Monday Monitor Tips: Lots of Postgres Options

Posted on January 6, 2025 by way0utwest

Redgate Monitor is growing to include more than just Microsoft SQL Server monitoring. We added PostgreSQL support in 2023 and that continues to grow. This post looks at a few changes we’ve added.

This is part of a series of posts on Redgate Monitor. Click to see the other posts

PostgreSQL Monitoring

When we added PostgreSQL support to Redgate Monitor, I assumed that we could monitor most types of PostgreSQL installs. I was very wrong. Apparently everyone that’s forked or used PostgreSQL in different ways has changed how a DBA might need to monitor the system. At first we monitored on-premises installs only, but that’s grown.

AWS

We now support RDS. If you search for bluebox, you’ll see a PostgreSQL RDS instance. If you click in the card, you can see the workload, and more specifics on this RDS database.

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We also support Aurora, if you use that version. Search for pizza and these cards appear, the right one being Aurora. This is an AWS Aurora database, based on PostgreSQL.

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Azure

We also support Azure Flex PostgreSQL database. Search for the pgtips database and you’ll see this card.

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If you’re in the cloud with AWS or Azure, we have some PostgreSQL monitoring available for you, with more coming all the time.

Give Redgate Monitor a Try

Redgate Monitor continues to change and grow. Look at our demo system at monitor.red-gate.com and click the What’s New in the upper right, where you’ll see all the new features, like the PostgreSQL support changes.

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You can also see the release timeline for more specific features in each version.

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Redgate Monitor is a world class monitoring solution for your database estate. Download a trial today and see how it can help you manage your estate more efficiently.

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The Rise of Data Centers

Posted on January 6, 2025 by way0utwest

For the last few years, we’ve seen no shortage of cloud migration stories and felt pressure from management who wanted to migrate our systems to the cloud. It seems that almost everyone I speak to has a story of having to move a system out of their owned or leased data center into a public cloud from some vendor. A lot of this is the movement of VMs from one place to another, which has me scratching my head. If we’re just running VMs, surely we can do this cheaper in our own data center.

Perhaps, though there are a lot of costs to setting up or running a data center, and it’s not easy getting a system in place that allows a bit of self-service for our customers. Especially while ensuring that images used are properly patched and secured, while ensuring lots of easy connectivity to storage that can be reconfigured easily. It might not be worth the effort for a few dozen VMs, but if you have hundreds of systems, maybe it is.

Maybe it’s happening. I keep seeing stories about repatriation from the cloud. I also caught the global data center trend report, which shows a lot of growth in the data center world. Vacancy rates are low and there is continued demand for building more data centers. Some of this is due to public cloud providers, some is from AI companies who need lots of power and GPUs, and some is from private companies looking to collocate their systems.

The world is becoming more and more dependent lots of servers in data centers. I expect that we will continue to see more data centers built, but I expect fewer and fewer private, corporate data centers. More than likely all of us will use someone else’s data center, even if we choose to own the computing systems. Even Basecamp, which left the cloud, is using a collocation facility for machines, which means they are using a facility owned by another organization and shared with other clients. However, they own the servers they use, which are just located in someone else’s data center.

If any of you have private data centers, my guess is most of those will slowly fade away over time. The cost of running them privately will exceed that of what vendors will charge. Data center vendors can spread the cost of buildings, power, networking, cooling, etc. across multiple clients, often hundreds or thousands. While you might not be in the cloud, and you may still own your own computers, you’ll likely store and connect them in someone else’s data center.

That means that most of us will need to be comfortable with limits on the hardware deployed and amount of upgrades available. In the cloud you’re limited to what vendors provide. In our own collation spaces, it might be what our core IT group makes available. I still expect database servers to be among the largest machines available, but there will still be limits to what most of us can provision. After all, most IT groups still want some standard configurations shared by most of their servers. That might be an interesting trade-off for some of us as the cloud might be more or less preferable in certain situations.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

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Insiders Selling Data

Posted on January 4, 2025 by way0utwest

There is a report that the lowest-paid employees at various banks are selling customer data, which is sad and also not unexpected. Those who have access to sensitive information can be tempted to part with it for a quick profit. I’ve seen this in the past in restaurants and retail stores. Sometimes with credit card or other data, but also with knowledge (or keys) that would let someone burglarize the premises.

