Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Memory Cube

    How would you like memory in your SQL Server that’s 15 times as fast as your current DDR3 DRAM? I know I would, and since memory is often one of the things that can dramatically speed up, or hinder, SQL Server performance, this article about new memory cubes is good news. Over 100 companies have signed on to the specifications for three dimensional DRAM, which stacks memory dies on top of each other.
    How much better is the performance? Try 160GBps for this cube against the 11GBps that we typically see from DDR3. Even DDR4 is only 18-20GBps of aggregate bandwidth. What’s more, this new technology should require less power. That’s a good sign as more and more data centers are finding that power and cooling are significant issues and can end up being a significant percentage of the total cost of operating computer systems.
    This technology isn’t quite ready for production, as the prototypes only hold 2GB and 4GB of memory right now. However I would expect that to grow quickly as memory companies look to get production cubes out in 2013. The deployment will likely start in network devices and other environments where extremely high speed memory is needed, but I could see that server computers, especially those slated to handle large numbers of virtual machines, will move to this technology once capacities get over 32GB. At that point, there could be lots of OLTP systems that would benefit from faster access to memory, especially those systems backing high volume, (relatively) low storage systems.
    The bottleneck for many systems will continue to be the disk drives, but if you can process more data in memory, at a much faster rate, I’m sure there are lots of DBAs that would love to use this technology to reduce the number of complaints from their clients.
    Steve Jones

  • Development, Operations, or Accounting

    These kinds of problems should not happen in the cloud.
    These kinds of problems should not happen in the cloud.

    I think the idea of a platform of services, such as Windows Azure provides, is a great idea. I’d love to be able to stop worrying about hardware in many cases, and even skip some of the infrastructure of networking and managing specific machines. Just having services that I could deploy to that run my database and code, would smooth out some of the hassles of Information Technology in many companies.

    However the services have to work and work well.

    I’ve had concerns with AWS and their outages, though Netflix has run a thriving business on that platform and learned to work within that service. I think the Azure platform is similar, and they’ve had a few outages, I do have concerns over where their outages have occurred. There was an expired certificate, then supposedly maintenance, later revealed to be heat issues.

    These issues bother me. Some are unavoidable, but some aren’t. I’m particularly concerned about the expiration of security certificates. This happened again recently to Azure, and it shouldn’t. I don’t know if this was a problem with the development groups that build applications using certificates, the operations groups that administer systems, or the accounting groups that might need to purchase new certificates, but part of what the “cloud” should bring is expertise and better qualities of service from the people doing the work.

    I can hire semi-competent people that don’t pay attention to details and suffer my own outages. At least then I know I’m to blame and I can replace them. However moving to a service like Azure or AWS means giving up a lot of control. If I can’t count on better services than I get in-house, I’m not sure there are many advantages to moving.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Data Darwinism

    A great look at the future, where data about you will decide much about your life.
    A great look at the future, where data about you will decide much about your life.

    A few years ago my son asked me to buy him The Unincorporated Man. After he finished it, he gave it to me and we read all four books in the series, which we both enjoyed. The premise of this future civilization is that each person is their own corporation, selling stock in themselves to anyone in the world. As with a company, the better your performance at life, the higher the price. However there is also accountability, with your actions, jobs, etc., potentially limited by your “board of directors”, who are the shareholders in your corporation. It sounds a little drastic, but it’s not as bad as you might think. It’s actually a neat idea.

    It’s also somewhat of the way the world works now, although without all the disclosure. In today’s world it’s actually much easier to hide your flaws and poor performance because the information isn’t always readily available to potential employers. Some of us see this in the poor performance of colleagues, who were hired with good recommendations or interviews. We may find out later that these were exaggerated, though we often can’t (or won’t) do anything about this, suffering through poor performance from the individual or company.

    That may be changing. I ran across an interesting article where vehicle drivers were let go from their jobs because clients had rated them poorly or complained about them. There is some controversy here, but it does bring up the issue of more companies that look to “go where the data goes” in operating their businesses. It’s all too easy to begin using metrics, measurements, feedback, and more to make business decisions. This is one of the driving forces being building business intelligence systems in our industry. However if the models, assumptions, or data are flawed, bad decisions are not only possible, but probable. It’s easy to trust the computer’s report more than is prudent, especially when we have no good way of measuring the quality, or even appropriate interpretation of the data.

    There are lots of BI systems that work well, and provide companies with many benefits, but there are probably also plenty of them that don’t work well and we don’t hear about them. There are systems that use flawed, incomplete, or otherwise compromised models to help business leaders make decisions. Ultimately a BI system needs lots of human intelligence added to it, including judgement and refinement, constant tweaking, and a bit of common sense. I would hope that using data to cut off some service, fire an employee (or decline to interview someone), or make any far reaching decision has a lot of experience and audit built into the system to prevent its abuse.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Salaries in 2013

    Training is a big reason people give for making more money.
    Training is a big reason people give for making more money.

    Salaries are looking good, at least in software development in the US. Windows IT Pro released a report (PDF) that came from over a half million surveys that were completed in late 2012. You can read the report, but the highlights were that more people were satisfied with their jobs (nearly 60%) with two thirds of the respondents saying their received a raise with about half getting bonuses. The downsides were that salaries and bonuses had trended downward from the last 4 hours, which shows that economic conditions in IT are not as great as we might like.

    I found the survey on Trainsignal’s blog, which isn’t surprising given one other highlight. Eighter percent of respondents said that training in 2012 was a positive investment for themselves and their company. Ninety percent of those people said they learned new skills that could be used in their job. That’s a great point, and one that I think is worth emphasizing to your management. Budgets are tight, and companies can be reluctant to invest in training, but surveys like this can help convince them the investment is worthwhile.

    However I wouldn’t just expect my company to train me. Many of you reading this don’t, since you are a member of SQLServerCentral and are trying to learn more about your field. I’d point out those investments, and include any monetary or time investments you make on your own. If you attend events, buy books, practice at home, showcase those to your management and task that they make some investment in you as well.

    Everything is negotiable, and if they are worried you might take the training and leave, ask for an agreement that you will remain with the company for xx months for $yy spent on training. It’s a good trade, and if you get a great offer to leave, pay back the company and call it an investment in your career.

    I think technology is still one of the best fields to be in for working conditions and compensation, if you enjoy the work. However you to succeed and enjoy a good career, you need to continue to work on your skills on a regular basis.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We normally publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy. We have no podcasts today due to technical difficulties.