Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Prepare for When Disaster Strikes

    When disaster strikes you have to respond and get things fixed ASAP. However if you could turn back the clock, and think about the potential problems and possible issues, can you decrease the time it takes to get things back to normal?

    This presentation looks at reducing your RTO by examining four common disasters, of which most disasters are a variation. We examine the components of RTO and then how you can reduce each one of them with a little forethought and preparation. The disasters are

    • Hardware Failure
    • User (or DBA) error
    • Corruption
    • Bad Deployment

    The talk includes a few demos of how you can respond quicker using Red Gate tools.

    Level: 100

    Length: 60 minutes

    Slides: Available after the SQL in the City 2012 tour.

  • A Long Day

    Flying all night from Houston, arriving in London at 6:40am, taking a train into the city and then finding a Starbucks to work in was the agenda for today. It worked out, but it feels like a long extension of yesterday, with very little sleep on the plane.

    Hotels don’t usually let you check in this early, which means that I’m struggling a bit to concentrate in the  center of London, people wandering in and out of the Starbucks by my hotel. Hopefully I’ll get checked in soon, and get some rest and then work in a little piece on my presentations for tomorrow. They’re done, but I want a little more practice.

    Traveling is always a little challenging when you need to get work done and you are out of your routine. Add in the lack of cell phone service in another country, and it’s a tough spot to be in today. Fortunately I got most things done before I left home, just working on a few Database Weekly things, which are easier to handle in a busy atmosphere.

    At least I found a Starbucks.

  • Time Zones

    Why don’t we have a function like the one in this article to convert from time zone to time zone? Seems like something SQL Server should have added awhile ago.

  • Back Across the Pond

    SQL in the CityThis coming weekend is SQL in the City – London 2012. Friday, July 13, and Saturday, July 14, I’ll be at One Wimpole Street in London. This is the Royal Society of Medicine, a fantastic venue for events near Oxford Circus. I’m looking forward to the event and the venue.

    This is the first stop in 2012 for our SQL in the City tour. These are the only two days in Europe and then we come back to the US with a 5 city, 11 day tour of the US. I’m looking forward to the events, but not the travel. It’s a lot of flights in a short time, and quite a few hotels. Fortunately I’ve consolidated down to one carry on bag and a backpack for travel, so I should be in and out of airports quickly.

    This week I fly overnight on Wednesday to arrive in London and recover on Thursday before the Friday and Saturday events. Then I’m back home on Sunday, just in time to start another week of work. A quick trip, and likely not much sightseeing for me, but if you’re up early, you might find me running down Oxford Street in the mornings.

    I’ll be delivering two sessions in London. They are both new and while I’ll link them to a few of the Red Gate tools, these aren’t sessions built around our products. These are sessions that talk about the issues of Disaster Recovery and Contained Databases.

    If you’re coming to one of the London events, please feel free to grab me and shake my hand. I’ll be the guy in the Hawaiian shirt and cowboy hat Winking smile

    sqlpassfriends03