Author: way0utwest

The family returned back from the UK last night, after traveling for something like 14 hours, plus an early morning wake up. I was up at 5am, GMT, for a 9am flight. Got to Denver around 5pm MST, and then it took a couple hours to clear customs, luggage, etc. So when I arrived home at around 8pm, I was exhausted. A very long day, with work to be done last night.

I didn’t do much last night, just scheduling out the newsletter and getting it going, despite a few issues. However I still had a problem with one of the ads. I didn’t preview it since by the time I figured out what was wrong and sent myself a test, the newsletter started going out the door. 😦

Today was a busy morning, kids struggling to get ready, having to drive them both to school, and then my weekly meeting. As I prepped, I realized that I was in the hole with 800+ emails since last Wednesday. Two days of a publishing meeting, and then 4 days of no Internet connection had me way behind. A double whammy there being offsite and then away for a few days.

Now with a pipeline that’s almost empty, it looks like some busy days trying to get caught up and back in line. With April 1 tomorrow, and a few things to finish, this day is almost gone for me in terms of getting caught up on anything. No ski Thursday this week!

Once again, I need a vacation from my vacation. That’s bad, and it makes me hesitant to slip away for a day or two in the future. It’s much easier to just get a week away and leave everything for someone else to cover. That’s definitely something I need to address, and I realize that there has to be a better way for me to better balance time away from work when I don’t have connectivity.

And glad to be back in the US.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the Red Gate offices Monday morning to find Jeff Aven at the office. I had a double take since Jeff is one of the founders of Hyperbac, and since Red Gate has SQL Backup, I’m surprised that Jeff was even allowed in the building. They’re competitive products in the same space.

I assumed there was some deal in the works, but didn’t ask and remained quiet. I hadn’t tweeted or posted anything, and I’m glad. Even a “Just saw Jeff” probably would have gotten me into trouble. We all received an email later that day that informed us Red Gate had purchased Hyperbac (press release) and that it would be announced after customers were contacted. That’s good business, and while it seems silly, it makes sense. Most customers probably don’t care, but a few might.

What does this mean for Hyperbac? I’m not sure. In the short term nothing. There will be two separate backup products from Red Gate. My guess is they will be priced similarly with some choice, but who knows. We’ll see when the sales and marketing team has a chance to examine both products.

I think for the most part either product works for most DBAs. There are some technical differences in how they work, but for the most part they compress and/or encrypt backups. That’s almost a base, core function these days, especially as database sizes grow.

Hyperbac has a nice, core engine and my guess is that over time the best parts of Hyperbac and SQL Backup will merge somehow, depending on what happens with the built-in compression in SQL Server.

In either case, they’re both great products, and Red Gate has done a great job of supporting DBAs for years, so I don’t hesitate to recommend either product.

I did enjoy seeing Jeff, who I have known for almost as long as SQLServerCentral has been in existence.

I went to the UK SQL Server User Group in Cambridge on Wednesday. I’m not sure it’s the Cambridge group since they seem to move it around at times, but this time it was at the Red Gate offices, so I stuck around to see who showed up and how it went.  While there I met a fan, and a friend.

The fan was someone that I’d actually met before, at PASS, but I didn’t remember. I did once he reminded me, but I meet so many people that I didn’t feel bad. He’s a consultant in the UK, and it was good talking to him. We chatted about a few things, what he thought of PASS especially, and I got a nice complement on the podcast. It was good to hear his opinion on the PASS Summit, and something i need to incorporate into another post.

The friend was Simon Sabin, and it was great to see him. We always have a good chat about SQL, business, life, mixed in with a little ribbing of each other. I rarely see Simon, once or twice a year, but it’s always interesting when I do and I’m glad we got the chance to sit and talk a bit.

The meeting went OK, though I wasn’t in there much. A little different format with Simon opening with a little SQL tidbit (for another post) that I found interesting and generated some discussion. Then a demo from Red Gate, who is sponsoring this meeting before they broke out for pizza and beer.

Yep, beer.

That’s pretty cool. Not sure that would work in the US, though I’ve often gone and had a beer after meetings with some of the attendees. Alas, no beer tonight for me as it had been a long day and I wanted to do things like write this blog post on the train. A beer would have ended that.

After pizza Brad McGehee was giving a short presentation on MDW, but it was time for my train. Simon and I chatted a bit before I headed off.

A good night, and I’m glad that I stuck around. I also saw a very cool feature of Hyperbac’s product (now owned by Red Gate), that I need to share next week.

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