T-SQL Tuesday #147 Invitation – Upgrade Strategies

Posted on February 1, 2022 by way0utwest

tsqltuesdayIt is time for T-SQL Tuesday #147 and this month I get to be the host. Since I’m in charge, I usually try to ensure I remember what this is like and host every year or two. This will be my sixth time hosting. The others I’ve hosted are: 013, 027, 106, 117, 137.

For this month, I was thinking about SQL Server 2022. The next version of the platform was announced in the fall, and I’ve spent a little time working with it, getting familiar with some of the changes. I don’t plan on upgrading SQL Server Central anytime soon, but you never know.

Planning for Upgrades

In my career, most of the time we don’t upgrade production databases very often. In most of my jobs, we’d change versions for new databases, but existing ones often lived on their original version. It’s how I got into a job where I was managing 4 different versions of SQL Server. These days I expect it’s common for many DBAs to have to deal with that many, or more, versions.

I do have customers these days that try to upgrade often, and limit the number of versions they work with. I have customers now that are on a mix of 2016-2019 only, some that might be working on 2014-2016 only, and I’ve run into a customer that only has SQL Server 2017. Of course, they have few databases and look to upgrade about every 5 years when mainstream support is running out for their edition.

This month I want you to write about how you look at SQL Server upgrades. A few things you might think about:

  • Why we wait to upgrade?
  • Strategies for testing an upgrade
  • Smoke tests or other ways to verify the upgrade worked
  • Moving to the cloud to avoid upgrades
  • Using compatibility levels to upgrade an instance by not a database.
  • Checklists of things to use in planning
  • The time it takes to upgrade your environment
  • What you evaluate in making a decision to upgrade or not?
  • Anything else

I don’t know when SQL Server 2022 will release, but certainly many of us will need to consider in 2023 whether we want to upgrade systems or not. Think about it and write about something that matters to you.

The Rules

Write your own post in response to the invitation. If you want to be in the wrap-up, follow these rules. If you read this after Feb 8, 2022, just write your response on your blog.

  • Write your post and publish it on Feb 8 ,2022, UTC time
  • Include the T-SQL Tuesday logo and link to this post.
    (logo in this post)

  • Ensure you leave a comment on this post with the URL of your post (or a trackback/pingback)
  • Publicize your  post on Twitter/LinkedIn with the #tsql2sday hashtag
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Daily Coping 31 Jan 2022

Posted on January 31, 2022 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to say hello to a neighbor and get to know them better.

Tough to say hello to neighbors where I am. The nearest one is over 1/4 mile away, and they have long driveways.

I do, however, sometimes see me neighbors walking along the road. I slowed down and stopped to chat with one recently. I wasn’t pressed for time, so I took a few minutes to say hi, ask how life was going, and caught up with someone I hadn’t talked to in over a year.

It was a good use of my time.

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Making Video Chat Better

Posted on January 31, 2022 by way0utwest

I ran across an article on Zoom fatigue and new tech that was written in July 2020. That month seems like ages ago, and at the same time, not too long ago as the world seems to have still been in some sort of suspended animation for much of 2020 and 2021. However, one thing that has remained since that time is a regular stream of Zoom and Teams meetings that I attend.

I’ve been dealing with video meetings for over a decade. For most of the time I’ve worked for Redgate, I’ve had regular meetings every week with various people that are in Cambridge, UK. I’m in Denver,  US, and while I enjoy going to England and visiting the office, that’s a few times a year. Across the years, we’ve tried a number of platforms, and various different configurations, including a dedicated conference room with extra mics and sound-absorbing padding on the walls. None of this made for a great experience, though I have to say our adoption of Zoom across the last 2-3 years has been the best experience overall.

Still, when I have multiple meetings in a day, I feel fatigued. Many people feel similarly, and that has not gone unnoticed. While we do try to cut down on some of the meetings as a company, they aren’t going away entirely for us, or likely, for your company. Some companies are going back to the office, at least part-time, but many employees are resisting, which means we need better tech. Something I hope is coming.

The article I linked above talks about some of the changes taking place, with some newer tech being tried. I don’t know I’ll ever like video chat without some sort of VR-style view of a room or holograms, but perhaps something will come along that makes these meetings better. I’ve certainly found that having larger views of speakers is good, but when they rapidly switch from one person to another it feels like a 5-year old directing a live TV show. I want to turn off my video and just listen. Or end the call.

One thing that I’ve found helps is I try hard to get more done through Slack and email, avoiding meetings that aren’t needed. The best way to combat something that doesn’t work well for me is to do less of it, so I work to minimize video, type more, and hope for more live face-to-face meetings a few times a year.

Steve Jones

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

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DP-900 Preparation Guide

Posted on January 31, 2022 by way0utwest

This is part of a series on my preparation for the DP-900 exam. This is the Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals, part of a number of certification paths. You can read various posts I’ve created as part of this learning experience.

I was asked to pursue a few Azure exams as part of Redgate’s partnership with Microsoft. I’ve been slowly studying some concepts and working towards exams in spare time, but getting more focused in January. I made this a part of my goals for 2022, and it’s been an interesting experience to work towards this exam.

I’m providing an overview of my resources, and I’ll add new posts for various detailed items I found interesting with links as well.

Overview of Preparation

The first thing I did was look over the exam page. This lets the reader know what is being covered as well as the purpose of the exam. There is a note that some things have changed as of Oct 2021, and there is a new PDF to look at with the various areas being tested.

Download the PDF.

That’s first, and then check the scope of the exam. There is a lot here, including, but not limited to:

  • data workloads
  • relational Azure services (including PostgreSQL and MySQL/MariaDB)
  • Synapse
  • security (firewall, auth)
  • deployment options
  • query tools
  • DDL and DML
  • non-relational data
  • Azure Storage, Azure Files, Azure Tables, Azure queues
  • Azure CosmosDB
  • analytic workloads, including HD Insight, Databricks, ADS, and Synapse
  • Power BI

That’s daunting.

I also looked over some guides from others:

This seems like a lot, but since the exam can only cover so much, I didn’t expect to be too detailed in each area. However, you do need to know quite a bit about a number of different areas.

I looked over these, trying to determine what I knew and didn’t know. These gave me hints about which places to spend a little time. I didn’t watch all of the Andrew Brown video, but I did look over the others.

Prep Process

I started looking for an overview of each area. Microsoft Learning has some free reading courses, and sandboxes for practice, that I used. I went through these learning paths:

These each are tens of minutes, but there is a lot of information to absorb about each area. Quite a few of these areas I hadn’t spent much time working in, so I found myself dropping into the MS Docs to get a little more clarification of the area.

I also took the MS sample question test to get an idea of what I actually knew. I learned that I had quite a few holes in small areas, though overall I knew most of what was being covered.

I haven’t taken the exam yet, as I’ve been spending an hour every 2-3 days going over some concept and trying to learn a solid overview of what it consists of and how it might be used for data work. Lots to learn here, and the thing I do like is that this forces me to actually dig into topics at a slightly deeper level and helps me to understand a bit more about the options in Azure.

It also helps me to have better conversations with customers, which is important for my job. I’m not an expert, but I have an idea how of what Azure Table Storage is v. CosmosDB and can understand why someone might choose one of the other in a conversation. At least I can talk basics and know where to look for more detailed information.

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