vm – sqlsunday.com

Set your Azure VM to auto-shutdown and have it notify you on Slack

Virtual machines cost money when they’re powered on. Most servers obviously need to be on 24 hours a day. Others, like development machines, only have to be on when you’re using them. And if you forget to turn them off, they’ll empty out your Azure credits (or your credit card) before you know it.

Today, I’ll show you how to set an Auto-shutdown time to turn a VM off if you forget, as well as have Azure notify you on Slack 30 minutes ahead of time, so you have the option to postpone or cancel the shutdown.

Encrypting SQL Server connections with Let’s Encrypt certificates

Encrypting your SQL Server’s TDS connections should be high on your list of things to do if you’re concerned with the privacy of your data. This often boils down to one big problem: can you get a valid certificate without paying a ton of money, and will it work with SQL Server?

So follow me down the rabbit hole, as we work out the steps to using Let’s Encrypt to create (and auto-renew!) a certificate for SQL Server. This is going to get technical.