Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • The Effectiveness of Solar Estimation

    We added a solar system to the ranch as a way to hedge against future costs as well as require less energy from the utility. I don’t plan to, or think, that everyone can get away from using utility power, but this is a way to control our finances for the future better, as well as reduce the load on the utility.

    When we designed the system, the company (Namaste) provided us with production estimates for each month of the year. I wrote about this in a database design post, but I wanted to update how things are going.

    The estimate for May and June were:

    • May – 1556.81kWh
    • June – 1779.63kWh

    Pretty specific, but based on our house, the system, and weather patterns, this is what they came up with. I have a real time tracking system, which I back up in my database, so I can keep a running total.

    For May, we had unusually dry, hot weather. Not good for the land or ranch, but good for power. We ended up producing 1830.28kWh. This was a surplus of 273kWh, or 5.4 extra days of power.

    June is still going, but as of the 20th, we had produced 1263kWh compared with a running total estimate of 1186kWh. It was interesting because the first half of June was mostly negative with some cloudy (and a little rainy) weather. Since the 12th,however, we’ve been on a sunny streak and have been building a surplus.

    I don’t know what this means for costs this year as we are supposed to have a surplus of power in the May-October time period and then draw more in the winter months. However, our power bills have been near the minimum charge for a connection to the utility. So far, I think we’ve made a good financial investment, but time will tell. I’ll continue tracking and hopefully continue to see positive results.

  • Long Term Storage

    Data storage has always been a concern for data professionals. Early on in my career, we dealt with large ESDI, IDE, and SCSI drives, all of which would fail unexpectedly in servers. Sometimes after a few years, sometimes after a few weeks. We learned to use RAID and tape backups to ensure that our data was recoverable.

    In many places tape was the long term storage medium used. These days, I know many people have moved to secondary disk storage of some sort, often rotating data across a few disk types that give you recovery for days, weeks, or longer. I don’t know how long term storage work in Azure or AWS, but I assume some sort of combination of technologies are in use. I also know I don’t trust them completely to be readily available and recoverable after a few years.

    For most of us, database backups aren’t really relevant after some number of weeks or months. We usually just don’t need to recover things from long term storage. The exception might be for some types of data that do need to archived for legal or financial purposes. I know we used to keep a end of year tape for 7 years after we’d closed the financial records at one company. I don’t know if that would be the case today, especially with so many “digital records” of transactions. Would we really need to recreate a system as it looked on a particular day from 5 years ago?

    However, there are types of data that we might want to archive for a long time. An example might be the arts, where we have lots of music and video that can preserved. There might be other records, such as historical government records, which are suitable for WORM (write-once-read-many) systems.

    A new type of recording uses glass and may provide archival storage for thousands of years. Obviously we don’t know this is the case as we haven’t been recording digital information for thousands of years, but it’s an interesting medium. It also doesn’t require the algorithms to be maintained as the idea is machine learning systems can read back the data and learn to interpret it.

    To me, that might be the most interesting part of this project. Using computers to learn to read the data rather than requiring us to know have an MP3 player, a database system like SQL Server, or any other particular technology. Instead, we can let the computer learn how to read the data and then play back that recording of Prince in the year 3510.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Daily Coping 24 Jun 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 get outside and find joy in being active.

    My ankle is doing better. I managed to go this whole week without a cane for assistance, including a work trip to Austin.

    I took advantage of this to walk alongside the Colorado River in Austin. enjoying the cool(er) evening air. Since I’ve been limited in my mobility, this was a great chance to enjoy the outdoors in a very neat place, watching people enjoying the city life and the river.

  • Daily Coping 23 Jun 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 look for something good in a difficult situation.

    I had ankle surgery a few weeks back. Actually, it’s almost a month and things are going well. However, the first two weeks I was in a boot and supposed to avoid weight bearing where possible. The next week was beginning rehab, but still being careful how much I used the joint.

    In that time, I had to travel to Germany, camped in Nebraska, and flew to Austin. Across those trips, I had to maneuver with a cane and wheelchair, navigate planes, steps, ferries, trains, carry bags, and more. It was certainly difficult at times. My ankle ached, My right arm and wrist were sore from using the cane to support myself, and I was slow. I couldn’t do things that I normally do, or if I could, I moved at half speed.

    Still, I got to go to Germany and speak at a conference. I got to go camping with my family and enjoy a beautiful view of nature. I got to go to Austin, speak at an event, meet people, and see my cousin.

    I had a lot of good, even if it was difficult.