Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Grow Your Family

    Yesterday I wrote a piece on the networking event that Andy Warren and I host on the Monday before the Summit conference each year. It’s a great event, and I hope more of you can come next year. Our event is really a microcosm of something amazing in the SQL Server community. I haven’t seen it in other technologies I’ve been a part of, and I’m proud that we, as a community, have done something amazing.

    The hashtag on Twitter for many events is #sqlfamily. It seems as though the various community members, some speakers, some authors, some watchers, all treat this professional group as a family. We greet each other warmly, we hug, we help each other solve problems or find jobs. And we argue and disagree. We act like a family, a large group of people bonded together.

    If you choose to join and participate, it seems that someone will be willing to help you, cheer you up, laugh with you, and be your friend. It’s an amazing group of people, and I have a question for you this Friday.

    Will you join the #sqlfamily and meet 3 new people at your next event?

    That’s my recommendation for networking and becoming more involved in the community. At your next user group, SQL Saturday, or other event, make an effort to talk to 3 people. Introduce yourself and ask them what they do with SQL Server. It’s that simple to network with people and you never know what will come of a new relationship. Most will be casual “hi, how are you” relationships and some will be “I don’t want to talk to them anymore”, but I bet you get a few closer relationships where you enjoy seeing and talking to the individual.

    You might find a new good friend, a contact that you can call for help, or a colleague that calls to offer you a new job.

    Steve Jones

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  • Open Arms

    This past Monday night was the annual networking dinner that Andy Warren and I put on before the PASS Summit. Actually “put on” is a bit of an overstatement. We pick a location, call them to ask if a large group can come in, and send out an invitation. People learn about it and if they can, they come and meet people and buy their own food or drinks.

    Apparently people still like the idea as we had over 200 people fill up the Buffalo Wild Wings at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte. I stood out front for 45 minutes or so, greeting people and making sure they knew were to go. I bet I shook more than 100 hands in that time, introducing myself to at least half of the people and greeting the others that I’ve known for years. I probably got 50 hugs as well during a long night. I didn’t get a chance to eat dinner until 10pm.

    Despite the main event not starting until Wednesday, a lot of people were in town early. Some had pre-conference sessions scheduled, some arrived early to sight-see and adjust to the new time zone, and quite a few attended our SQL in the City on Monday and weren’t even attending the larger conference. All of them came to meet others on Monday night.

    It’s an amazing happy hour opportunity for people to meet each other. Andy and I try to make the even welcoming, introducing people to each other whenever we have the chance. We encourage everyone to not just sit with their friends, but meet 3-5 new people and have a short conversation.

    I think it works well and even though I’m not attending the conference, I did want to make it to this event and I met some new people that I’ll remember in the future. @sqlhammer and Erroll from Charlotte are two that stand out, but I had lots of short conversations with others that are too numerous to mention.

    If you come to the conference next year, think about attending our Monday night event. If you don’t, think about going early (or staying late) at your local user group and doing a little networking. If you go to a SQL Saturday, be sure to say hi to at least 3 new people.

    Steve Jones

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    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

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  • Four Years Later

    Yesterday I republished a piece on cloud computing, and I was struck by a sentence in the piece. I had written ” Paul Nielsen says inside of 2 years we’ll be leaning cloud first, local server second and in 5 hosting your own data will seem obsolete.” I had written I was skeptical of that, but I wanted to revisit the topic. It’s been 4.5 years since I wrote that, so it’s close to five years.

    Are we thinking cloud first for SQL Server applications? I can say that for the businesses I’ve considered or engaged in, we do think about cloud type services first. The cost and hassles of procuring hardware mean that for a small business, I’m not sure it’s worth renting space in your own, or even someone else’s, data center. It’s much more cost effective and easier to rent a virtual machine or two from Azure, AWS, Rackspace or another vendor. For many non-database services, like email, it’s probably better just to contract for a service, and not even concern yourself with machines or software.

    For larger, more established businesses, however, I’m not sure that most SQL Server professionals think cloud first. There are still lots of concerns over security, control, and performance. Most DBAs I know do think virtual machines in many cases, but without their own infrastructure, not the cloud.

    I do think we could get to the point where many DBAs think about the cloud first, but only if their clients find provisioning a new server inside isn’t as smooth as clicking a few buttons. For the DBAs that ensure new databases can be created quickly and easily, I would guess that their clients would never even bother mentioning the cloud.

    Steve Jones

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    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

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  • The Cloud of Destiny

    This editorial was originally published on Mar 15, 2009. It is being re-run as Steve is away on the 2013 SQL in the City tour.

    Is it inevitable that SQL Server will move to the cloud? In a word, yes.

    But like absolutely everything else with databases, “it depends” applies as well. I am sure that we’ll have support for SQL Server in the cloud, something much more advanced than the current state of SQL Server Data Services, before too many more releases.

    Paul Nielsen says inside of 2 years, and in 5 we’ll be leaning cloud first, local server second. I think that’s a bit aggressive, and I do think Denis Gobo has some great thoughts about a few things that need to be done before SQL Server can move into the clouds, but it’s going to get there for many people. Not everyone, but many people.

    If you think about it, we are already moving towards a cloud type architecture. SQL Server has supported the idea of master/target servers for awhile, and with the addition of Policy Based Management, we are moving towards a way of telling SQL Server how we want it to work and behave and letting it then handle the details.

    Much of IT is slowly moving down this path of requesting and using resources, and not necessarily specifying the details. We have implemented SANs that hide the disk architectures from us. For the most part they work, as long as those engineers in the deep bowels of SAN-storage land continue to replace disks as they fail.

    In 2007 and 2008 is seemed many companies were also looking beyond individual servers by provisioning virtual machines and letting our hypervisors handle the details of getting the required resources to the calling server instance. There’s  still work to be done here to allow database servers to take advantage of this, but it’s a matter of when now, not if.

    Tomorrow we’ll take a look at another aspect of SQL Server in the cloud.

    Steve Jones

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