Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Catching Up

    It’s President’s Day in the US, and technically a holiday for me (I think). Hard to tell since my company is a UK company and the holidays get a little weird for me. However it’s a holiday for my wife and kids, so I’ll take part of the day off.

    I do have some things to do, and a ton of messages piled up from vacation, so I need to go through things a bit and get some things done for tomorrow.

    Strange to be back, after being gone for a week and mostly unwired. I took my laptop and checked some email, thinking I might work and write a bit, but didn’t. I did get some MCM studying done, so it wasn’t a complete sit-by-the-pool-and-drink-fest, but not as much as I might have liked. Some notes, and some good questions to run on SQLServerCentral as the Question of the day.

  • Backups after a DR Restore – MCM

    If you have a disaster, and you need to restore to some point in time prior to the last log backup you have, what’s the first thing you should do at this point in time?

    Make a full backup, of course.

    Actually anytime you complete a restore sequence, you want to do a full backup immediately before you turn users loose to do work. Why is that?

    Think about what happens if you complete the restore and then have another issue? You would have to go through the entire restore sequence again from before the first disaster. If that were a full backup, a differential, and a dozen log backups, would you want to explain that delay to your boss again?

    Would you even want to go through it?

    I wouldn’t, and it’s easy to prevent. Once you get done with your restore, start a full backup right away. You might never need it, but then again, you probably said that about the full backup you just restored.

  • Recharging

    I’m in the Bahamas!

    This is a week off for me from SQLServerCentral, so if you’re expecting a response, you might not get one on Twitter, in email, etc. My wife won a trip back to the Caribbean for her work in sales last year for her company, and this is the week the two of us are getting away from kids and enjoying ourselves at Atlantis in the Bahamas.

    This is my continuing with an attempt to better balance life and work, and take all of my vacation in a year. My wife and I went away last January, and again for a long weekend in the summer. This winter we took Thanksgiving and Christmas to be with the kids and ski, trying to recharge my batteries and enjoy life with my family.

    I hope the rest of you get the chance to enjoy your life away from work, and find the balance that I’m striving for in mine. I’ll see you next week when I’m back at my desk, and typing away at the computer.

  • T-SQL Tuesday Topics – Feb 2011

    I was looking for a static list of all the T-SQL Tuesday topics and couldn’t find one. The domain moves around to the current hosting blog, so when it was my turn to host it, I made a list just so I could reference what was out there.

    After a few more months, I decided to update my list with the latest topics. That will give me the chance to plan for my own future hosting of the party if Adam will have me again.