Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • When Do You Take a Full Backup?

    This series of blog posts are related to my presentation, The Top Ten Skills You Need, which is scheduled for a few deliveries in 2011.

    When is a Full Backup Taken?

    Most people might answer this with “every day”, or “as often as needed”, but those are a little nebulous, and not necessarily correct.

    I do recommend that you backup as often as you can, which is every day for most people. Those with large databases might go once a week, or even once a month, but you want to get a full backup periodically. If you have a really large database, say 50TB or greater (in 2011), you might opt for a yearly SAN snapshot of some kind, but you need some full backup as a base.

    So when do you backup your database? Here’s a list of some times you might think about:

    • As often as you can on a regular schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc)
    • Before applying a Service Pack or CU*
    • Before applying a Windows patch*
    • Before upgrading your application*
    • Before a large data load*
    • After restoring your instance in a DR situation

    That last one might throw people, but I’ve seen more than a couple situations where someone recovered a database in a DR situation and never setup backups. And there was another failure.

    Whenever you create a database, either from scratch or after a restore, make a backup.

    * Note that if you have Enterprise Edition or above, you can use Database Snapshots to substitute for a full backup in some of these situations.

  • Keeping Your Soul

    Is your soul for sale?

    Last year I got into a debate, and an argument, with a friend over the growth of Google and their profits. I took the position that while Google has provided a good service to the world with their search engine and their founders have earned money, they will find it harder and harder to continue to follow the mantra of “do no evil” if they feel they need to continue to grow their profits. Given the recent shutdowns of some of the “good projects” they had embarked upon to make the world a better place, that prediction seems to be coming true.

     

    Building a business is hard, and as shown in the numbers, most don’t succeed. Many do, however, and the vast majority of businesses out in the world today are small ones, with less than a 100 people. However those small businesses don’t account for most of the revenue in the US.  Large businesses do, which isn’t all the unexpected since those large companies do business in areas that are important to most people (energy, oil, banking, etc.).

     

    In the technology world, it seems that we often hear about “the next big thing” disrupting the way the world works and making people rich. The people in these companies are just like you and me; they built a product , caught the eyes of millions, and became a success. That dream has driven so many technology workers to come up with their own idea or go to work on someone else’s idea in a startup.

     

    However the chances of hitting it big are like the chances of hitting the lottery. Those chances are small, though I wouldn’t discourage anyone from pursuing that dream. What I do think, however, is that it’s not worth losing your soul over the chance to make money. I truly believe you can succeed, and make money, while making ethical and moral decisions that respect your customers. You might sacrifice some profit to do so, but in the end, I think that’s a good trade. I would certainly rather make a million dollars ethically than a billion dollars compromising my values.

     

    Steve Jones

     

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Tricky Questions

    What tricky questions have you been asked?

    I suspect that most of us have been on many interviews in our career. Unfortunately today’s technology business doesn’t seem driven towards having decades of employment for individuals at one job, so most of us will have more interviews sometime in the next five to ten years.

    I’ve had many interviews in my career, of all types with many different formats. I’ve had technical interviews with multiple people, tests to take, and interviews by managers that didn’t include a single T-SQL question. I’ve had a lot of success, and much of what has worked for me is a part of my presentation on branding, which you can see at the PASS Summit in 2011.

    With that in mind, I thought this Friday poll might be a good place to help you get prepared for your next interview by asking about the questions that others have been asked. The question this week is:

    What’s an interview question that has thrown you for a loop?

    It’s rare that I’ve actually been surprised by interview questions. I typically prepare for interviews, using a process that has worked for me since I was in college. I research the company, trying to understand what the business is, and if possible, the person that might interview me. I look for blogs or other information written by employees, and any information I can get to prepare for questions about the business or technology used in the company.

    There have been a few times I’ve been thrown by a specific technology question, usually asking for some switch, definition, or other detail that is easily gleaned from some documentation. For those questions, I practice making sure I know where to get the information and use to show that I understand what needs to be done and where to get the answer.

    Let us know today if you have any great questions you get asked, especially if you’ve been asked any of them more than once.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Data Matters

    A very interesting book about technology and business – from inside Google.

    I recently finished reading In the Plex, which is a great look inside Google and how they operate. For a company that has had so much secrecy around it’s internal workings, this was an amazing look at how the company operates. If you’re interested in Google, or even in how a technology company might grow and operate, or even just curious about the decisions that might affect our lives with regard to digital information, this is an interesting book to read.

    There are lots of things to talk about in there, but one thing in particular seemed to stand out to me. I n many cases, the justification for getting some project approved, or moving forward, is different than in many companies. It’s not the personal relationship with the person in charge, or because it seems like a good idea, but because the data matters. That’s a quote used quite often in the book.

    Those of us that work as data professionals know that data is important. We spend lots of time and effort to cleanse, standardize, and organize data in a way that allows it to be used as information for better decisions. That’s the fundamental idea behind business intelligence and data warehousing: extracting information from data and using it to run your business better.

    However I suspect that many companies don’t have management that really understands or truly appreciates the value of the data stored. They don’t often devote the resources, especially time, to allows data professionals to build better systems that people can use. We struggle to purchase enough storage and struggle to make writing better T-SQL or tuning the systems a priority. Most importantly, we often don’t have the time to spend just working with data in different ways to try and build patterns.

    Data is important, but without having the ability to turn it into information, most of that value remains locked away.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts