Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Four Years Later

    Yesterday I republished a piece on cloud computing, and I was struck by a sentence in the piece. I had written ” Paul Nielsen says inside of 2 years we’ll be leaning cloud first, local server second and in 5 hosting your own data will seem obsolete.” I had written I was skeptical of that, but I wanted to revisit the topic. It’s been 4.5 years since I wrote that, so it’s close to five years.

    Are we thinking cloud first for SQL Server applications? I can say that for the businesses I’ve considered or engaged in, we do think about cloud type services first. The cost and hassles of procuring hardware mean that for a small business, I’m not sure it’s worth renting space in your own, or even someone else’s, data center. It’s much more cost effective and easier to rent a virtual machine or two from Azure, AWS, Rackspace or another vendor. For many non-database services, like email, it’s probably better just to contract for a service, and not even concern yourself with machines or software.

    For larger, more established businesses, however, I’m not sure that most SQL Server professionals think cloud first. There are still lots of concerns over security, control, and performance. Most DBAs I know do think virtual machines in many cases, but without their own infrastructure, not the cloud.

    I do think we could get to the point where many DBAs think about the cloud first, but only if their clients find provisioning a new server inside isn’t as smooth as clicking a few buttons. For the DBAs that ensure new databases can be created quickly and easily, I would guess that their clients would never even bother mentioning the cloud.

    Steve Jones

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  • Getting Started with CI and Databases

    It’s fairly easy. At least, I think it is if a salesperson can do it.

    Alex Yates, salesman extraordinaire at Red Gate Software, spent a lunch hour recently setting up a CI system so he could better understand how hard, or easy, it can be for customers. He wrote about his experiences using the Jenkins CI server.

    Check it out. If Alex can do it, I bet most of you developers and DBAs can as well.

  • The Cloud of Destiny

    This editorial was originally published on Mar 15, 2009. It is being re-run as Steve is away on the 2013 SQL in the City tour.

    Is it inevitable that SQL Server will move to the cloud? In a word, yes.

    But like absolutely everything else with databases, “it depends” applies as well. I am sure that we’ll have support for SQL Server in the cloud, something much more advanced than the current state of SQL Server Data Services, before too many more releases.

    Paul Nielsen says inside of 2 years, and in 5 we’ll be leaning cloud first, local server second. I think that’s a bit aggressive, and I do think Denis Gobo has some great thoughts about a few things that need to be done before SQL Server can move into the clouds, but it’s going to get there for many people. Not everyone, but many people.

    If you think about it, we are already moving towards a cloud type architecture. SQL Server has supported the idea of master/target servers for awhile, and with the addition of Policy Based Management, we are moving towards a way of telling SQL Server how we want it to work and behave and letting it then handle the details.

    Much of IT is slowly moving down this path of requesting and using resources, and not necessarily specifying the details. We have implemented SANs that hide the disk architectures from us. For the most part they work, as long as those engineers in the deep bowels of SAN-storage land continue to replace disks as they fail.

    In 2007 and 2008 is seemed many companies were also looking beyond individual servers by provisioning virtual machines and letting our hypervisors handle the details of getting the required resources to the calling server instance. There’s  still work to be done here to allow database servers to take advantage of this, but it’s a matter of when now, not if.

    Tomorrow we’ll take a look at another aspect of SQL Server in the cloud.

    Steve Jones

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  • Two Weeks to SQL Intersection

    If you haven’t made it to a conference this year, you’ve still got a great one to think about: SQL Intersection. The second installment of this conference, run by SQLskills (Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal) takes place in two weeks. Come to Las Vegas and learn a ton about SQL Server on October 27-30.  You can register now and if you choose the SHOW package, you’ll get an XBOX One or a Surface RT.

    I spoke at this event in the spring and it was interesting. There were some amazing speakers (Brent Ozar, Kendra Little, Joe Sack, and more), which meant I didn’t have too many questions (or attendees) at my sessions. That’s OK. If I had the chance, I’d probably rather go see those speakers talk about performance rather than some of my niche topics.

    This fall I’ve redone some sessions and built new ones. Perhaps I’ll do better as I have some developer focused topics and there will be developers and hybrid technology folks at the rest of the Dev Interestion event. With ASP.NET, Visual Studio, Azure, and Sharepoint events taking place as well, perhaps I’ll get a few people to wander over as I walk about Version Control for databases along with Automated Building and Testing of your database changes. My employer, Red Gate Software, has tools and does a lot of work in this area, and while you don’t need our tools, you do want to be sure you implement these concepts in your environment.

    I’ll also be talking about branding, but tell your boss not to worry. I’m not trying to get you a new employer, but help you stand out in your current one, get a raise, or find a better job that fits what you want to do.

    It will be chilly in most of the country by late October, but it should still be beautiful in Las Vegas. If you stick around for the weekend, Halloween in the city is something to see. Come to the conference and extend it into a vacation that you’ll never forget.

    Register today for the last big SQL Server conference I’ll be at in 2013 and I hope to see you there.