Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Do You Need a Mentor?

    When I was young, I never thought I did. I was sure that I knew what was best for my career and that I could figure things out by studying more, reading more, and learning more. Probably I had some trusts “issues” somewhere in my past, but I didn’t want to put my career in anyone else’s hands.

    Over the years I’ve doled out advice to a number of people when they’ve asked, and they’ve come back to thank me. I even was in conversation with a few groups this year and two separate people (different people/places) spoke out in the group, crediting me as a mentor to them.

    That surprised me, but it made me stop and think about what I’d asked them and how it had influenced them, based on what they told me. Apparently I had been a bit of a mentor. When someone recently asked me if I’d be a mentor to them, listening and offering advice, I agreed.

    Mentoring

    Those of us with kids try to mentor them. By definition, mentoring is a more senior person (in experience) providing advice or counsel to a more junior person. This has nothing to do with age, and a mentor in one area might be a mentoree in another.

    Looking back I think my career would have been more successful if I had had someone to help guide me, bounce ideas off, and get advice about the directions to take. I’ve had a good career, but I felt like I’ve stumbled in many ways. Fortunately my wife has helped, and my business partner has taught my a lot in the last 6-8 years.

    If you are looking to grow your career, I would look around and think about someone that you trust and have a good relationship with that is a more senior person. It could be your boss, a colleague, or even a neighbor. Ask them if they would help you, and see what they say.

  • Quick Elevators

    I’m at the Renaissance in Seattle for a couple days, stuck on the 14th floor. That’s higher than I normally like to stay, preferring low floors. However there is something that makes a huge difference here.

    A fast elevator.

    Traveling is often an inconvenience for me. It’s a hassle, it disrupts my schedule, and I feel like I waste a lot of time getting places. Last week I had a 10 minute walk from the convention center to my hotel room, and they were in essentially the same building! But they drag you through the casino, and it’s designed to tempt you on the way, so it ended up being around 1/2 mile. And I had a slow elevator.

    Today I got up to run, and then fitness center is on the 28th floor, top of the building. My trip on the elevator, nonstop, was about 15 sec. That’s doors closing and all. Last week the doors would stay open for 10 sec or so, perhaps in expectation of people enjoying themselves a bit much in Vegas, but it was annoying. Here the doors open and almost immediately start to close if no one is there.

    I noticed it because on the way back up from breakfast we stopped at floors 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, and finally 14. I was starting to get annoyed, but it was almost as quick as my 1 to 4 to 5 trip last week because of the delays in the doors and the slower elevator.

    Little things make a difference, and surprisingly to me, the fast elevator here makes a difference.

  • The Tapestry

    270px-ST-TNG_Tapestry[1] When I run on the treadmill, I have a TV and DVD player down there and have been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation over the last few years on and off. I recently saw an episode called Tapestry and it really made me stop and think.

    In this episode, Picard is killed, or dying at the beginning, pulled into Sick Bay. As he fades, we cut to a scene with Q where Picard is told he’s dead. The story goes on to give Picard a chance to change his life, taking him back to the time when he’s newly graduated and just before he’s stabbed in the heart. Picard shows some regret that he started a fight then, and had to receive an artificial heart. You can guess that he relives the scene, but doesn’t get stabbed, resulting in a history he doesn’t like.

    As I watched this over a few days, I kept thinking about my life, and regrets. Would I want to go back, with different knowledge, and change anything? I know I have some regrets, some actions that I’m not proud of, but I wouldn’t change anything. The place that I am in today is because of all the choices I made in the past. The good ones, the bad ones, they’ve contributed to the person that I am today.

    I’m not a fatalist, but I have an acceptance of life as it is. I strive to do good, to be better, but I understand I’ll make mistakes and I’m frail. I do the best I can at each moment, knowing that sometimes that isn’t my best, and that I might change how I view the world as I grow and learn.

    The tapestry of my life is somewhat woven, with more being added each day, but I wouldn’t go back and change anything. If I died today, I would accept that I’ve lived a good life, without wishing for the chance to change my past.

  • Powershell and Performance Monitoring

    When I was doing performance monitoring of servers, I typically struggled with a good way to get the data. In years past it was cumbersome to keep track of server information and rarely was it done well. So often I found that many problems were the result of simple mis-configuration settings, or a lack of patches. Once a DBA or sysadmin can’t remember everything about every instance, it invites chaos.

    Allen White is showing how to better track a “server inventory” to learn all about the setup, configuration, and performance of SQL Server using Powershell. It’s easy to find this information in an ad hoc manner, but keeping track of it and catching exceptions requires something more formal. Powershell is a great way to do that in a repeatable way.

    Based on an article at Simple Talk, Allen shows how you can put your servers in an XML file and then read that in from Powershell and use it to drive a series of queries against a particular instance and machine.

    Most of this session gives you a good look at a script that will gather various information, including performance data, from your instances.  One of the more practical sessions that can really help you understand a large Powershell script in detail.

    However Powershell takes some practice. It’s a set of fairly concepts that are designed to be put together, but you need to take a little time to understand how the scripts work.

    If you get the chance to see Allen speak, it’s worth it. He does a good job of walking through code and helping you understand how it works.