Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Custom SQL Server on RDS

    One of the challenges in moving to the cloud is achieving a similar level of performance to what you would get with dedicated hardware on-premises. The cloud is someone else’s computer, and you are limited to the choices that the vendors allow you to rent. In many cases, you might even share the physical hardware resources with other customers, though many cloud providers have started to allow dedicated hardware reservations in the last few years.

    One of the challenges of choosing a PaaS cloud database platform is that there are often restrictions that differ from a similar platform on-premises. This is often to ensure that one customer doesn’t affect another, or that customers don’t make changes that might prevent the vendor from supporting the system. Azure SQL Database gives us a database only, no instance features, though we do see a virtual master database.

    AWS, however, is changing its RDS offering to allow customers to customize their database software. They started with Oracle and then added SQL Server. For the SQL Server offering, they will let you not only change the instance config with things like CLR and install drivers in the host OS. They’ll continue to manage the overall service, and handle backups, DR, etc. You can focus on your database, but if you have special configuration needs, you can set them up.

    This is a nice evolution of the cloud by giving customers more control and meeting their needs, but not forcing them to handle everything. While a lot of technologists don’t think the OS adds a burden to a DBA, I’d disagree. I think the popularity of RDS and Azure SQL Managed Instance show that a lot of customers feel the way I do. Paying for a service to be managed is valuable, and it allows your staff to focus on more helpful tasks, like performance tuning, finding data quality issues, etc.

    Of course, your staff has to take advantage of that extra time. I see plenty of companies that don’t culturally change how they work with their systems, and that means that a lot of the benefits the cloud offers aren’t being seen by the company.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Republish: Are You a Traffic Cop?

    In England today, working even though it’s a UK holiday. I was supposed to be out at a customer all day, so I had repeated an old editorial. Check out Are You a Traffic Cop and see if you feel differently than you did the first time you read it.

  • Paying It Forward on the Internet

    A big part of SQL Server Central has been members of the community answering questions for others. We have an amazing community and over the years, it’s been helpful to so many people. I often get the thanks, but really the people at the top of the all-time list have been those that have helped many people. There are too many to list, but gilamonster, Jeff Moden, lynn-pettis, lowell, and more have been tremendous assets to our community.

    Part of the inspiration for StackOverflow years ago was SQL Server Central and the popularity of people helping others. The main thing their founders didn’t like from us (and other sites) was the need to register. Hence, the ability to be anonymous on Stack if you choose. No matter what format or style of Q&A you like, Stack and many other sites have found that there is a lot of desire to ask and answer questions online.

    Brent Ozar answers questions regularly during his office hours. I enjoy watching the recordings, especially from the beach. I miss the beach, but I love the mountains, so I’m only a bit jealous. However, recently he had a number of questions come through that he declined to answer and instead put out a post, inviting the community to answer. There are some interesting answers in there, and some are worth reading. Maybe you even want to add your own thoughts to some of the questions.

    A big part of my career, and in life outside of my career, is helping others improve their lives. Answering questions for others got me started on this path of SQL Server Central and speaking at conferences. Coaching my kids led me to coach others. Thinking about both those things got me to volunteer at other organizations.

    I’ve had success, so I’m paying it forward in different ways. I’d encourage you to do the same. Whether online or in your local community, whether now or at some point in the future, paying it forward is good for your soul.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • To Which Experts Should You Listen?

    When I was getting my career going in Denver, Microsoft used to host lunch sessions every few weeks in their office. There were some Microsoft employees presenting and some community members. I learned a lot from both groups. At local user groups, more often than not, a community speaker was present, but there were plenty of people that worked for different vendor companies that delivered talks. I saw many of these people are knowledgeable in their area, and they taught me things I used in my job.

    At some point, it started to seem that presenters that worked for companies weren’t experts, and maybe more importantly, they weren’t worth listening to because they were “selling something.” In fact, a large community conference, and some small ones, banned “vendor” talks and the use of tools in presentations. Sometimes even free ones, if someone was promoting the software as the focus in their talk.

    That hasn’t applied to Microsoft, even when they are “selling” something, free or not.

    I understand some of the concerns. I’ve seen some extremely poor presentations from sales and marketing staff, who often don’t really understand the technology or why it would be used in one situation over another. There is no shortage of complaints about the poor experience from the attendees who didn’t learn anything useful. That’s fair.

    There was a post about this topic from a writer. While I think lots of larger technology conferences do end up with speakers that vendors sponsor, they have plenty of speakers aren’t sponsored, and not all sessions are sales pitches. The SQL community might be slightly different as we have lots of community speakers, more than I ever imagined we’d have. I love that so many people have chosen to get up in front of groups and share their knowledge.

    Technical experts abound, and many of them work for vendors. In fact, often the people who give high-quality technical talks get hired by various vendors. I’m one of those, and it’s always a challenge to find a way to talk about a problem and potential solutions without selling a product. I must present well because I rarely get complaints, and I find there are a lot of other technical experts that do a great job as well. I hope that you give most people a chance and if they end up making a sales presentation, then let the organizers know. They can always address issues in the future.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.