Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Off to Live 360

    I am off to Live 360 today, on my last trip of the year. I’m excited to deliver two presentations tomorrow (VSTH03 and VSTH12), but a little sad this is a very quick trip. I’m coming back Friday, so in total I’ll be in Orlando for about 43 hours, I need to sleep, so my time is less than that.

    I haven’t been to this conference in a few years, but I’m looking forward to going back, even though it’s a short trip. I always enjoy these multi-tech conferences because I get the chance to learn something completely out of my area. In my limited time, I’ll learn about Shift Left DevOps security, because it’s interesting and Brian is a friend. I will also try to hit a GraphQL session since I know nothing about it and it works with various db stores. If I can, I might do some prompt engineering as well.

    If you’re at the event, I’ll try to swing by Wed afternoon and be there all day Thur. Feel free to stop me and say hi.

  • How Do You Patch 100 Database Servers?

    In most of the organizations I’ve worked for or consulted with, patching was always a challenge. Patching hasn’t usually been given a priority and is often skipped when operations staff is busy. This has resulted in lots of un-patched, or slowly patched systems. I assume this is one reason Microsoft continues to release RTM-GDR patches because some people won’t patch at all unless there are critical fixes.

    I also know that much of IT management sees patching systems like patching parking lots. Needs to be done, but tomorrow, after we do other important work today.

    Patching isn’t easy, in fact, Allan Hirt says it was never easy, but these days we don’t get the downtime over a weekend to patch, and there is a desire to patch security issues immediately because of the potential reputational (more likely) or regulatory (less likely) risks. Also, we often need to patch dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of systems.

    So is there a way that most organizations do this? It’s interesting in the piece above that Allan notes that most of us have technical debt, and this debt consists of more than just code and systems. It’s also people, budget, politics, and more. This is even more of an issue if you didn’t write the software. Applications often limit patches or upgrades, and it can be hard enough to get applications certified on new platforms when you control everything. If you purchased something from a vendor, you might be bound by their timelines not your own.

    So how do you patch a lot of systems? There are lots of ideas and potential solutions. I’m sure Allan covered some recently in his session at the PASS Data Community Summit. For me, this boils down to building part of a process, using it, evaluating it, and then rolling it out wider. This might mean I need two processes because some systems will lag behind others for various reasons. I’d probably spend a year or two slowly adding to this process and getting it better, all the while ensuring I used automation as much as humanly possible to process notifications, approvals, and actually deploy code.

    Start small, experiment, test, evaluate, make changes. Always codifying things that I can. It’s a method that has worked for a long time.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Grinding Away: Michael Jordan

    A story from Tim Grover, who was Michael Jordan’s trainer when he was with the Chicago Bulls. I don’t know this is true, but I saw this story posted and I like it (and don’t like it).

    “After every game, I used to ask Michael one question: 5, 6, or 7? As in, what time are we hitting the gym tomorrow morning? And he’d snap back the time, and that was it. Especially after a loss, when there wasn’t a whole lot else to say.

    No discussion, no debate, no lame attempt to convince me he needed the morning off. ‘Are you good?’ ‘I’m good.’ ‘See you in the morning.’ And the next morning, at whatever time he’d decided, he’d awaken to find me standing outside his door.

    No matter what happened the night before—good game, bad game, soreness, fatigue—he was up working out every morning while most other guys slept. Interesting how the guy with the most talent and success spent more time working out than anyone else.”

    Grinding away, getting better at your craft, is something that all of us can do. Whether we want to or not is a separate story.

    Why I like this

    There aren’t excuses for continuing to work on your craft and it takes regular attention. It requires some dedication and commitment to improve.

    Why I don’t like this

    It’s easy to take this to far and think the routine of every day or every week is important. It’s also easy to drive yourself too far. If you want to be the rest of the best, then you need this drive.

    If you don’t want to be the best, but just be really good, then you need to do this often, but give yourself a break at times when life gets in the way.

  • Do You Want a Microsoft Solution?

    Microsoft constantly releases new features and products in the data platform space. Many of us have seen the SQL Server product grow in new ways, some of which are very useful to us. As an example the changes from log shipping to clustering to Availability Groups has improved our HA/DR options as well as the capabilities available to us in different situations.

    With that in mind, I saw someone recently that wanted to deploy SQL Server on Kubernetes, which is something that could be a very interesting way of managing your different systems. However, this individual wanted to know when Microsoft would release their own supported solution with a Microsoft operator to manage the instance. There is guidance from Microsoft, but no official operator.

    I saw a recommendation to use DH2i, which has a solution with an operator that can help here. In fact, in the MS docs, there are articles on using DH2i with SQL Server. However, the docs note that DH2i is responsible for supporting their product. The person asking about support didn’t want another vendor and wanted a Microsoft solution.

    Is that something you want? Do you want a Microsoft solution for most (or all) things? Or do you think third parties or bespoke solutions are acceptable? This could be your opinion or a policy/guideline from your employer, but let us know.

    To me, I think third parties are necessary. Microsoft can’t do everything, and they might not provide the support or flexibility that someone else can. Many of us sp_whoisactive, which isn’t an official Microsoft solution. There is a First Responder kit, diagnostic queries, a pressure detector, and plenty of other resources that people have created and shared. There are plenty of tools for SQL Server (and most other products) that various vendors have produced and sell which meet the needs of their customers.

    My view isn’t to choose a Microsoft solution for everything because their solutions aren’t always the best choice for my problem. Even when they work well, they are often incomplete and I need to do some work to get them to fit into my environment. To be fair, most anything often needs a little work (or time) to fit into many environments.

    Let us know today. Do you want official Microsoft solutions for your data platform? Or Oracle ones for Oracle? Who makes you comfortable with PostgreSQL, Aurora, Redshift, Databricks, or other platforms? Or do you only use tools and capabilities inside the platforms?

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.