Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Daily Coping 22 Oct 2021

    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 reflect on what you accomplished this week.

    I’m going back a week, mostly because this is a busy week and I don’t know I’ll get to get organized in my thoughts on Thursday.

    Last week, 11 Oct-17 Oct, I was doing a lot. The first part of the week was in Belgium at the first live work conference in nearly two years for me. It was great. I met people, chatted about all sorts of things from how the event ran to what some people did in their jobs. I delivered a presentation, networked with speakers and attendees, and got to enjoy some amazing Belgian beer.

    I was back in Cambridge, UK on Wednesday, where I went to the office and had a few meetings. A hectic day, especially as I was trying to prep for work Thur. A great dinner with a friend as well, but a late night. That’s 3 in a row.

    Thursday was recording a series of interviews for the PASS keynote. This was surprisingly difficult to do, helping the people focus and answer questions, sit in a not-very-comfortable chair all day, take after take. 8 hours of recording and then a team dinner. I fell into bed at 8.

    Friday was also hectic, a few meetings, trying to get the final face time with people before leaving.

    Saturday was travel, so I didn’t do much, but I did read a few books on the trip. Total for the pandemic limited 2021, 97 so far.

    Sunday I got back to yoga class, cut some grass, and coached some volleyball.

    It was a lot of stuff, a bit too much, as I ended up getting run down, feeling as though I’m fighting a cold after too little sleep and too long days. I used to handle busy weeks like this better in the past, but I’m getting older. I need to learn to slow down a bit, which is my big reflection.

  • Daily Coping 21 Oct 2021

    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 ask for help to overcome an obstacle.

    I hate asking for help. I really struggle with it. Work appreciates that, but my wife sometimes gets on me to share with her and the family.

    I’m working on it.

    I had some chores to do recently, which I could have easily done. Well, not easily, but I likely wouldn’t have hurt myself. Mostly, I’m just slower by myself. I took time to ask my son to help. He’s happy to do it; I just needed to ask and schedule it with him.

    It was nice to work on something together, and it went quicker. Hopefully it survives for a few years.

    20210911_134219

  • Going Cloud Native

    I am constantly surprised at the migration of workloads to the cloud. It seems that many of the customers and clients that I speak with are moving some of their assets to the cloud. Some are moving the majority of their systems, and they are pushing to do this sooner than later, including database assets.

    I ran across an article that noted that while many companies love the on-demand provisioning of cloud resources, they don’t always get improvement in their software performance. In fact, quite a few might experience worse performance, though often not horribly worse. Instead, what they often get is a bit more unpredictable performance, and sometimes a bigger bill, which makes perfect sense. After all, the cloud is really just someone else’s computer, and the one you’re using might have other people doing the same thing.

    To truly embrace the cloud and get the power of the cloud, you do need to consider being cloud-native, which is often a change in how your software is architected. It is also a change in your entire software lifecycle, meaning not just buying DevOps tools or renaming a team, but also embracing the entire way that DevOps works. Not just fast releases, but experimentation, learning, adapting,  testing, and changing how you build and release software. This is also changing how you manage the teams that build software.

    If you think this is just for the Netflixes and Spotifys of the world, that’s not true. Stripe and Capital One are financial companies completely in the cloud. There are plenty of other examples as well, and the successful ones, in all industries, are embracing a new way of building and operating software. Docusign has had a lot of success, and quite a bit with a lift-and-shift to IaaS resources as they continue to build and rebuild their software to embrace the cloud and adopt more PaaS services. They didn’t move systems and expect everything to just get better. They started a journey that they continue to travel every week. The move is a journey, not a quick move, another item that the article points out and many managers forget.

    That being said, not everyone is moving their systems to the cloud. Even organizations that adopt some cloud services, implementing Salesforce as a CRM, might continue to run plenty of systems on-premises. Lots of companies use the cloud for IaaS, but with the architectures and software that used to run in their own data centers. They just moved their  VMs.

    The cloud can be successful in many ways, but you need to understand how you adopt the technology, what capabilities can help, and how limitations can hinder your software. There is no magic bullet, but there are a lot of opportunities if your organization takes advantage of them.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Daily Coping 20 Oct 2021

    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 thank yourself for achieving things you often take for granted.

    I think I get a lot done, and I expect that I will do so. I also tend to just assume these are the things I need to do because I’m responsible, accountable, etc. for these tasks.

    One of the things that I enjoy, but I also know that makes a difference, is I cook dinner. My wife doesn’t like to cook. My son will, but he’d rather not have the burden of deciding on a dish and shopping. If I do those things, he doesn’t mind.

    It’s relaxing for me when I have time, but stressful when I’m busy. However, I also know everyone appreciates it rather than having the throw something together for themselves. It’s a shared chore, not assigned to anyone, but one that I usually take on.

    I somewhat take for granted it’s my job, but I have started to internally recognize that it’s a good thing and I can thank myself.