There’s a great quote in the article that says: “The more employees there are inside a company with access to sensitive customer information, the higher the risk that access is going to be abused.” I think that’s very true in most companies, which is why governance and data controls are becoming more important in some organizations. I wish it were a global trend at all companies, but far too many don’t think there is a high risk, or that their employees will abuse their privileges.

I’d like to think most IT people wouldn’t be tempted to sell or disclose info, but I’m not sure that’s true. While many IT staffers are paid well, well is relative. Some might not think they’re compensated enough or they might feel pressure from their own financial stresses to compromise that data of others.

Privileged access is just that: privileged. While it can be a pain to have a separate account for certain access, the intention is that you are reminded that this account can access things that others should not see. In my career, I’ve tried to remember this and be careful with my access, though admittedly, I’ve done plenty of non-privileged things with a privileged account, being lucky enough that nothing bad happened.

Security continues to be a problem in so many places, and with the vast amounts of data we collect, and the growing desire for many organizations to let AI LLMs view that data, I suspect we’ll likely have more problems in the future not less. While we might not have as many humans that decide to sell our data, I suspect we’ll have many more AIs that can be tricked into disclosing it.

Steve Jones

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The Learning Plan for 2025

Posted on January 3, 2025 by way0utwest

I saw a post from Brent Ozar a couple of months ago promoting his Black Friday sale, which is really a Month-of-November-Training-Sale. I like that he does this, as I know it can take time to get purchases approved and not many techies want to spend a few thousand USD in hopes their company will reimburse them. Redgate likely would for me, but I don’t know many other employers that would reimburse the expense without prior approval.

In the post, Brent outlines how you might spend your year working through his courses, learning more about various aspects of SQL Server. He plans out 11 months (Dec-Oct), and it’s a good flow going from understanding how things work to more advanced work in different areas. I’ve been in a few of his classes and I honestly think you might easily need a month if not 2-3 months to get through the various modules, practice using them, and cement in a few skills along the way.

That’s around the rest of the things in your life. You do need to live your life, right? It’s not just work and training for work?

I used to make a plan every Dec/Jan for the year, with some goals for learning and growing. I gave up a few years ago because I found the nature of my job meant my plan was likely not appropriate after March. Even going to quarterly goals was hard, as travel became a bit chaotic for me.

As much as I like to set an example, for someone in their 50s with a busy job, the reality is I don’t know where my job takes me year to year, so planning is really hard. Plus, I find myself focusing on different aspects of technology or software sales as challenges arise. While I’m trying to work on my career, it’s more tactical in the sense that I worry about new things in Redgate month to month that can help me in my position.

However, for many of you, you have a job that you know the parameters of, you know what types of things you’ll be asked to do, and more importantly, you know which of those things you were asked to do in the past, but struggled to get done at an expert level.

In that case, have you made a learning plan? Are you setting aside time most (or every) week to further your career? If you’re young and single or married without kids, you definitely should spend time every week on your career. Doctors, lawyers, CPAs, and engineers have dedicated education requirements in their jobs, and they spend time on their careers. You ought to aim for at least a 3-4 hour a week commitment to yourself.

If you have young kids, time is precious. While you might take a few years off, my view was that when my kids were 4-5, I could take some time to grow my career. In the those toddler/young schoolage years, this might only be an hour or two a week, but it should be something. As your kids grow, you can spend a bit more time.

If you’ve got older kids, now is the time when you can prove you’re worth a higher salary. Dive deep into tech and show that you’re an expert. If your current employer doesn’t want to pay you, I’m sure someone will. While there are lots of people looking for jobs, and lots of unfilled positions, employers aren’t just hiring unless they are convinced someone really adds value. Learn to do this and you’ll have a fun, enjoyable twilight to your career.

Think about your learning plan for 2025 and if you want to share, we’d love to hear it.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

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