SQL Server 2014 – CTP Now Available for Download

SQL Server 2014 delivers:

• Mission critical performance across all database workloads with in-memory for online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing and business intelligence built-in as well as greater scale and availability
• Hybrid cloud platform enabling organizations to more easily build, deploy and manage database solutions that span on-premises and cloud
• Faster insights from any data with a complete BI solution using familiar tools like Excel

Key Features included in SQL Server 2014 CTP1:

In Memory Performance Built-In

• In-Memory OLTP – built in to core SQL Server database and uniquely flexible to work with traditional SQL Server tables allowing you to improve the performance of your database applications without having to refresh your existing hardware. Customers such as EdgeNet and Bwin are accelerating their businesses by achieving significant performance gains to scale.
• Enhanced In-Memory ColumnStore for data warehousing – now updatable with greater data compression for more real-time analytics support.
• New buffer pool extension support to non-volatile memory such as solid state drives (SSDs) – Increases performance and extends your in-memory buffer pools to SSDs for faster paging.
• New enhanced query processing – speeds all SQL Server queries regardless of workload.

Enhanced Availability, Security and Scalability

• Enhanced AlwaysOn – Built upon the significant capabilities introduced with SQL Server 2012, AlwaysOn delivers mission critical availability with up to eight readable secondaries and enhanced online operations. Failover Cluster Instances now support Windows Cluster Shared Volumes, improving the utilization of share storage and increasing failover resiliency.
• Enhanced separation of duties – Achieve greater compliance with new capabilities for creating role and sub-roles. For example, a database administrator can now manage data without seeing sensitive data or personally identifiable information.
• Greater scalability of compute, networking and storage with Windows Server 2012 R2 – SQL Server 2014 CTP1 supports Windows Server 2012 R2 CTP, so you can start to test the scalability gains Windows Server 2012 R2 provides for SQL Server:
  • Increased compute scale – Continue to benefit from scale for up to 640 logical processors and 4TB of memory in a physical environment and up to 64 virtual processors and 1TB of memory per VM.
  • Network virtualization and NIC teaming – Abstracts networking layer so you can easily migrate SQL Server from one datacenter to another. Increase network throughput for your mission critical SQL Server workloads by allowing those workloads to access more than one network card.
  • Storage virtualization with storage spaces – Create pools of storage and storage tiers allowing your hot data to access the premium storage and cold data to access standard storage improving resilience, performance and predictability.

Platform for Hybrid Cloud

While there are several additional hybrid cloud features coming in the feature complete CTP at a later date, today you can try the new hybrid cloud deployment wizard in this CTP.

• Deployment wizard for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machine – Point and click user interface built into SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to help customers easily deploy existing SQL Server databases into Windows Azure Virtual Machine.

Enhanced BI Capabilities

SQL Server 2014 is at the heart of our modern data platform which delivers a comprehensive BI solution that simplifies access to all data types big and small. Within SQL Server 2014 CTP1, you will find Power View support for multi-dimensional models which was also include in SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU4.

• Power View for Multi-Dimensional Models – Support for Power View for the multi-dimensional format within the BI Semantic Model in SQL Server Analysis Services.

Download SQL Server 2014 CTP1

SQL Server 2014 brings to market many new exciting capabilities that will deliver tremendous value to customers. You can begin to test many of these new features today with the release of the         SQL Server 2014 CTP1. For fast development and testing of SQL Server 2014 CTP features, we have made the CTP available on Windows Azure Virtual Machines in addition to the on-premises download.

If you are at TechEd Europe and want to learn more about SQL Server 2014 don’t miss these sessions:

• Wednesday, June 26^t: DBI-B317: Microsoft SQL Server 2014 – Future and Features
• Thursday, June 27^th: DBI-B306: Microsoft SQL Server High Availability and Disaster Recovery on Windows Azure

Learn more about SQL Server 2014 and download new datasheet and whitepapers here. You can also view the SQL Server 2014 CTP1 product documentation here.

