Over a decade ago, when the startup company that I worked for went bankrupt, I received a few servers and some other hardware as a partial severance. At the time it seemed like a good idea, and it was nice to have a few spare servers on hand. I would later use some of that hardware to work on SQLServerCentral. My wife, however, wasn't thrilled since spare hardware, even powerful hardware, doesn't buy groceries.

These days the pace of technology change is high. SQL Server is a stable platform that many companies might install and use for a decade, but it seems we have new features to learn every 18-24 months as new versions are released. I think more and more of us have to understand a wider variety of features and platform all the time...

Read the rest of "The Virtual Lab" at SQLServerCentral.