Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Versions and Patches in SQL Monitor

    SQL Monitor has grown from a basic alerting system to an amazing product over the years. From it’s early days as SQL Response, where Brad and I weren’t sure this was a good idea to the current version that has two teams and releases change almost every week. In fact, new features often come out before we bundle them into a major release.

    Not that the other teams aren’t doing well at Redgate Software, but across the last 3-4 years the SQL Monitor group has been the best development team in the company. First under Daniel and now under Ben, they’ve done amazing work and it’s hard to put into words how proud and impressed I am with their results. Lots of kudos to Adam as well, who helps with UX. I enjoy our monthly chats about the progress they’ve made and future directions they’re considering.

    This post covers one of those areas.

    The SQL Estate

    There’s a new tab that’s appeared at monitor.red-gate.com:Estate. Awhile ago we started talking about the idea of scale and how do fewer DBA resources manage all their instances easily. With pressure to be more efficient and still provide rapid responses when there are issues, there has been quite a bit of work over time to help users keep track of all their database resources.

    The Estate tab is one of those areas, which has grown to 4 areas: Installed Versions, Disk Usage, Backups, and SQL Agent Jobs. Some of these are in preview, with more work planned in the future.

    2018-12-20 11_03_16-Installed Versions

    If you have ideas or requests for features, let us know. Our goal is to find ways to better ensure you get alerted to issues, can solve problems, and keep track of work that needs to be done on all your databases, no matter where they are located.

    Installed Versions

    One of the tasks I’ve often had as a DBA or sysadmin is patching systems. It’s a hassle to keep track of versions and current patches, even with resources like the SQLServerCentral Build Lists. I’ve heard similar challenges from other DBAs.

    I made a suggestion to the SQL Monitor team and they came up with the Installed Versions on the Estate tab. This let’s you easily see which versions you have installed in your monitored environment. At a quick view, you can see which SQL Server versions are installed and are up to date.

    2018-12-20 11_05_41-Installed Versions

    You can play with filters to get a quick look at your estate, which is helpful when planning your patching resources.

    If you look below here, you’ll see more details on the instances, broken out into the groups you’ve configured. What’s nice here is that you see each database, as well as the version and an icon to let you know if you are behind in patching.

    2018-12-20 11_05_52-Installed Versions

    Perhaps even more helpful, there’s a link to the download for the latest patch. Makes it easy for you to find the files you need to update an instance. Perhaps even nicer, you can easily see when support ends, and use that to make plans for upgrades if you need to do so.

    This is one of the simpler, but amazingly handy features to have in a monitoring system. I’ve built scripts and tools to do this in the past, and while it’s not hard, it’s also not something that is necessarily a good use of my time. This is a task that’s tedious with limited value add for my salary. Much better to have a tool that gathers and manages this for me.

    If you haven’t tried SQL Monitor, run over to monitor.red-gate.com and give it a run, or even better, download an eval and try it in your environment.

  • My Favorites from 2018

    Recently we had a webinar with Grant, Kathi, Kendra, and myself to discuss the year in review. We talked about our favorite things from the year and made a few predictions for 2019. I like to do this myself every year, usually in a general sense, looking over the entire data platform and technology world. In our webinar, Kendra asked us about some favorites, and I thought I’d look back at memorable items for me in 2018.

    I was lucky to attend a number of events this year. My speaking schedule was 25 events and 37 talks, a few of them virtual events. Around this I managed to get to 4 other events where I didn’t speak, 2 volleyball tournaments, and went on 5 family trips. A busy year, but with some exciting highlights. My two favorite talks were at security events in Cork and Washington DC. I had the chance to speak to a different audience about Database DevOps, and they were very interested and anxious to spread the word to their organizations.

    My wardrobe didn’t get quite the same upgrade as Grant’s, but I did get one new shirt this year. Only one?? (perhaps more next year) Still, I had a great time at our SQL in the City Summits, which we’re planning to repeat next year. Stay tuned for dates, but we’ll likely run a number in the US, the UK, and one other country. Fingers are crossed as this will be a new country that I’ve never visited. I missed SQL Bits this year and will next year, but that’s my recommendation if you get budget to attend an event. With lots of flight deals, you might even find it costs as much to go to the UK as attend one of the large conferences in the US.

