Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Technology for Sharing

    Zipcar
    Zipcar has done a great job of using technology to more efficiently manage assets in the real world.

    Computer technology has done an amazing job of making many parts of business more efficient. It has streamlined processes, freed up many people from relatively menial tasks and increased the speed at which we can accomplish many things. This has been both good and bad, as fewer people are needed in many positions because of the capabilities of technology, but this has also freed many more people up to spend more time thinking about more complex problems.

    We have also seen investments in computer technology result in much more efficient operations in many industries. One example is our delivery companies plot our optimum routes for package delivery, saving time and fuel. Another example caught my eye the other day: car sharing for government fleets of vehicles. It’s a concept, using technology from ZipCar, that could potentially save tens of millions of dollars.

    The concept of sharing is nothing new in computing, where our applications have been sharing computer resources for decades. However a number of companies have started to expand that concept to the real world, because of the power of new technologies that allow tracking, management, and administration of physical assets. Quite a few companies have come up with a way to share resources and run a business. This same concept is something that we are doing with virualization, allowing multiple users to share the same hardware as there are significant amounts of time when any particular server is not being used to its potential.

    In the real world, we have to have enough cars to satisfy the peak demand, when the most number of people need a car, which is challenging. My guess is that some people will not be able to get a car when they need it, especially as the software tries to reduce the number of cars to the minimum level it can. We see people doing this with VMs (Virtual Machines) as well, which can lead to worse performance than expected from a particular VM. I think in many cases this is acceptable to companies in order to save money, but there are cases where it isn’t. For those cases, you might be better off with your instance on a physical host rather than a VM.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Smelly Power

    waste treatment data center
    Not sure I’d want to work here, at least not without a clothespin for my nose.

    Power is a limited resource and it’s become an issue in more and more data centers over the years. As we use more computing resources, the effort to provide power becomes a challenge. A decade ago I wrote an inventory system to help us keep track of our thousands of servers. The challenge of locating a particular machine to manage the hardware was a problem for our hardware people, and we built a system to allow them to easily find a particular server, with hardware configuration updated from software queries made by our management software.

    Almost as soon as we got the system deployed, we had to modify it to add additional pieces of data related to power and heat. We were approaching the limits of both, and knowing where we had spare power, the consumption of power on each circuit as well as the heat load in different parts of the room allowed our hardware people to better plan for future requirements.

    Over the last few years I’ve seen some creative solutions being used to build new data centers and handle the power and cooling requirements. Google has built data centers near rivers and hydroelectric generators to take advantage of those resources. Old mines and open air cooling solutions have been implemented, and just recently I saw Microsoft had one thing I’d never thought of: a waste-powered data center. That’s a new one for computing, though a local brewery in Colorado has been using methane to generate power for a few years.

    I like the idea of trying new solutions, and trying to build a sustainable energy source that uses less of our fossil fuels. It makes sense to me, and seems like it’s a longer term view of advancing our computing infrastructure in a cost effective way. I applaud Microsoft for trying this; I’m just not sure I’d want to be the DBA working in this particular data center.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Social Media and Interviews

    Will You Get Fired Because of Facebook?
    Too much time on Facebook during work is a bad idea

    When I first saw this story, I was a bit disturbed. In an interview, for a statistician, the candidate was asked for his Facebook username and password. The interviewer wanted to view non-public parts of the candidate’s profile on Facebook, and the candidate refused and withdrew his job application. I’ve heard of this in the past, with the city of Bozeman asking for credentials, but it appears the practice is growing. College athletes are asked to “friend” coaching staff, and some public sector workers must connect with their superiors.

    If I were asked in an interview, I would politely decline and state that I have set up privacy for a reason. There are things I post to share with friends and family that are not meant to be available for the general public. In my mind, these are akin to photo albums or letters I’ve written that I store in my house. Anything that I post publicly I take responsibility for, but private posts are private. I would suggest you do the same.

    On one hand companies are free to ask and candidates are free to decline, and that’s the free market. At some point, however, if all companies were to ask for this, employees would essentially have no choice but to comply, which feels like an intrusion into employee’s lives at a higher level than I feel should be allowed. It strikes me as a little too 1984-ish for my own comfort.

    Part of the problem is that the laws we’ve written for the real world frame the way we interact. Those laws, however, don’t necessarily translate and apply to the digital world, which means that we struggle to apply them in this new frame of reference. I think that we also aren’t always sure exactly how we would want to have our privacy or rights preserved in the digital world, and all too often we have companies, and criminals, taking advantage of that fact.

    I suggest everyone make an effort to separate your public and professional posts and profile online. Point employers to a professional profile, and let them know this what they should expect from you at work. Your personal thoughts and ideas are separate, and you’ll keep them that way at work, just as you do in the digital world.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Small Management

    Steve on a horse
    I’m on a horse

    This editorial was originally published on June 21, 2007. It is being republished as Steve is traveling.

    I saw this article on server management from a handheld and it’s always seen like something that’s very cool and handy, but I’ve almost never been in a situation where I really needed to manage my server while stopped on the side of the road or eating dinner. There’s times I got called away from something to go into work, but usually it’s not something I think I could have solved, or even wanted to solve, on a 320×240 screen.

    But recently while I was at TechEd, I saw some really cool new handheld devices. The capabilities of handheld devices, usually PDAs converged into phones, is really amazing. So I wanted to know:

    How many of you can, or would, manage your servers from a handheld?

    I’ve never had a phone with a keyboard, like a Blackberry. I’ve been a candy-bay Nokia guy for a long time, though my updated Startac, errr Razr, adorns my belt these days. Not by choice, but for another 6 or 7 months I’m stuck with it.

    Years ago I also had a small form factor laptop to test for my boss. It was aCasio Cassiopeia A-10, and it ran CE and limited applications (this was circa 1997). I run pcAnywhere on it and actually logged into a workstation at work and tried to manage our SQL Server and other applications. It didn’t work, at least not without frustration. Granted that was over dial-up, but it was way worse than my laptop because of the small form factor.

    Recently I saw APC giving a self-guided tour of their new racks using PDAs. You could pick up a Dell Axim, click a button to start the video or move to the next section, and watch the tour while you walked around the rack. With headphones you could get the sales pitch and pause or move forward as you wanted. And it actually worked pretty well.

    That’s not quite typing in a T-SQL command and I’m not sure how difficult it would be to try and navigate SSMS thorough a Terminal Services screen, but it gave me some hope that it might be something I’d try down the road.

    So let me know if you think it’s something you might do.