Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Does It Count?

    Maintenance in the Army

    I wrote a blog recently about downtime and SLAs, and the need to have not only downtime SLAs, but also a data loss SLA. Thanks to Paul Randal (blog | @PaulRandal) for clueing me in to the need for having both. In the comments someone mentioned that scheduled downtime ought not be counted against your uptime measurements. That’s a debate I’ve had in the past with employers, and I thought it would be a good Friday poll:

    Should scheduled maintenance be counted against your downtime SLA?

    There’s an argument that says since the outage is scheduled, and people are informed, that this shouldn’t really count against your work in keeping servers running. The flip side is that when the database instance is down, it’s not useable, and of limited use to the business.

    I know that companies that calculate the usage of their vehicles, and maintenance counts against usage time. While it’s necessary, the idea is that mechanics should be looking to minimize it, and perhaps ensure that extra checks are done when the vehicle is being worked on to help prevent future issues. A similar argument could be made for database servers.

    Do you feel that scheduled maintenance is downtime? Is it calculated that way at your employer? Let us know this Friday.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72280/)

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Master Training

    A Kung Fu Master

    As a kid, growing up on Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and Saturday afternoon Kung Fu Theater, I always wanted to be a martial arts master. A few years later, being a Jedi Master caught my interest despite the fact that it wasn’t a viable goal on Earth in 1977. Now I’ve started down the path towards another master, the Microsoft Certified Master.

    Actually I’m not going down that path. I had the chance to take the written test with no downside for me, so I took it. I have no intention of actually pursuing the lab at this time. It’s a lot of work, and not necessarily something that would provide me a lot of benefits right now. I may change my mind if I were looking for consulting work, but I am quite happy with my job right now and don’t want to change.

    I do plan on taking one or two of the MCM training being offered by SQLskills this year, but I won’t be looking for the intensive  4 weeks of training to prepare me for the lab exam. After reading Brent Ozar’s adventures last year, I think I’d need all 4 weeks of class along with a few more weeks of prep to be ready for the lab.

    So why am I taking a class? First, it’s good training. I have had the privilege of seeing both Paul Randal and Kimberly Tripp speak before, and it’s always enjoyable and informative. I come out of their hour long sessions with so many notes and new knowledge that it I feel like I’ve been learning for a full day. I am sure that a week’s training from them will result in a small novel that I’ll need to review over the following months.

    Training can be hard to get funded, but it is often worth it. I hope that more companies would be willing to improve the skills of their people with this type of advanced training, even without paying for the certification testing. The chance to learn from experts in particular areas is an investment that I think is worth making in my career and in yours.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72278/)

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • What Not To Say

    Don't yell at the boss

    This article on 8 things your boss doesn’t want to hear made me smile. There are a few phrases listed that I would definitely recommend not using if you want to succeed in your current place of employment.

    Having managed a few DBAs in my career, I thought of a few more that I thought might fit the data professionals out there as “things not to say” to your boss:

    I’m not sure if more memory will help: You could substitute CPU or disk drives for memory in this one, but it’s your job to know. If you don’t, learn how to tell what your bottlenecks are and make appropriate recommendations.

    That additional memory didn’t help: The only thing worse than not being able to make a good recommendation is making one that doesn’t improve performance after your boss has approved the purchase. Now you look bad, and you’ve made your boss look bad.

    Company X has offered me $yyyyy. Will you match it? You can get away with this once at a job, or maybe once a decade. If you want to go to your boss with this one, be ready to quit if you don’t get it, and be ready to shine if you receive the raise. No one wants to be put in a corner, and I would be likely to let you move on if you came to me, unless I felt you deserved it. Even then, the second time you ask, I’m showing you the door.

    I downloaded this software off the Internet and it crashed the server: You can’t trust stuff you download, no matter what the Open Source crowd says. Test, test, test. Preferably on a test machine.

    It works on my machine: I have always wanted to answer this with a “Who gives a <insert four letter expletive here>?” My actual responses haven’t been that far away if it’s an important project and you give me this excuse.

    Feel free to add your own “things not to say” to the comments below.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72279/)

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Sharing Code

    Sharing of Ideas

    It seems that almost every week I encounter some form of plagiarism it the SQL Server community. Whether its from SQLServerCentral or it’s someone else, it seems that I’m either alerting someone or sending my own takedown notice.  It’s a little sad that I have to even explain the morality of re-publishing someone’s else’s content without giving them credit to anyone over 8 years old, but apparently I do. However this isn’t a piece about plagiarism.

    I have seen people take various additional steps to protect their content, and that’s fine. It’s their right, and I understand that some people derive a level of income from their work. Whether it’s direct or indirect, it doesn’t matter. If someone wants to protect their work and they don’t want you to reuse it, then respect their wishes. If not for legal reasons, for moral ones.

    As we publish information on the web, however, I would think most of us hope our code and ideas are adapted and re-used. Not used in another publishing piece (blog, article, etc.), but used in a piece of production code that makes a system run better. I know when I’ve published code that helps someone track backups or monitor their servers, I was quite honored to hear that someone used my code in their system.

    Sometimes I wonder if  other authors out there feel the same way. Do writers assume their code will be rewritten by someone before it is used. Digital rights and intellectual property are immature fields, and I’m not sure how we ought to best handle the re-use of code. Authors have the right to decide how they want their works to be shared, and should publish their decision. I would hope that others out there would respect that.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72245/)

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts