Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • BCPs – The Disaster Recovery Plan

    I came up with a short acronym for my Preparation for Disaster presentation: BCPs. It describes what I think you need to do in order to be prepared for issues with your database server. The initials stand for:

    • Backups
    • Checks
    • Practice and Preparation
    • Script and Schedule

    With a utility in SQL Server going by BCP, this ought to be easy to remember. I’ll describe what I mean below by each of these:

    Backups

    You need to make sure that you have backups. They are insurance for the issues that will befall you at some point. They are also required for restores, which do matter.

    You need a backup plan that meets the need for the particular system you are protecting. Not your entire infrastructure, but what’s appropriate for each system. Once size does not fit all here.

    Checks

    You can’t prevent corruption and it can occur at any time. The best you can do is detect it early, and fix it as soon as you can. Make sure you have checks in place that look for corruption.

    You also want checks for things that are out of the ordinary. Make sure you have some monitoring/base-lining set up so that you can proactively be aware of what a disaster might occur.

    Practice and Preparation

    All of the backups, checks, etc. in the world are useless if you don’t know how to apply them. Or if you don’t have the keys, passwords, account numbers, etc. Practice the skills you need to recover your systems, and make sure that you are prepared to do so in a variety of situations.

    Explaining to your CEO that you don’t have the keys for that TDE encrypted restore will make for a very, very bad day.

    Script and Schedule

    You must automate most of your job to be successful and efficient, and you ought to have lots of your DR insurance (backups/scripts) scheduled so that it get performed in a timely manner, and a regular manner. Humans forget things, and make mistakes constantly. You need to ensure that you are scripting your tasks (to speed up processes) and scheduling them (to ensure they occur regularly).

  • Understanding Security

    We have to learn to use better encryption than this.

    SQL Server has become a very complicated product, with so many subsystems and features that I don’t know anyone that is an expert in all of them. There are lots of people that become somewhat familiar with many features, and learn to understand enough to use them competently. However there is one area that seems to confuse many people, but is one area that is also quite important to a secure SQL Server: encryption.

    It seems that the idea of encryption is easy, but once we get into the actual practice of managing keys, indexing encrypted columns, and dealing with disaster recovery techniques, encryption quickly becomes complex. If the technical people managing servers struggle to deal with encryption, what hope does the average user have to implement encryption? Likely little to no hope of doing it well, which is a problem as many end users will have data on their machines. TDE is supposed to make this easy, but it solves only certain problems and isn’t available in all editions.

    I ran across a very interesting article in the Economist on what a general understanding of what encryption means in a practical sense. The article is somewhat based on the Dropbox issues I wrote about recently, but also speaks to the general misunderstanding many people have about what encryption actually means.

    I’ve always been hesitant to implement encryption widely, mostly because of the problems of managing keys. Keeping track of them, ensuring they are safe, in multiple places, and easily deployed in a DR situation, is a complex task, and making a mistake can have permanent consequences.

    I don’t know how to both maintain security, and also implement enough safety to ensure access to encrypted data is available, but I do know that this is a task data professionals need to learn to accomplish.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Speaking at the 2011 PASS Summit

    PASS_2011_SpeakingButton_180x180-blackI submitted three sessions to the 2011 Summit for consideration and I heard today that two of them were accepted, with the third being an alternate.

    It’s nice to be accepted, especially as there is always a lot of competition for people to speak and there are tons of submissions each year. I don’t know the total this year, but I’m sure it was over 500 for 160 or so slots.

    My two sessions are:

    Branding Yourself for a Dream Job -The Modern Resume – Everyone wants a dream job that they enjoy going to each week. However finding that job, and getting yourself hired can be hard for most people. Steve Jones will give you practical tips and suggestions in this session that show you how to better market yourself, how to get the attention of employers, and help improve the chances that the job you want will get offered to you. Learn about networking, blogging, writing, speaking , and more from Steve Jones, who has successfully used these techniques to find his dream job.

    (in the Professional Development Track, level 100)

    The Top Ten SQL Server Skills You Need – Come learn the ten most important skills that every accidental DBA, developer, or even manager should be able to do in SQL server. If you want to know where to start working with SQL server or which 10 things will get you through most of your days, some see Steve Jones show you how to accomplish these ten important tasks and explain why they are important. These ten skills represent the 80/20 rule in action; if you can do these ten things, you can successfully get through most of your days at work.

    (In Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment, level 100)

    No idea on which days they’ll be there, but come join me if you’re interested.

  • The 2012 Rally

    In case you hadn’t heard, the 2012 SQL Rally will be in Dallas. Andy Warren talks about the process for picking the city, and some of the challenges involved. There was supposed to be an open submission process and then votes from the community, but that didn’t work out. For the record, I completely understand the decision and would like to congratulate Sri, Tim, Sean, and the rest of the Dallas crew that put together a great application for their city. With the defending NBA champs in Dallas and the Rangers nearby, I’m looking forward to going to the Rally next year.

    Denver submitted an application, which I wasn’t a part of, but I was contacted by a group of people that wanted to get the Rally in Denver and we were looking to come  up with a way to market the city, get some votes, and get people excited.

    That’s done for now, but we won’t give up. Look for us to do some work and try to get the 2013 Rally in late spring, hopefully in time for a few of you to join us in some spring skiing.