Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Big Data Analytics

    How large is your analytics system? Do you have more than one machine for analytics? Do you have a cluster of machines that run Hadoop in a YARN cluster to analyze your data? Are there hundreds, or even thousands, of nodes that are being used regularly? Some of you might have what you consider to be a large system, but I bet it isn’t as large as Microsoft’s cluster.

    They think they have the biggest YARN cluster, with over 50,000 nodes in a single cluster. This is used to process multiple exabytes of data from their various properties and systems. I certainly haven’t heard of a system this large, and I really wonder what this costs to run. After all, I’d think a 50,000 node cluster has to be a significant cost, though perhaps in the grand scheme of Microsoft’s $100 billion in revenue and $38 billion in expenses, even 100,000 machines can’t really impact their numbers.

    The cluster has essentially been running a private version of Azure Data Lake for years that their internal developers and analysts use to access a common pool of data. In fact, because of their scale needs and the desire to limit the copying of data between clusters, they have contributed back to the Apache Yarn project a number of fixes to help ensure the software can scale to tens of thousands of nodes. There is some discussion of how they’ve allowed YARN to grow to larger scales, and it’s an interesting solution that essentially allows some overbooking of resources, knowing there are always some spare cycles available for processing data. It’s a great test site for Azure Data Lake, and something that more of us might use in the future.

    I doubt may of us would need to work on data sets that large, and I know I certainly wouldn’t want to be responsible for that much of a data lake, I do think these are interesting problem domains that someone should look at. Certainly there are always large organizations and governments that have ever growing pools of data that will likely end up in a data lake of some sort. And who knows, perhaps, the definition of large will continue to grow to the point where 1,000 nodes in a cluster is considered “small”, and it’s what many of our businesses might implement in the future.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Horrible Bosses

    Horrible Bosses is a movie that makes me laugh. I’ve seen it a few times, and I’d likely watch it again if I stumbled on it during a flight or while flipping channels. I’ve had some bad bosses, even one I’d consider a horrible boss. I’ve worked in poor conditions for IT, though considering what some people go through, it wasn’t that bad. I”ve been stressed, overworked, and abused by employers. Again, relatively. These are really #firstworldproblems, and not so much problems as annoyances. I’ve really had an easy life compared to many people, though it hasn’t always been stress-free.

    The one thing that I’ve tried to do throughout my career is be a professional. Do the job I’m paid to do, and accept the good and bad. If I don’t enjoy it, or don’t agree with the demands, then I can leave and find another job. I’ve had to do that a few times, often because of the people that make the job a bad one. Fortunately I have a great boss now, which makes my work much more enjoyable.

    I’ve also tried to build software that I feel comfortable with from a moral standpoint. I’ve never been asked to work on anything illegal, and I hope I never am. I’d also hope that I would refuse to do so. I think it’s hard to put yourself in a tough situation, as you can never know all the variables. Imagine that you’re in debt, you need your salary to pay for medical care for your family and it’s a recession. You might feel trapped in a position, worried about not only losing your job, but also your livelihood and potentially putting someone’s life at risk. Making moral stands in tough situations is hard, and I hope I never have to do so.

    My best advice for my kids, and for others out there, is that you want to actively manage your career. I’ve told my son the best time to find the job you want is when you have a job, not when you are out of work and need a job. If you’ve got a horrible boss, start making steps to find a better one. It can take time, potentially months or years, so make a plan and start down the path of finding a dream job that you look forward to every day.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Republish: Selling Automation to Ops

    On a plane, back to the UK, so republishing Selling Automation to Ops

  • A $3 Billion Donation

    Earlier this week, Microsoft agreed to grant royalty free licenses for 60,000 of its patents for Open Invention Network (OIN) members as it joins the group. The patents include a number that affect Android, Linux, OpenStack, and more. As recently as a few years ago, Microsoft was making over $3 billion from this set of patents, including a billion dollars from Samsung.

    To be fair, licensing revenue has been declining, so this isn’t likely a $3b gift, but it’s still substantial and more important, it’s a positive step forward.

    Actually, it’s a surprising move, and one that seems to have stunned many journalists and open source advocates. There are numerous stories that seem to describe the move with disbelief, which is a position I would have held until recently. If I had seen this post from Erich Anderson, Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel, I would have parsed the language, looking for the careful crafting of phrases that indicated some future duplicitous action.

    Instead, as I’ve worked with more and more people from Microsoft and talked with them about upcoming changes, I’ve found that Microsoft is truly changing. They’re becoming more open, and trying to prove their services and software are worth using, not trying to lock customers into an environment they can’t easily leave.

    Nowhere is this more evident than Azure, where there are quite a few Linux VMs. In fact, I thought I heard that there were more Linux than Windows VMs earlier this year, but I can’t find confirmation. In any case, Microsoft supports free and open source software (FOSS), including MySQL as a Service. Incidentally, that powers tsqltuesday.com. I moved the site there earlier this year, using Microsoft’s MySQL services.

    Microsoft is a for profit company, and I expect that they want you to use their software in addition to services. That’s no surprise, but they are becoming less cutthroat and much more welcoming. Scott Guthrie, who leads the cloud and enterprise group, noted that “It’s not just code, it’s community.”

    That’s been my philosophy here are SQLServerCentral. We’re a community, and the vision from Brian, Andy, and I was to share and help others as much as we could. We continued that with SQL Saturday, and we continue that today in our own ways. Andy and I try to support individuals in various ways. Brian has really put his money forward in this area with the Pragmatic Works Foundation.

    We’re a community. All of us. We compete, we argue, we laugh, we cry, but we’re a community and we can all try to grow our business, improve our skills, and advance our industry as a community. I’m proud to be a member of the SQL Community and the #sqlfamily.

    Steve Jones