    I have a great job with Redgate, and I really enjoy talking about our products when I can. This past year, with the GDPR coming into enforcement, has had me focused on our Protect and Preserve area. While I enjoy talking about Database DevOps overall, I gave quite a few SQL Provision demos, which is one of those amazing products that really changes how you proceed with development. I’m hoping this is a continued area of growth, both because I like the topic and product, but also I do think we need better data handling practices as an industry. Next year I hope to do more work in this area, and add in some container talks as well. I’m also thrilled with making a difference with suggestions and lobbying for the product teams. Clone Resets and Installed Versions were two of the items I’ve heard from you and suggested myself that were implemented. Keep the feedback and votes coming.

    My least favorite moments of the year were losses in the community. I took a moment to mention this in an editorial, at the PASS Summit, and in the webinar. I didn’t know Stephen Hawking, but I do miss chatting with Tom Roush, Robert Davis, Aaron Lowe, and Naomi Williams. Unfortunately part of aging is losing friends and family. I added a section to Database Weekly for obituaries, and while I don’t relish adding links, let me know if someone passes.

    I’m also excited about the new version of SQL Server 2019 coming. There are some fundamental changes coming in how we might process and query lots of data. I don’t know what I think of the Big Data Clusters and some other features as they’ll be 1.0 releases next year, I do think that this is a shift in how we might think about SQL Server that will affect us in the next decade. I certainly am looking forward to a more robust Linux feature set as well as how containers will change the way we work. If you haven’t looked at them, now might be the time to start.

    Hopefully you’ve had a great 2018 and are looking forward to ringing in 2019 tonight. Stay safe and enjoy yourself.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 6.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • The 2019 Learning Goals

    As mentioned in my editorial, I plan on working through books this year for some extra learning. Certainly I’ll still use Pluralsight, websites, and more learn some things, but I want to get through at least 6 books this year and practice those skills. Six seems doable. Eight would be great. Twelve is unlikely and four is a failure. You can see this in my amazing, homegrown career skill thermometer.

    2018-12-20 13_31_33-Presentation1 - PowerPoint

    In any case, my goal tracking will be looking at how I get through books. Here are the ones on my list for now, in no particular order. They’re just listed in the order I bought them during the CyberWeek sale.

    I’m going to start with Pro SQL Server on Linux and go from there. I may add other books, or change mid year, depending on what I find as I go through these books.

  • Looking Forward to 2019

    It’s the final Friday of the year, between the Christmas and New Year days off that many of us have as holidays. Since this is often a very quiet workday, I thought it would be a good day for many of us to stop and think about our future plans for next year.

    I write often about career topics, encouraging you to improve your skill sets and actively manage your career. I think too many of us have been passive in our careers. We learn what our boss asks us to learn. We change jobs when we need to, often just accepting the first offer we get. We let ourselves be interviewed without interviewing the hiring organization. In most cases, we fall from position to position, which often might not be what we did if we actively managed our career.

    I talk about the different things you can do to brand yourself, market yourself, and improve your career in various presentations and writings. However, before you brand yourself, you really need to know what skills and abilities you want to brand. For many of us, this means verifying, practicing, and improving the skills in areas we want to work. To do that, most of us need some sort of plan.

    That’s what this piece is about. What is your plan for 2019? Are there things you want to learn for fun? For your current position? Maybe to set you up to get a new job in a year or two? Andy Warren has written a bit about this, and I think he has some good ideas. We need a plan that’s manageable, but also helps us move forward. We should write this down and have some way of measuring what we want to do with this plan. I’m asking you today to think a bit about what you might want to do and then make some plans.

    I’ve tried a few ideas in the past, with various levels of success, and in 2019 I want to try something else. I like books and learn from them well, so I’m going to take a number of books that I bought from Apress during their $7 sale and start working through them. My goal is to get through a book a month in 2019, adding some skills and practicing some of the techniques to see if I can learn some useful skills in this way.

    If you’re not busy today, work on a plan. Outline the time, the money, and the way in which you plan to learn in 2019 and write that down. If nothing else, maybe you want to go through one article we publish each week and practice some of those skills. You’d certainly learn quite a bit doing that in 2019.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.5MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.