Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • The Talent Crunch

    IT Jobs are everywhere. Check out the listings on any of these sites.

    Is it a good time to be in the technology business? I think so, as the US unemployment rate stands at just above 9%, but the rate in IT is listed as about 4%. There might be some errors in how they are classifying and counting IT jobs, and the unemployment is not evenly distribute across the US, but that still seems like a significant difference. As a comparison, much of the medical profession is similarly employed, as are teachers (yeah!), but construction trades are showing  > 20% unemployment.

    Not only are there lots of jobs in the technology area, but overall technology pays a much higher salary (or wage) than many other industries. Whether you think you are paid well or not, peruse some other professions on Dice, Monster, or another job board and compare salaries. Keep in mind the US median income is $48k, meaning half the people make more and half make less. I suspect most IT workers are in the “more” side of that range.

    I think it’s also likely that the unemployment rate in technology could decline further. There’s an interesting report from Dice (2MB PDF) that indicates we are in a talent crunch as well that could become more problematic in the future. More than a few places predict that we will have a shortage of skilled technology workers in the future. Some of those predictions are based on enrollment in college math and science programs, which can be faulty. IT work doesn’t require a college degree, and perhaps shouldn’t.

    However it does seem that we have an ever increasing need for people to work in technology. I’ve had friend worry that our own efforts to improve and automate things would result in fewer jobs, but it seems that’s not the case. The gains in individual productivity in both the development and administrative areas are easily outstripped by the huge growth in the numbers of applications and servers to manage.

    Hopefully you have a good career in IT, and will have one for as long as you want one. I’d caution you to think carefully about the title of this piece. There’s a crunch for talented people, not just people. You need to work on your technical skills, and your soft skills, regularly if you want to be in demand in the future.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Virtual Security

    The State of New Mexico is being careful with virtual machine security

    I have a few friends that are working virtualize almost their entire computer infrastructures.  They work in large and small companies, but there is a constant push to avoid the bare metal installation of any operating system onto physical hardware, making every Windows or Unix machine a virtual machine on top of a hypervisor. I was surprised to hear that companies were being to aggressive, but the cost benefits can be huge, and when virtualization is done in a smart way, performance doesn’t suffer.

    However virtualization can change security, especially when you have VMs that are allowed to move from physical host to physical host. The state of New Mexico embarked on a similar project, and were concerned over security of the virtual machines. Their department had dismissed some employees because of a security breach a few years earlier and security was on the forefront of their minds. Additional security as well as network controls were used in their project, and I hope they also implemented strong auditing procedures.

    As we move to newer infrastructures that include virtualization, physical security becomes more important, and additional controls are needed. The ability for someone to potentially move a VM outside of a data center, or even to a less secure remote data center becomes a point of concern. Moving the storage itself might be an even bigger problem as virtual storage becomes more commonplace.

    Ultimately, however, we can’t all have dedicated security employees, nor can we expect every DBA, sysadmin or even security officer to be able to protect against and mitigate all attack vectors. Auditing is ultimately the best way to handle breaches. We can’t prevent all of them, but responding quickly, learning, and perhaps more importantly informing the appropriate people to be ready to respond to the information disclosure.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • A Flock of SQL Servers

    Check out the #sqlhelp hashtag on Twitter

    Twitter is an amazing application. I still remember hearing about it in the spring of 2008 as some type of “let others know what you’re doing” service. It seemed a little silly to me and I couldn’t understand the value. My first tweet is lost for now, but I know that I struggled to find a use for the service at the beginning. Like many people, I ended up updating my status with inane things like “Getting a latte from Starbucks.”

    Since then I’ve found Twitter to be a very exciting way of keeping in touch with people around the world, learning new things, and even getting information at various events. It’s the ultimate water cooler that makes me smile, laugh, and share interesting information. There is a great SQL Server community on Twitter, and an amazing hashtag (#sqlhelp) that might help you solve some complex SQL issue. It’s happened before, and it’s amazing when it does, especially considering that responses are limited to 140 characters.

    It seems that there are any number of ways in which people use the service to spread information and interact with others. However there are security implications in using Twitter, and that leads me to this week’s poll:

    Do you want your SQL Servers tweeting?

    If you find some way in which it might be useful for your database server to send information out through a broadcast service, would you want to use Twitter? Are you worried about potential security implications, or maybe just the potential load from a large number of broadcasts. Would you ever consider letting your application or database server read twitter updates and respond to them?

    If you haven’t tried Twitter, I’d recommend you do so. It isn’t for everyone, but I’ve found a lot of value and inspiration from the service.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Feedback from SQL Saturday #64 in Baton Rouge

    I did my session on The Top Ten SQL Server Skills You Need for the first time in Baton Rouge at SQL Saturday #64. This was my first time doing this session, which I hate doing at a large event. I had hoped to get to a user group and get this scheduled, but I didn’t have time or the freedom to get it scheduled in a busy summer.

    So I went through a dozen practice sessions and hoped for the best. Once again I was packing in a lot of information into an hour, really 55 minutes, and moving quickly.

    The session was busy, with the auditorium holding about 100 people. I went through the list, and made it through on time. With a clock on the wall, I could watch and keep myself to about 5 minutes per section. I’m blogging about the ten things over time, so most of the info will get out here, and the deck is available from the event site.

    I ended up with 71 evaluations, which was amazing. Usually I get much less, but with this event at a college, and with a beginner session, perhaps that isn’t surprising. The ratings across all categories averaged above 4, and an overall rating of 4.7. I guess I did OK, and am looking forward to presenting this at the PASS Summit in October.

    Once again, not many comments, but a few constructive ones:

    • Maybe more time per slide to make better notes – I can understand this, though I did not at the beginning that I was moving fast and the deck would be available. Perhaps I need to mention this a few times during the session for latecomers or to reinforce this.
    • I was expecting something more in-depth – This is a hard one. It’s always a battle to try and get enough content in there and cover it in depth. One of the things that one hour sessions don’t do well is go very in depth into a topic unless it is very narrowly focused. I’ll have to think about what I could change here, but I’m not sure I can do a lot. I was mostly trying to trigger the idea that each of these skills is something you need to work on and use in your job.
    • Speaker volume dips from time to time – Usually I’m a loud talker, but it was a large room and I was trying to turn from side to side. Have to keep this in the front of my mind as something to watch out for.

    The rest of the comments were very positive, which is nice and helps make it worthwhile.

    I’ve enjoyed my three years in Baton Rouge and looking forward to going back next year if I can.