nerd Cog: $10 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Genius Cog: $25 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Brainiac Cog: $50 Amazon.com Gift Card

• Certified Nerd Cog: $10 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Certified Genius Cog: $25 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Certified Brainiac Cog: $50 Amazon.com Gift Card

Not surprisingly there are some rules which are also posted.

• Must be active within the past six months to qualify for initial prize.
• For prizes that must be shipped, allow 2 to 4 weeks for delivery. Shipping only permitted to United States, Canada, and Europe.
• For further TechTarget contest rules, please see the official contest rules.

But that’s a pretty slim set of rules, for the chance to get some pretty major cash in Amazon gift cards.  (Don’t forget that you can use these Amazon gift cards to pick up a copy of my book “Securing SQL Server“.)

But it is sort of true.  I was grabbing the URL for my book to send to someone today, and I noticed that the Kindle version had a price listed.  The book is $39.96 at the moment (I don’t set the price), so all of you that were waiting for the Kindle version, your wait is over.  Amazon does have the paperback in stock again ($32.64 at the moment) if that is your preference.

Denny

This means that either Amazon either ordered just enough copies to cover the pre-orders,  or they ordered a heck of a lot of copies and the SQL Server community bought them like crazy.  Personally I’m hoping for the second reason and not the first.  But when I look at the sales graph that Amazon shows me, it might actually be the second.

If you look at the graph to the right (I’m a DBA, we love data) you can see how the book has been ranked on Amazon’s best seller list over the last month.  What I really like is that yesterday, on my birthday, the book breached the 100,000 mark for just the second time.  The first time was back on October 22, 2010 which the book was ranked #99,971 overall.  Well the rank yesterday was #49,111.  And unlike every prior spike, this wasn’t a one day spike.  There were actually two days of positive climbing in the rankings.  Does this tell me that the book has been selling like crazy?  No, well sort of no.  The book rankings are based on daily sales, and as you get closer to being #1, it takes more and more sales to move up the rankings.

There’s no specific sales data available for the book yet that I can see, that all comes from BookScan (a company that gathers sales info from all the major retailers) so it’ll take a week or two for data to show up, but at least I can see some general info about the book so I’ve got a general idea.

Now I get to move into another party of the book writing phase that I like to call “Please tell me you liked it”.  Now I have to sit around and wait for the revues to be posted about the book.  Personally I’m pretty proud of it, I should be proud of it I wrote the thing after all, but I hope that you the SQL Server community at large like it, and more importantly that you (or someone you know) find it useful.  If just one (or maybe two) people are able to better protect their SQL Server data because of the book I’m going to call it a success.

I think I’ve rambled enough for the day.  I’ve got to get back to my MCM study.

Denny

But the big question that I have (besides pricing) is how does all this fit into the overall picture for my company or my client.

Do I see a lot of large enterprises moving large parts of there environment into the Cloud?  Probably not.

Do I see the small/medium business moving customer facing applications to the Cloud?  Possibly, it’s going to depend on the application and the business model.

Do I see the cloud being a stepping stone in a eventual path to building your own data center?  Very much so.

Why don’t I see large enterprises moving data into the cloud?  Mainly control and compliance.  Large companies (and even larger medium sized companies) want to control everything about there data.  They also need to be able to ensure that no one who isn’t authorized to view the data can’t view the data.  The easiest way to do this is to own the machines that have the data. Large companies also have to have DR plans.  Those plans usually can’t depend on some other company doing “Yes, it will be back up.”.

I said above that I see the cloud being a stepping stone to getting your own servers and data center.  The path that I see in my mind is for the small to medium business who can’t afford to setup their own servers onsite or at a colo.  For them cloud computing is a great first step to let them get started and see where the application goes.  If nothing happens, then there isn’t much capitol lost.  If it grows like crazy then everything scales nicely (not yet sure how well and automatically the databases scale).  This gives the SMB the ability to judge where the business is going to go and how fast it’s going to get there.

Some applications may be able to stay in the cloud forever.  Either they persist a lot of the data at the client, or they simply never outgrow the cloud.  On the otherhand I see a lot of applications going from running in the cloud to moving to an MSP (Managed Services Provider) such as Rackspace, MaximumASP, etc.  These guys offer the benifits of dedicated hardware, without having to shell out the massive amounts of cash up front.  Over time however it becomes cost ineffective to continue at an MSP, and buying your own hardware simply becomes the correct thing to do.  The trick is knowing when this is the case, so that you aren’t spending a lot of money at the MSP.

Now for those that were paying attention, you’ll noticed that I skipped the point above about the SMB moving somethings into the cloud.  I think this falls into both answers above.  Some things will make sense to host up in the cloud, other things won’t.

What do you think will happen to the cloud?  Where do you see it being really useful?  Will you be moving applications into the cloud at your current company, at a future company?

These are questions that you’ll need to ask yourself at some point, so why not now?  In these times of rapid change to the IT world (and the world in general) don’t be afraid to change your answers to these questions.

Denny