To download click here – SQL Server 2014 CTP1

SQL Server 2014: Unlocking Real-Time Insights

Microsoft announced a wave of products and services that will help customers embrace the “enterprise cloud era.”

The next version of their data platform – SQL Server 2014 – is a key part of the day’s news. Designed and developed with our cloud-first principles in mind, it delivers built-in in-memory capabilities, new hybrid cloud scenarios and enables even faster data insights.

The journey to SQL Server 2014

It’s been a mere 14 months since we shipped SQL Server 2012 and in that time we’ve advanced our data platform portfolio with a preview of Windows Azure HDInsight, customer successes on Windows Azure SQL Database and releases of PowerPivot and Power View for Office 2013, project codename “Data Explorer” in Excel, Parallel Data Warehouse 2.0 and so much more. It’s been an incredibly busy time building a modern data platform that empowers businesses to unlock real-time insights from big data.

Among all these enhancements, SQL Server 2014 has been special to me. It started a few years ago when a group of SQL Server database engineers from my team, collaborated with Microsoft Research on a project to explore how to take advantage of changes in database design. The power of modern chipsets, the availability and scale of memory and the advent of solid state drives are just a few of the underlying system architectural changes that challenged our assumptions about design. We nurtured this project, in parallel to our work developing in-memory analytics capabilities in Excel, SQL Server Analysis Services and the RDMBS in-memory column index, because we had an intuition that the need for real-time analytics in businesses was growing. We’d seen early success with StreamInsight and this new project, codenamed “Hekaton,” was focused on extreme scale and performance for online transaction processing (OLTP) – in short, managing business activity in real time.

In-memory in the box enables breakthrough performance

Today, we’re delivering Hekaton’s in-memory OLTP in the box with SQL Server 2014. For our customers, “in the box” means they don’t need to buy specialized hardware or software and can migrate existing applications to benefit from performance gains. Early adopters are already experiencing significant gains from being able to run their applications at the speed of business. Edgenet, for example, has a SaaS solution for large-scale retailers that can now manage inventory updates in near real time – not the daily batch model of the past. The move from “we need to check the stock on shelves to see if what the system shows is correct” to “yes, we have one in stock and we know it’s still there” improves the end customer experience – and helps their margins.

As you can see from the Edgenet scenario, SQL Server 2014 is helping businesses manage their data in nearly real-time. The ability to interact with your data and the system supporting business activities is truly transformative. SQL Server 2014 builds on the in-memory analytics and data warehousing features already in SQL Server 2012 to help customers experience real-time business value with a familiar platform and built-in technology.

Delivering mission critical capabilities through new hybrid scenarios

In this era of big data, applications and data are going to depend on one another like never before. As a result, mission-critical performance and scale has to be part of every application and solution, not just the select few.

SQL Server 2014 includes comprehensive, high-availability technologies that now extend seamlessly into Windows Azure to make the highest level of service level agreements possible for every application while also reducing CAPEX and OPEX for mission-critical applications. Simplified cloud backup, cloud disaster recovery and easy migration to Windows Azure Virtual Machines are empowering new, easy to use, out of the box hybrid capabilities.

We’ve also improved the AlwaysOn features of the RDBMS with support for new scenarios, scale of deployment and ease of adoption. We continue to make major investments in our in-memory columnstore for performance and now compression, and this is deeply married to our business intelligence servers and Excel tools for faster business insights.

Unlocking real-time insights

Our big data strategy to unlock real-time insights continues with SQL Server 2014. We are embracing the role of data – it dramatically changes how business happens. Real-time data integration, new and large data sets, data signals from outside LOB systems, evolving analytics techniques and more fluid visualization and collaboration experiences are significant components of that change. Another foundational component of this is embracing cloud computing: nearly infinite scale, dramatically lowered cost for compute and storage and data exchange between businesses. Data changes everything and across the data platform, we continue to democratize technology to bring new business value to our customers.

This is an exciting day for me – the SQL Server 2014 release will mean a lot to our customers and will bring new scenarios and possibilities to fruition. Our industry is evolving rapidly and together we will change how business works with real-time insights, powerful analytics and a complete data platform

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