Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Future of DBAs

    truck data center
    Is this the future of many data centers?

    At SQL Saturday #169 in Denver I sat in on a panel that talked about cloud computing. There was a consultant, a customer, and a Microsoft representative that give different perspectives on what their experiences were with Windows Azure. It was an interesting talk and the more I learn about the cloud, the more potential situations where I think it applies. It’s not for everyone, but there are a lot of places where it can work, and I would encourage you to learn more about cloud services and cloud computing.

    One really interesting question was asked. Do you know the skills needed for modern Microsoft data centers? Truck driver. A truck driver can drop off a shipping container with servers pre-configured inside and just plug it in to power and network, often with no cooling needed. A fenced in parking lot, open to the atmosphere, makes a nice, inexpensive, low maintenance data center.

    That’s simplified, but it has interesting implications for networking, hardware, and system administrators, but what does that mean for DBAs? How will our jobs change if these shipping containers run SQL Server services on Azure or AWS? It’s a good question, and one that I know worries many people that manage SQL Servers.

    On one hand our jobs don’t change. We still need to manage the data, enforce quality, design tables and manage indexes. We must ensure the data is available, intact, accessible by clients. We import, export, and even recover it at times. These are all the core skills of a DBA. On the other hand, we have new challenges to manage. Our recovery process will change. We will need to learn how to scale out our data and applications. We will need to better set expectations for performance, and perhaps more closely expand and contract the resources we use to match the demand we receive. In order to do that, we’ll also have to better understand the financial costing models that vendors provide, along with gathering more knowledge on the actual value our organization receives from more, or fewer, resources.

    The idea of remote computing, whether as hosted VMs or a platform that provides database services, is going to be a part of many of our careers. We might as well embrace it, understand it, and find a way to fit in.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Too Much Data

    Big Data is getting lots of attention. Will that mean more resources for managing it.

    Many data professionals these days feel like they are working with too much data. Queries run slow, storage is constantly a concern, and our hardware is outgrown on a regular basis by the sheer amount of data that we need to manage. It’s a good thing that “Big Data” is in the news since it focuses more attention on the issues of data management and growth in our systems.

    Some companies are taking the idea of managing their data more seriously. Boeing and Nike are talked about in this piece about coping with large amounts of data. With the vast amount of growth in the data stores these two companies work with, they had to find ways to ensure that business people could effectively find the information they needed in a sea of data.

    It’s an interesting read and one that you might pass on to your management. The solutions aren’t new and innovative; they’re back to basics ideas. Have a central warehouse, use a data strategy that includes strong models and enforces data quality. Integrate your systems to allow a better view of your entire enterprise. These are the ideas that many data professionals preach, but are rarely found in many companies.

    Sometimes a new perspective helps, and articles like the one above can help you convince managers of the need to raise your data quality and enforce some standards.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Monitoring Is Essential

    Watch your systems like a hawk. You’ll be glad you did.

    An old phrase used in business is that knowledge is power. When you understand more about a particular situation, you can develop solutions and better understand which ones would both suit your environment better and solve any issues faster.

    As someone that has worked in a variety of production environments managing all different types of platforms, I have found it extremely career-enhancing to have knowledge about the entire environment. Knowing what is happening at any point in time has allowed me to answer pointed questions about the applications. With comprehensive monitoring set up in database servers, I have often found myself in a position to proactively prevent issues, or make preparations for a quick response when I do find problems.

    Over the years I developed a variety of techniques to monitor my own servers, often using third party solutions, enhanced with my own queries. I have learned that each system has its own idiosyncrasies, which often require custom queries to keep an eye on the pulse of the system. I’ve also learned that a regular exception report is the most valuable tool for me as a DBA. I assume most of my applications and scheduled tasks are working well; I just want a list of those things that have broken, or are not performing as expected sent to me every day, using the data from my various monitoring tools.

    I have found that tracking metrics and analyzing the data is a valuable tool in my DBA tool belt. I would go so far as to say that monitoring the systems that you work with is not only a best practice, it’s essential if you want to be an exceptional DBA.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • What Do You Want from SQL in the City?

    This week finished the SQL in the City 2012 tour, which covered six cities in the US this fall and London this past summer. It was a fun, hard, whirlwind event that had myself, Grant Fritchey, and a lot of other Red Gate employees working hard to bring you a fun, educational, and worthwhile set of events. We met a lot of great people, and hats off to Annabel Bradford at Red Gate for organizing the entire tour.

    I think we did a good job, and heard some great comments from people at the events. Right now we’re starting to think about 2013, and I wanted to get some open-ended feedback here from people on what they’d like to see. Whether you attended a SQL in the City or not, give us your opinion.

    What do you want from a one day training event?

    I’m curious what you hope to get out of an event, what formats do you like, what types of content, and at what levels? Does the size, location, or any part of the venue matter? Do you need tables for a laptop or are you coming to listen and get ideas that you’ll work on in the future? Give us your feedback on what you think makes a worthwhile day of training for you.

    There are any number of ways we can do things in the future, all with various tradeoffs. We can do smaller events in more cities, larger events with more staff, or something in between. I can’t promise anything specific, but your opinion and feedback do help us to try and deliver the community service and education that will help you get better at using SQL Server.

    Steve Jones