Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book is simply not factually correct on a large number of issues. Page 309 - the high availability chart shows pre-SQL-2012 clustering and SQL-2012+ clustering as having different recovery point objectives. (They don't - they just have different marketing names.) It says database mirroring, AlwaysOn Availability Groups, and failover clusters fail over in less than three seconds - that's just not realistic. It says you can do vMotion on a database mirror - that's not realistic either, because synchronous mirrors often fail over during long vMotions. Those errors are all on just one page, in one chart, and it just keeps coming. Page 111 says that if you put your log files on local SSDs, you should "have an additional copy on SAN." That's just not even physically possible with SQL Server - you can have two log files, but if either of them fails, your database is down. This concept is possible in Oracle, and the authors' Oracle background keeps showing up throughout the book. They recommend things that work in Oracle, but not in SQL Server. Page 111 also says that Microsoft recommends 1 data file per CPU core and .25 to 1 user database. That was true in 2005-2006, but Microsoft has since released multiple knowledge base articles like KB2154845 that have better guidance. I could go on and on (and in my book review on BrentOzar dot com, I do) but the bottom line is that you should wait for the next revision of this book. The first edition has too many technical problems.