Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Great Access to Data with Google Fi

    I’ve been a subscriber to the Google Fi (formerly Project Fi) network for a couple years now. Like many of you, I depend on my mobile device for lots of data items, usually email, but I’ve also been able to get work done at times, and certainly Slack and Skype are a regular part of my work.

    I made the switch because I often travel to the UK and a few other countries. Getting access from the US carriers is a pain. I’ve switched SIM cards before (never like doing that), carried a second phone that I can put a SIM in, and even tried to live on Wi-Fi. These are all compromises and a hassle.

    I used to have Verizon and the had great coverage, but at $10/day, that adds up quickly. T-Mobile had free data, but low speed. My kids have Sprint and get the same, low speed connection that’s almost useless in today’s very chatty applications.

    The last couple years have had me use the Google network in my travels. I’ve gotten phone and text calls in many places, tethered my computer, and been able to keep in touch in same way I do every day, regardless of where I am. I’ve been in these countries with Google Fi:

    • United States
    • United Kingdom (GB, Scotland, and N Ireland)
    • Ireland
    • France
    • Switzerland
    • Greece
    • Norway
    • Denmark
    • Canada
    • Australia
    • New Zealand
    • Hong Kong

    In all of these countries, my phone connects and gives me 4G speeds, with my same data plan. I pay a bit for international calls, but texts are included. What’s even better is that my data cost is capped at $60. I pay $10/GB, but if I go over $60 (And I did while in Australia), there’s no extra charge. If I use less, I get charged on a pro-rated basis.

    If you decide to move, I’ve got a referral link. You’ll save some money and I’ll get a little credit. Referral: https://g.co/fi/r/KAF848

  • Learning to Stop Being a Hero

    A few weeks ago I re-published a piece on whether we might be giving too much of ourselves for our employers. At the time I was on holiday with my family and since this was a popular piece years ago, I decided to run it again. I was surprised at the response, with quite a few individuals writing about their experiences in their current positions.

    A good friend of mine read the editorial and then sent me a link to a post by Paul Cunningham that looks at the IT hero. This talks about some of the ways in which we put ourselves out as employees. It’s a good read, and it’s certainly something to think about when you look for a new job. When I talk about finding a dream job, I’m not talking about a specific job or career path, but rather, what’s the right fit for you. That might not be the job I want, or even that your friends want. It’s the job that you’d want.

    To find your job, you really need to think about more than the work, the company, the location, or benefits. Instead, think about everything and start to rate those items against each other. A friend always tries to scale everything to some monetary value to make it easy to compare jobs. You can put a value on a 5 minute commute v a 45 min commute by thinking of the cost of time. Same for other benefits. Perhaps you can even do this in terms of future opportunities. You certainly can do this in terms of expected work week, on call time, and more.

    What you don’t want to do is let an employer take advantage of you by asking for a lot more of your time than you feel comfortable giving for the salary. Most of us are happy to pitch in when extra work is needed. I’ve seen this in restaurants, lawn care, and IT. What we don’t want to do is get taken advantage of when extra work is required on a regular basis. You don’t need to be a hero to be successful.

    Perhaps the final caveat in all of this is that you can’t control how all employers treat or view employees. Sometimes you might take a job that isn’t a good fit because you need a job, or maybe because you’re trading a poor situation for some experience. Just be sure you know you’re making that trade.

    The other thing I’d note is that finding a dream job, or maybe just a job that fits your life well, means you need to be able to compete with the others wanting that job. Work on improving your technical and soft skills to ensure that when the time comes, you are in the best position to get that job.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Waking Up to No Support

    When you wake up on July 10, SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will be out of support. Microsoft has been talking about this for some time, there’s been a Migration Tour from PASS with live events in quite a few cities, webinars, and more to let you know that you might want to upgrade to a supported version.

    While I typically think that systems that run are fine and don’t necessarily need support, there are compliance and security concerns here. If you work in a regulated industry, you might need support to stay compliant. If that’s the case, you might want to ensure you have plans to move to SQL Server 2017 (or 2019) soon.

    The same goes in this era of attacks and potential security issues. While SQL Server has relatively few patches for security, you never know. I haven’t worried about this in the past, often with internal servers, but I do get more concerned over time as we seem to constantly find more complex bugs in hardware and software.

    SQL Server 2008 support is over, but you have options. Microsoft will continue to support you if you move your servers to Azure. That’s not a bad option if you need to move quickly, but don’t forget to really think through what this means for your applications. Moving to Azure isn’t necessarily as smooth or simple as you might think. Authentication and authorization need some attention to detail to get working well. It’s not hard, but it is work.

    When SQL Server 2005 went out of support, it didn’t seem there was as much emphasis on migrating. Certainly lots of people ran SQL Server 2000 instances for many years without support. You can do it, but the world feels more dangerous, and there are more implications with regard to regulation, security, insurance, and other complex topics that can impact your business.

    Think carefully about the implications of migrating and not migrating. You’ll have to make the decision, and it can be hard, but it’s something you should spend quality time thinking carefully about.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Containers make easy upgrades

    I’ve been working with containers and writing a bit about them for awhile. I find them to be fascinating and useful as a technology, and I’ve come to really believe these will change how we work with the SQL Server data platform.

    In any case, I wanted to get the latest SQL Server 2019 version recently, so I decided to download the container image. I’ve had a few on my machine, and so upgrading to the latest was a question of running this:

    docker image pull mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2019-CTP3.1-ubuntu

    The main SQL Server 2019 image exists in a few flavors on my machine, so as you can see, I don’t even download the entire image.

    2019-07-03 19_15_29-cmd

    There were only 4 layers I needed to pull since I already had the other 5 layers. This took about 10 minutes on my nice, but not great, 15MBps download speed. That’s much quicker than I could download an iso to install, plus I’d need to uninstall the previous CTP.

    With containers, I can just run any CTP by picking the image from my list.

    2019-07-03 19_18_01-cmd

    If you haven’t tried working with containers, I’d urge you to start learning a bit. This is amazing technology that your developers already use, or want to use, and I expect data professionals to follow suit in the next few years.