Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • The Limited Cloud

    The cloud is truly someone else’s computer, and it’s not limitless. From the perspective of the individual, it might seem like you could scale infinitely if you need more boxes, storage, or networking, but ultimately the cloud vendor (Azure, AWS, GCP, etc.) needs to have spare machines around. Many of them do, and that works well at the scales in which they operate.

    To a point.

    Azure is having capacity issues in some of its data centers. I’m sure that all of the major cloud providers buy lots of hardware constantly, but there have been shortages during the last year, which has meant for Azure that DCs are running out of capacity. At least for the rest of 2022, which is likely driven by both a limited supply of new machines and the growth of cloud usage by their customers. I know I’ve seen continued growth in companies moving to the cloud for various services, including their data services.

    I haven’t seen reports of large AWS issues, though they do have plenty of instances of insufficient capacity errors and solutions. GCP has similar reports.

    Truly, the cloud is the cloud vendor’s computer. It’s also the cloud vendor’s infrastructure with lots of tooling to help you manage software configured networking and storage in addition to compute engines. It is limited in capacity, especially when lots of customers want to use these resources in one particular data center. That capacity is usually quite high, but there is definitely a limit.

    Does this mean that the cloud isn’t better than your data center? That’s an “it depends” questions. The cloud is great in many ways, and far superior to a lot of private data centers (or colocations facilities) that I’ve worked in or seen. I think the cloud is fantastic, but it’s not perfect. There are limits and issues at times, and you should be ready to work within or around those limits.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Daily Coping 18 Jul 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to shift your mood by doing something you really enjoy.

    A different type of tip for a Monday. Usually Friday is when you might aim to do something fun for the weekend. However, let’s shake things up on Monday.

    What do I really enjoy? Time with my wife and kids, coaching, yoga, and snowboarding. July in Colorado takes the last one out, but I do enjoy getting outside anyway. For this Monday, I’m going to schedule yoga for the evening.

    I do yoga regularly, but I’ve been practicing in the mornings almost exclusively the last few months. There is a great teacher that I enjoy, and I’m scheduling a Monday night to change up my routine and enjoy time with a person that makes me happy.

  • Using Telsa Dog Mode

    This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

    It’s summer in Colorado. Actually, it’s a hot summer, with quite a few days approaching 100F. While I tend to work at home, the other day I was working remotely between a few doctor’s appointments. At various times I was in and out of coffee shops, or even working in my car. The latter is convenient when I have a meetings and need a quieter space than a coffee shop.

    While I was working at one point, the climate controls turned off. Not a big deal, but I decided I wanted to avoid this, so I turned on Dog mode. This is a change to the car software Tesla added a year or so before I bought mine. This allows the car to control the climate, which makes it safe to leave a pet in the car.

    I’ve used it a few times with our dogs when we’ve been running errands and we want to be sure they’re safe, and a cracked window might not be comfortable enough, especially on 90F+ days.

    I used it for myself, and it worked well. I didn’t get the message on the screen, but it did keep the car at a comfortable temperature. I’ve also had a few friends note they enable this when running errands so the car doesn’t get too hot (or cold) in between stops.

    I might start doing this when I got to the gym in the summer, just to keep the temperature a little more even.

    One more thing I love about my Tesla.

    A short video of this is on my channel.

  • Which Work Is Suited for In-Person?

    In this article on flexible working plans, number four makes a good point. What work is suited for live, in-person interaction? Which aspects of your job benefit from seeing others face-to-face?

    Today I’m asking data professionals to think about it. I know we can do all our jobs remotely, after all, many of us have been doing that for at least a couple of years, and some for far longer. I can’t remember the last time I actually needed to look at a physical server I wrote code for? Probably when I self-hosted SQL Server Central back in 2002-2003 and went to reboot a machine or add a disk drive. Even then, those weren’t DBA or developer jobs, but really Operations hardware tasks.

    These days many companies are trying to decide how to handle office and workers. I don’t know I’ve seen anyone come up with a good plan other than leaving everyone remote and figure out how to make things work. Every day in the office doesn’t seem great, and I’m not sure I’ve seen a good company hybrid plan. I see some groups deciding to meet once a week or once a month and that works well, but I think that’s more a reason to have some social time than it is a need for productivity.

    Not that allocating some amount of time specifically to bond socially is a bad idea. I am in favor of this. We used to do this when we were in offices every day, so why not schedule this periodically now?

    While you can do your job remotely, I wonder if there are not some aspects of development or operations that are better done in person. Or maybe, sometimes in-person. I can see brainstorming and planning as being smoother in person. Being focused and closely collaborating always feel stilted and confusing online. I prefer being in person. Perhaps pair programming or a similar arrangement is better in person at times. I know we can share a screen and code together, but doing this in the same room periodically builds a bond that I think would make remote sessions more productive.

    The only other thing that I think matters is cross-team bonding, perhaps doing some debate and discussion of how teams work together or how their work affects others is better done in person. Perhaps not every day/week/month but once a quarter or a few times a year I can see this building better relationships between people, much like in-person pair programming.

    If you have other ideas or experiences, let us know. If you think there isn’t a reason to ever go in the office, that’s something worth sharing as well.

    Steve Jones

     

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.