Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Certified Private Clouds

    Cloud computing is becoming more and more popular, or at least, more and more talked about in the tech press. Like many of you, I am not sure that I want to run my database servers from the cloud, but that might change. I ran across a note that said Microsoft is looking to certify private cloud stacks with a number of vendors, similar to the Fast Track program that they implemented for data warehousing.

    For some time now I’ve felt that to really get large scale adoption of the Azure cloud framework, Microsoft really needed to have a way for corporate IT departments to build and deploy to private, internal “cloud services.” Clouds they could build, expand, and most importantly, secure, according to their own requirements, on their own premises. The idea of trusting a central provider seems foreign to many companies, especially when governments could subpoena your information or the cloud provider could shut down your business. To what extent you are more protected on premises is unclear, but many companies do no want to trust a third party to safeguard their rights.

    The idea of a service that you can deploy to, connect to, and use to abstract your applications away from specific machines is one that makes sense. We constantly build abstraction layers to simplify the interconnections of our systems. The “cloud”, whether public or private, is another extension of this. I know I’d like to be able to manage one large SQL Server cloud, rather than individual machines.

    Actually, it seems like  a lot of the work I’ve done over the years is to try and make all my instances appear as one single group that I can manage together. Kind of my own type of “cloud.”

    Steve Jones

  • Put Your Thinking Caps On

    A repost from SQLServerCentral.
    What would you like for Christmas?

    Hint, hint, a little visual imagery of the kind of prize that you just might win from Red Gate software next week. And just in time for Christmas!

    To celebrate the release of SQL Monitor, Red Gate is letting me give away 10 iPads along with 10 licenses of SQL Monitor to 10 lucky winners. But it’s not just me, there are a few others that get to give away prizes as well. Anyone know this guy?

     


    or these guys?

    All three of us will be giving away 10 iPad/SQL Monitor combos next week. Each of us will be running a separate contest, with separate ideas, that will give you the chance to win an iPad. Keep an eye on the daily editorial for Steve’s contest, BrentOzar.com for Brent’s, and ScaryDBA.com for Grant’s.
    You can only enter one contest, so don’t enter too quickly. Put some thought into your one and only chance for a Christmas iPad. The standard rules will apply (no family, employees, etc) and will be posted on each site Monday.
    A few hints for you to think about: SQL Monitor (of course), life balance, traveling far away, and synergy.
    Good luck!

  • Costing Cool Projects

    I ran across this article on how accounting can kill innovation, basically talking about the issues of applying our standard accounting rules and ROI calculations to innovative ideas. When an idea is too new, or too different, applying estimates of returns and value are often wildly incorrect.

    A study showed that when strict financial controls were not applied at the beginning, but rather decisions were made along the way to continue investing in projects, there were more likely to be positive  returns from the project.

    This approach seems to be one that could be useful in many BI type projects, and to a large extent, seems to be a good use of Powerpivot as a way to prototype projects. Assemble some data by hand, making a limited investment, and then determine if further investment is warranted.

    Companies often follow similar paths, with similar software and the differentiators between can turn out to be the innovation of the people inside the company. Making a case for innovation, with limited investment and small prototypes can be a great way to work on something interesting while potentially making yourself a very valuable employee to keep around.

    Steve Jones

  • T-SQL Tuesday #13 – What the Business Says Is Not What the Business Wants

    TSQL2sDay150x150It’s time to wrap up T-SQL Tuesday for the year 2010 and I was invited to host his month’s blog party by Adam Machanic (Blog | Twitter).

    What’s T-SQL Tuesday?

    This monthly event is the brainchild of Adam, and you can read about the inspiration in his very first T-SQL Tuesday post. Adam Machanic , a long time SQL Server MVP came up with an excellent idea of improving community involvement around blogging where bloggers around the world post their views on a same topic chosen by the host on the 2nd Tuesday of every month. If you are interested in hosting an event like this and then send a note to Adam.

    What are the rules?

    1. Since this is a global event, your post should go live between 2010/12/14 00:00:00.000 GMT (2nd Tuesday) and 2010/12/15 00:00:00.000 GMT. Since those of us in the US as sometimes date challenged, that’s sometime during Dec 14, 2010 using GMT time.
    2. Your blog post has to link back to the hosting blog, and the link must be anchored from the logo (found above) which must also appear at the top of the post.
    3. If trackbacks won’t work properly then please leave a comment below so that your post is accounted for in the roundup.

    Nice Things To Do

    1. Include a reference to T-SQL Tuesday in the title of your post. (The more we bloggers advertise T-SQL Tuesday, the more we bloggers get T-SQL Tuesday readers)
    2. Tweet using the hash tag #TSQL2sDay to follow links and other relevant conversations.
    3. consider hosting T-SQL Tuesday yourself. If you’re interested let Adam Machanic Know. If you’ve participated in two T-SQL Tuesdays previously and you don’t let your blog go stale (blog once a month for the last six months) then he’ll put you in the rotation.

    The Topic

    I was giving a presentation recently and someone in the audience started to ask about why I recommended against a certain technique. Without getting into it, this person kept saying that she had to implement things her way since the “business” said they needed it done that way. However a little digging showed that the business didn’t really understand the technology. They were asking for a result, and she took them literally in how she implemented a process. A classic impedance mismatch.

    I think we’ve all had situations that are similar. The business, the client, the customer, is asking for something, but they don’t know how to ask those of us building the technology. Or they don’t understand the implications of asking for something like “absolutely zero data loss” to be implemented.

    The official topic this month is:

    What issues have you had in interacting with the business to get your job done.

    Post your answer on Dec 14, 2010, based on GMT time, make sure a trackback or link appears in the comments for this blog, and I’ll look forward to reading what issues you have had to work through.