Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Be careful with your smartphone

    I love my iOS device and find it very handy.

    More and more tech professionals I know are carrying smartphones. There seems to be a split among technical people between iOS, Android, or WP7 platforms, but it seems that all the mobile OSes are extremely handy for system administrators. I know that I appreciate the ability to connect to email and other people when I’m away from my desk. If I were a production DBA, the ability to potentially fix something remotely, without the need to go to the office or back home, would be extremely valuable.

    However, carrying around a smartphone isn’t without a risk. The features and capabilities of the various mobile operating systems are a double edged sword. The power of the smartphone can easily be used for attacks against your network. This piece talks about hackers targeting the mobile platforms as another attack vector. That’s scary, especially as most of these mobile OSes were not designed to be secure.

    One of the very attractive parts of the Android platform is it’s openness. Anyone can build an app and sell it in the Android Marketplace. However that openness also means that the marketplace is a target for malware. While you might not like the Apple review process, it does offer some security. I’m not sure how the Windows Phone 7 platform is affected, but I would hope there is some security review. I also hope third party stores, like the Amazon Android store, will do some kind of security review to prevent malware.

    Ultimately if you are a privileged user on a corporate network, and you connect from your smartphone, you need to be extra careful. Set a password on your phone, don’t save passwords to trusted systems in your mobile browser, and be especially careful about scanning your system regularly.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • How to change the SQL Server service account

    It’s easy. First you click here:

    serviceaccount1

    Then you find the SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2 program group

    serviceaccount2

    Open those and then pick the SQL Server Configuration Manager.

    serviceaccount3

    You might get a UAC message asking if you want to make changes to the system, and say yes. This application can change service accounts, which is a sysadmin function. The screen basically looks like this:

    serviceaccount4

    If you right click the SQL Server entry, the database engine, you can select the properties, and you’ll get this screen:

    serviceaccount6

    On this screen, you can change the service account, and this is where you should change it. There are the three built in accounts in the top drop down (Local System, Local Service, and Network Service). I don’t recommend these. Instead, I recommend you create a new Active Directory Domain account (or local user account), assign it no rights, and then use the lower radio button to select the account.

    serviceaccount7

    Note that you do can search for it, and also you need to enter the user account. The password, while conforming to your domain policy, shouldn’t be one you use elsewhere. Make it a long, impossible to guess combination of stuff. You don’t need to recover this or log on as the user after you’ve assigned it to SQL Server. If you need to recover the password, just change it.

    A couple quick notes, on the Service Tab you can set the startup mode (Manual, automatic) for the database engine.

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    You can also change startup parameters here, on the Advanced tab.

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    That’s it, it’s easy, and it’s how you should change the service account for SQL Server.

  • When in trouble, upgrade

    When in trouble, upgrade.

    That’s what I did the other day, when I found my Corel VideoStudio X2 (v12), wouldn’t play any videos. It was podcast edit day, and I was on a deadline. I know this is the worst advice, and not necessarily what you want to do, but X3 had come out late last year, and I’d even purchased an upgrade this past summer. I didn’t think I’d get any support on the old version, and the new version had proven very stable for many people.

    I hadn’t upgraded until now because the last upgrade I did, from v10 to X2 had taken me a few days to reset some of my clips, reload settings, etc. I was worried about the time involved, but after restarting my machine a couple times and trying different things with the software, I decided to try the upgrade. I searched through email to find my license key, discovered the X3 installation file in my \Downloads folder, and performed the upgrade.

    The installation was slow. Unpacking the installation files to get to the EULA took 10 minutes on my quad core desktop. From there, it was a simple matter to agree, input the serial number, and let the installation run. I have no idea how long it took because I left my desk to run an errand, and came back 20 minutes later to find it complete. Everything went smoothly, and apart from a couple of buttons I use being moved, everything seemed to function as before. It was even a little quicker when rendering video!

    Running an upgrade to fix an issue is not necessarily what I’d recommend for most people. It’s a sledgehammer fix for a potential screwdriver problem. Really you ought to work through issues with your vendor, and if you are really stuck, perform your upgrades on a test system, and actually test the process.

    In my case, I had a backup of the video files, and I also had a fallback to use my laptop to edit the video. It would have entailed a little setup and probably burned an hour, which is something I need to do, but I had a backup plan ready in case this didn’t work.

     

  • Propose this to your boss

    If Nordstrom's can have an innovation lab, can't you?

    I’ve written a few times about the ways in which you could find interesting projects at work and potentially learn a few new skills while improving the ways your company uses technology. More and more companies are willing to allow side projects like the Google 20% time or the Atlassian FedEx days. My own company, Red Gate Software, implements this a few times a year as “Down Tools Week.”

    Many of you have replied that your companies are resistant to this, or your boss doesn’t think it’s a good idea. I have certainly had a few managers that felt that way, but I’ve also had success over time in changing their minds a bit. I’ve been able to get them to give me the chance to pilot ideas in a small way. Sometimes it’s taken years, but I’ve learned to play “long ball” and think about succeeding over time, not getting my way this week.

    One of the ways you can convince someone to give you a chance is to continue to show other examples of success from other companies. Nordstrom’s, not necessarily the place you’d expect to see IT innovation, has a video of how their lab enables them to build better applications. It might be worth saving this link, and even sending it to your boss with a proposal.

    If your boss is supportive, ask for a week to work on a project with another person or two and spec something out in your proposal. If your boss is skeptical, ask for a few half days across a month to work on something and build some basic prototype project. Even if it’s mocked up on paper, you can show the value of how an idea might work. If you get some support from your end users and customers, you might find yourself with a fun project to work on in 2012.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts