When it comes to SQL Server database indexes there is a wide scale of variation in depth of knowledge on this important topic among IT professionals leveraging SQL Server power while not necessarily being specialist DBA. Let’s discuss SQL server indexes a bit here with non-SQL DBAs/non-DB developers audience in mind covering why and how sides of the subject.

I still remember one of my interviews where I was asked something along the lines of “what comprises a database?” Being an experienced IT professional, I’ve instantly said something about rows and columns forming tables and entities within those, and something about relations between entities/tables and once I said my “that’s it without going into details too much” one of the interviewers said: “And what about indexes?”, “ah, yes indexes…” was my response. I think this is beginning of the scale of non-SQL professional knowledge about indexes – you are vaguely aware that they exist and have some vague idea about what they do.

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NIC teaming is not something we got with Windows Server 2016 but I just find it interesting to review this functionality as we have it in the current iteration of Windows Server, as usual, touching a bit on basics and history of this feature.

NIC teaming feature reached its maturity in Server 2012 R2 and there are (almost) no major changes in this department in Server 2016, yet if you just starting out with a practical use of NIC teaming on prepping for any related Microsoft exam you may find it useful to review this feature thoroughly.

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In my previous blog post, I covered SharePoint 2016 installation process, my next logical step after that was to configure SharePoint app catalog so that I can add K2 for SharePoint app and as I covered this process earlier on my personal blog, I expected this to be a small task. Indeed, I had created it following steps from my old blog post in just minutes, but, alas, I run into loads of warnings while running K2 for SharePoint AppDeployment.exe. I sorted most of them but after seeing extra warnings telling me that additional configuration is required just because I’m using HTTP instead of HTTPS I decided that it is better to re-create my app catalog using HTTPS.

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Recently there was an article on StarWind Blog dedicated to Exchange 2016 installation written by Nicolas Prigent, so I decided that some folks might want to get something similar for SharePoint 2016, so here you are. Disclaimer: I did not touch on scripting SharePoint installation with PowerShell or any other advanced stuff, but I promise that you’ll find some interesting details beyond of “how do I click my way through setup wizard” information.

Microsoft’s SharePoint evolved quite dramatically in three previous major releases (2007, 2010, 2013) and now we have yet another version – SharePoint 2016. As usual, in this release, you can find additional functionality and loads of things to learn. But I think what you may be interested in it is just how to do a quick install to play with the latest version of SharePoint and test if it works well for your scenarios whatever they are. For example, in my case, I am going to test different scenarios of integration between K2 blackpearl and SharePoint 2016 among many other things. Disclaimer: if you in a mood to read somewhat dry and lengthy official installation guide – it exists and should be perused before doing production installation, but as the usual official documentation does not go as a pleasant easy read for the majority of people.

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Time to continue our conversation about that “scaled down even further” Server 2016 installation option. In my previous article, I covered general concepts around Nano Server, now I want to switch gears and talk about more practical aspects: installation and management. At the end of the day, you would agree that the best way to learn new technology it is trying to use it – this way you will be exposed to its strengths and weaknesses directly, and can get the real understanding of whether it works for you or not. Though at this point even Microsoft admits that despite all its greatness, at the moment, Nano Server has quite limited utility as it supports only a small subset of roles and features out of those which you can find in full GUI version of Windows Server.

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We are in 2017 now, and it’s about fourth month since Windows Server 2016 has been RTMed in September 2016. By now, everyone probably heard about one of the big new features of Windows Server 2016 – Nano Server, new installation option which you can’t select during setup 🙂 . But I think there is still a lot of “why” and “how” questions around Nano Server. In this blog post, I will try to provide a bit of a history and compare Nano Server with other installation types.

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