Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • 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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  • 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.

    Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.
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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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  • Union Benefits

    This editorial was originally published on Mar 19, 2009. It is being re-run today as Steve is away at SQL in the City.

    I know lots of you don’t think unions are good, they create inefficiencies, etc., etc., blah, blah. We’ve debated that topic before and I’m not sure that anyone would change their mind.

    Suspend those thoughts for a moment. Not because you’re wrong, but because I want you to have a bit of fun this Friday. For this Friday’s poll:

    What benefits would you like if we were unionized?

    Stop and think about it for a minute. If you could argue for better benefits in your job, something that you think would make you more productive, or your company more productive, what kinds of things would you want your union to get?

    For a few thoughts, I was thinking along the lines of these things:

    • Retraining – Some guarantee of xx days of training for every xx years of service if they get rid of your technology?
    • Ergo Chairs – Or any other equipment that might make you more productive for your whole career
    • extra vacation – The US standard is still 2 weeks, though many companies combine sick and vacation time as one 3 week block. What would you want? 4 weeks? 5?
    • Medical benefits – Perhaps some base level of benefits that’s higher than you normally get?
    • Telecommuting – Some guarantee to commute xx days a year?
    • Professional Advancement – Certification payment with no penalty? Something else?
    • Overtime – Should we get paid for extra work?
    • Holidays – More holidays?
    • Retirement – Pensions?

    I’m not necessarily thinking that we’d get all these things, but it would be interesting to think about what benefits would benefit the group as a whole. So let us know what you think, and what might improve if we had a union. I’m not asking you to support one, or even calling for one, but just thinking a little outside the box.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    Everyday Jones

    The podcast feeds are now available atsqlservercentral.mevio.comto get better bandwidth and maybe a little more exposure :). Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.

    Overall RSS Feed:  or now on iTunes! 

    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.

    I really appreciate and value feedback on the podcasts. Let us know what you like, don’t like, or even send in ideas for the show. If you’d like to comment, post something here. The boss will be sure to read it.