I know some people like long holidays, but I tend to prefer short ones. Today is one of those breaks for me. I’m coming back from Pensacola and SQL Saturday #132, taking the day off as I spent Sunday and the morning with my daughter.
This was a combination of work on Fri night/Sat for the event, and then a mini-vacation on Fri morning, Sunday, and Monday morning for the two of us. A little Daddy/daughter time that we both enjoy and look forward to.
Remember to get those breaks in when you can, and take advantage of the chance to spend time away from work if you are traveling and can fit it in.
Hopefully you don’t have any server disasters because of coffee spilled on a machine.
This editorial that was originally published on Aug 15, 2007. It is being rerun as Steve is traveling.
This is an interesting list of disasters that can befall a production system. It comprises more than database servers, but certainly can happen to them as well.
The list is pretty good and of these I’ve had more than a few of them happen to me. There were a few that I’ve never seen and it makes me worry a bit that this guy doesn’t have a good staff or set of vendors working with him. But one of these is very interesting.
The second item on the list, a controller going bad and corrupting disks, is an interesting one in today’s world. What would you do if this happened on your SAN? Actually I know what you’d do. First you’d be in denial, and I don’t mean the river in Africa.
Then you’d tell the SAN guys. They wouldn’t believe you. You’d argue and they’d check things, then they’d wonder how it could happen and why? You’d scream at them to fix it, probably using 4 letter, not 3 letter words. They’d start looking for ways to recover data and your hair would be slowly thinning as upper managers started calling down looking for answers.
It shouldn’t happen, but it could. Some marketing VP is showing off that nice piece of SAN equipment with it’s high speed switches, dozens of drives, and lots of colored wires. He sloshes some coffee onto the system, freezes, but when the flashing red lights and siren from the Enterprise don’t go off (Red Alert!), he continues his tour while the controller scribbles on your disks.
Restoring from backup might be easy. Of course if you have a system like some I’ve seen that shares physical disks among multiple LUNs, it might not.
Disaster Recovery is rarely the hurricane Katrina type of issue. Usually it’s something like a disk drive, raid controller, cut wire, etc. that you have to deal with. So think about all of the minor disasters that you want to be sure you can handle and get some practice in on those. Make sure you have spare parts, you can rebuild a server (QA machines are handy for this), you know how to perform a restore.
And most of all, be sure that you know where the backup files are stored. Preferably on different disks than the production data.
Who will be the Exceptional DBA of 2012? I’ll be judging.
It’s hard to believe that it’s time for the Exceptional DBA awards once again. It was just a few months ago that I watched the presentation of the award to Jeff Moden in Seattle. However time flies, especially as I get older, and the nominations are once again open for the 2012 award. You can enter yourself or someone else between now and June 29th, so take a chance and enter if you think you’re doing a great job as a DBA for your company.
The previous winners have been ordinary people, just like most of you out there, that go to work, do their job, and are relatively unknown. They are exceptional, however, and their applications have shown that. These are people that go above and beyond what others do. They under-promise, over-deliver, and they help others. Those are the types of traits and characteristics that I get from their nomination forms. It’s interesting to see that many of our past finalists not only entered the contest, but were entered by a co-worker. That in and of itself says something about their work when a friend is willing to nominate them.
I’m judging again this year, along with Brad McGehee, Grant Fritchey, and Rodney Landrum. We’ve all down this before, and we all have lots of experience with people that stand out, and do not stand out, at work and in the community. We each have a slightly different take on the award, but we all get together and debate and decide who the finalists will be.
From my perspective, I want to see someone that does two main things. First, they’re effective. I have always been very successful at different jobs because I get things done. I ensure the systems work, and I solve problems, without getting bogged down in arguments, religious wars, or personal conflicts. My job first and foremost is to ensure that things work as people expect. I’m looking for those traits in an Exceptional DBA. Second, I want to see someone that makes others better, that helps the community. It doesn’t have to be by speaking, or blogging, or any one particular thing, but there are lots of smart people out there that get things done. I think the exceptional ones also make others better, either inside their company, in their area, or throughout the world. They share what they know and help lift up everyone else’s skills.
If you think you qualify, take some time and put together a nomination. If you think there’s someone that’s helped you and does a great job, nominate them. Make sure you spend a little time drafting, and proofing what you write. Good communication is essential here, and we all are writers for a living, so make sure you send us your best effort.
Enter today, and you may be the Exceptional DBA of 2012.
Being an intern at Google or Microsoft has to be very cool.
Today we have an editorial from Aug 8, 2007 that is being republished as Steve is on holiday.
You wouldn’t think that it would take much to woo interns to Silicon Valley, especially for Google. My guess is that Google and Microsoft get to fight over the top candidates, and neither of them is really a loser. It’s all the other companies out there that end up getting the less highly rated interns.
Which is cool with me. It would have given me lots of other choices if I were graduating 🙂
Still, how cool would it be to get to the Bill Gate summer BBQ while in college?
I had the chance to intern at Virginia Power a long time ago and it turned out to be a great experience. I was an EE graduate student at the time and ended up in the maintenance group learning how to schedule maintenance and giving input for work that was actually being done. Done by someone else, of course. It was, after all, a nuclear power plant. You can’t have interns running around with wrenches tightening reactor bolts. It is rightie-tightie, right?
However I ended up moving over to the IT group and writing a scheduling application that my old department actually used to manage their work. I stayed in IT, switched to computer engineering, and the rest is history.
I think interning is a great idea and it gives you the chance to groom someone for your company. It’s a chance for students to learn, do real work, and you to find out who fits and doesn’t fit in your organization. And it brings a new perspective to your group, with the addition of someone that isn’t set in their ways. After the recent Revisit What You Know, maybe that’s a really good thing.
I think there are less IT people to choose from overall, especially as salaries stagnate a little and the layoffs continue, but there is still a demand for people that’s hard to fill. If your company doesn’t look to hire people right out of college, maybe they should.
