Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Enabling Compression? Update your baseline

    I wrote recently about capacity planning, with an item near the end about disk usage. Someone pointed out to me that compression can dramatically affect your baseline, and as you implement it, or de-implement it, you need to update your baseline.

    That’s an important point, and if you make changes, you want to do one of two things.

    • Recalculate the old numbers to be in line with the new ones
    • Make a note in your documentation somewhere

    Whether you restate the history is up to you, but I wouldn’t. I hate changing the old values, but I can see someone not being aware of changes and perhaps getting confused. If that is a problem, and you are sure you’ll keep compression around, then you can run a quick test of compressed and uncompressed backups, get a rough idea of the ratio, and then alter your old numbers.

    For me, I prefer to make a documentation note, and update everyone to be aware of the change, perhaps even adding filters to my extrapolation routines to not use the older data.

  • No Cloud for Stack Exchange

    Stack Exchange administrators love computers

    One very large and successful site in the technology world is the Stack Exchange collection of sites. They’ve grown and scales with relatively few people, and they have chosen to host thier own systems as opposed to moving to the cloud? Why? One of the administrators talks about it in this blog post. The short answer: they love computers.

    That’s pretty cool from my perspective. They have a passion for their jobs, they like the different aspects of it, and they aren’t going to change that to save a few dollars or make their jobs easier. They don’t want to avoid responsibility for parts of their jobs, they want to embrace all of their jobs, as something they enjoy doing.

    That’s very cool, and it makes sense for a small company. However I’d hope that even at larger companies there were people that enjoyed their job. I know some DBAs love hardware, and enjoy digging into the specs and enjoying going over the configuration of every new server they procure. Me? I’d like to have three drops downs, with options for CPU, RAM, and disk, and be done with it, letting the people that do love hardware pick the actual configuration. Hopefully all of us love our jobs working with data.

    Life is short, and while there will always be things we don’t enjoy about our jobs, there should be plenty of things we do. If there aren’t, I’d hope we’d all be looking for some other job that we do enjoy.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • The Avon Walk

    It’s more often than not that I wake up, hoping that no new bad news comes my way.

    The short story is that my wife is going to do a 39mi walk this summer to raise money for cancer. If you are so inclined, you can donate here.

    I’m fine, my family is healthy, and lucky, and we don’t have any real problems. We have inconveniences and annoyances, and I’m thankful that’s all we have to worry about. We are very fortunate that the five of us are all living happy, successful lives.

    However that’s not the case with many friends and acquaintances we have. Lately it seems that 1 out of every 10 people we know has been struck by cancer. Some are survivors in remission, some are struggling and some are just starting their treatments.

    Perhaps it’s a sign of getting older, and our friends getting older. Sickness is more likely as you age, and we are coming to terms with this as the news of friends’ struggles reaches us. It’s sad, and it sucks, and I hope that we can find a cure for the various cancers in my lifetime.

    My wife lost her mother to breast cancer, and she has a few friends that are in the middle of their fights. She writes about it on her donation page, and decided to do something more than donate our own money. She committed to the Avon Walk this summer, a marathon one day, and a half the next. She started her training last weekend, dragging me along for a few walks.

    She is looking to raise awareness of the issue, and also raise money to help fight the disease. If you are inclined to help the research, please feel free to donate. If you’d like to sign up for this challenge, we’d love to have you join in as well.

  • Back to Vegas

    Back to Vegas for SQL Server Connections in 2012

    I enjoy Las Vegas and am glad to be heading back to present at the Spring SQL Server Connections conference in March. If you wear a number of hats at your job, and deal with a variety of platforms in the Microsoft technology stack, this is a great event to attend. There are nine conferences taking place at the same time, in the same place, and you get the chance to see sessions from Mark Minasi on Windows, Scott Hillier on Sharepoint, Miguel Castro on Visual Studio, and more along with your SQL Server sessions.

    I know you can’t attend every session, and you can’t see all the content that week, but the sessions are recorded and attendees can get DVDs of the content. I love that, and it means I can pop in and out of sessions, checking out the content and topics, and mark those in a program that I want to watch later. It also means that I can focus on the important parts of the conference: meeting people.

    When I’m looking to learn, I try to make time to talk to the people that can teach me something or answer a question I have. I can always email someone later, but the chance to have a meaningful conversation is worth the time spent at events.

    I like going to Las Vegas, but not for the reasons that many people go. I don’t gamble, having bet exactly $0 on my last two trips. I don’t stay out too late, or attend the shows. I go because the weather is great, it’s close to home, and I get the chance to network and bond with people in this amazing SQL Server community.

    Ask your boss for some training money, and come join me this March in Las Vegas.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts