Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Cloud Hacking

    Hackers are training for the cloud challenges

    Not everyone is down on the cloud. Apparently someone found a great use for pay-as-you-go computing in the cloud by using it to hack wireless networks. What’s next, someone using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to find security holes in police patrols of local businesses? It constantly amazes me just how someone will take a technology that is very handy and turn it into a tool used for criminal purposes. I suppose we just have to live with this use of technology and learn to protect ourselves as much as possible.

    I think that security will be one of the bigger impediments to cloud adoption than anything else. Sure there’s the cost factor of data transfers, and trying to determine how to manage the costs of large bursts. There’s the need to integrate local and cloud development codebases, and potential patching/version issues. However those are not large issues when compared with the potential security issues that come with cloud computing.

    Even as we move to private cloud structures, we may have security issues with more resources being grouped under one large services umbrella and the difficulties of managing security for large numbers of users. We want to use groups to make management easier, but the more people you manage and the more groups that become involved, the more likely it is that you will have some security hole in your system.

    I think we’ll start to find more hackers that will discover, and take advantage of, hole in cloud security that we haven’t thought of. As they do, we’ll see more resistance from companies in migrating their infrastructures. At least until it becomes more cost effective to do so. Then we’ll discover that many of those security issues don’t seem to matter quite as much.

    Steve Jones

    (published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72385/)

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Hybrid Hires

    I'd like to see more of these in the US

    There was a lot of talk about various hybrid technologies at the recent Detroit Auto Show, with many new models being displayed that use some type of hybrid technology. There are plenty of people that don’t love the technology, but my Prius has performed well for me over the last three and a half years I’ve had it. Who knows, I might even buy another one.

    The past two or three years have been a down economy around the world. As I’ve traveled to meet many SQL Server professionals at events all around the US, I’ve found that many of them have struggled with having more work and less resources to get it done. There are also many people who have lost their jobs or had trouble finding a job. Quite a few others have a hard time trying to get work done while worrying about their own job security. The downturn has not been pervasive, however, and there are plenty of technical professionals for whom the last two years have been business as usual as they go to work every day.

    At some point most of us will need to look for another job, and when we do, I think those of us that are well rounded DBAs will be in a good position. Data professionals often understand technology, and the business impact of data. There was some data on recent good trends in IT hiring summarized in this article that talks about job growth. In the article it mentions how there are lots of potential IT related positions where people are being hired to analyze data and statistics, as business/IT hybrids.

    I’m not sure that the idea of being a hybrid worker appeals to me, but I can see where technical and business skills are valuable for a data professional. You want to use these skills to market yourself and bring attention to your resume. It’s why a good IT worker will learn about the business of their employer and how it works.

    When you’re looking for a job, showing off your business skills alongside your technical skills can give you more opportunities to choose from and hopefully help you find the job that fits you best.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72344/)

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • What’s a Passive Server?

    Licensing software is often a more complicated process than I think it should be. Licensing database software seems to be even more difficult to understand, especially when you start to talk about the various high availability (HA) scenarios, virtualized  servers, separate machines to process SSIS packages and who knows what other configurations, not to mention the licensing changes with each new version of SQL Server.

    I was following a licensing debate  about how you license passive servers in an HA situation. I have always understood from the SQL Server licensing documents that if you have a passive server, it does not require a license for the SQL Server software. However it’s not that simple, or at least, it doesn’t appear that way to me.

    Suppose you have an primary instance that mirrors its database to another server. The mirror instance doesn’t need a license for that database, but what about if you also log ship your primary database to a third server? Does the third server need a license if it’s also “passive”? I assume that if you had second database on the mirror instance being used for another application, you’d need a license for that instance, but what if you only have a “DBA database” that gathers performance monitoring information for that mirror database? Is that “passive”?

    Suppose I have a 6 node cluster, and I have 4 active nodes and two passive ones, do I still have 2 other “passive” licenses for log shipped servers? Or can I log ship to 4 separate servers? That doesn’t even bring this clause into play:  “The passive server can take the duties of the active server for 30 days. Afterwards, it must be licensed accordingly” (from 2005 licensing). It almost feels like I am studying some type of Microsoft Internal Licensing Framework in preparation for some type of certification.

    To me, the simple way to handle this is to say that passive servers, those not doing any work for the business that owns them, don’t require a license. The exception would be for internal monitoring or maintenance on the passive server (backup restores, DBCC checks, DBA sysadmin monitoring). I doubt we’ll get something that simple, but that’s what I think would be fair.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72338/)

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • It’s Almost Always the Humans

    Today we have an editorial reprinted from Sept 19, 2005 as Steve is on vacation.

    Most breaches of security, stolen data, etc. are almost always the result of some breakdown in the human factor of the equation. By that I mean some interaction between the human “bad guys” and some human in the company. It could be stealing a laptop, sorting through trash or even paying for it. Or perhaps this method.

    I saw this article about bank fraud, but not the kind I expected. After all, I got called last year by my cell phone provider in a similar situation. You are late on your bill, make a telephone payment, presumably because you’re short of time. In my case I didn’t even call them back, which I should have. In this case, the individual writing just called and made a payment over the phone.

    A short time later a suspicious charge appeared. The person tracked it down to customer service that had been outsourced and someone at the outsourcing company was selling or passing along information to criminals that would use it in some type of identity theft crime. No word on what is happening with the investigation or even which company it is.

    To me, this the worst method of saving money, and if this results in security breaches, the name of the company should be publicized. Most of these corporations are not losing money. They are racing to make more, increase the stock price, whatever, and in doing so, they are sending out a piece of their core business. Customer service should be a cornerstone of any company. That is how you show that you are the place someone wants to do business. I’m not sure I even agree with outsourcing IT since that data is critical and vital to your company as well, but there is no way customer service is not a core part of your business.

    If you’re missing that point, you’re missing the function of a business in the world.