Voice of the DBA

Tag: administration

  • Prepping for Winter

    Living on a ranch in Colorado means that we have to prepare for winter in a way that we don’t worry about other seasons. Taking care of livestock when the weather gets cold (and snowy) presents challenges, and since it can be a matter of survival, we have to think about potential issues in advance and work to mitigate them before they occur. My return from the PASS Summit last weekend had me outside working on shed with my daughter to prep for this week’s winter storms.
    When working with computers, we don’t usually need to make special preparations for seasons, but we do need to be ready for difficult times. I was reminded of this with a post this week about 12 Things to Check to Prepare for Winter. These aren’t necessarily things you need to check as the temperatures drop, but they are things you might want to examine periodically in your environment.
    In many businesses, we are aware of the time periods when our systems get stressed, and great DBAs plan for those times. In one large organization I worked for, we knew that the end of quarter and end of year periods were very stressful and busy for many people in the company. As a result, any maintenance or preparation needed to occur at least a month early to ensure systems were at peak performance. In another job, at a power plant, the refueling process that occurred on a semi regular basis was the busiest time of year and we needed to ensure we were aware of when it was coming and double check everything before it was too late to do so.
    Good preparation is one of the keys to avoiding any of a DBA’s worst days. After all, if things go wrong for you at work, it’s unlikely The DBA Team will be available to save the day.
    Steve Jones

  • Avoiding a DBA’s Worst Days with Monitoring

    SQL in the City Abstract: When things go wrong with a database, it can be the start of the worst day of a DBA’s life. Join Steve Jones as he examines the problems uncovered by The DBA Team and how you can prevent them with proactive monitoring and in-depth knowledge of SQL Server.

    General Abstract: A DBA usually has a bad day because they are unprepared for issues that commonly occur or unaware of situations that can cause problems. Learn about the five things Steve Jones finds to be most important for DBAs and how you can be ready to handle issues in these areas:

    • Backups
    • Space
    • Security
    • Resources
    • Deployment

    This session does include Red Gate tools but explains how issues can be avoided with your own utilities.

    Slides: DBAsWorstDays.pptx

    Placeholder resources:

    Custom Metrics used in the demo:

  • Document, then Install

    I saw someone post a note that they had installed a new SQL Server and wanted to document the install. Did anyone have a good script or process for doing this?

    I’ve done this myself, but lately it seems to be the wrong way of actually building systems. One of the things I have started to feel is important is that I should strive for consistency and known states for systems rather than works of art.  However if I’m installing systems and then documenting them, I think that I’m doing things backwards.

    There has been a trend towards declarative actions in technology, whereby we tell the system what we want and it configures itself to arrive in that state. An example of how some this can be done is with Puppet. This is a case of the administrator essentially documenting what they want to be done first, and then letting the system put itself in that state. It’s almost like programming the installation and configuration of software, but with tools to make the process much smoother.

    In this model, administrators don’t need to document the installs. They’ve already declared what needs to be done. If vendors change defaults in the future it doesn’t matter, as the installations will configure themselves to the same state, ignoring defaults and human expectations. This also results in much more consistently configured systems, something that’s critical for building a smooth software delivery pipeline.

    The closest thing I’ve seen to this for SQL Server is the Finebuild project that Ed Vassie set up. That’s much better than unattended installs and I’ve seen Finebuild demo’d, and it looks good. I need to set it up so that I can ensure that every instance I set up is in a known configuration. I can have multiple configurations ready, but I’d rather choose one of my choices and then let the system apply the settings than remember to click a particular check box or change some item manually. I’d also appreciate this for DR and auditing, with some list of settings for each instance or host.

    That just seems more like a 21st century way of working to me.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.6MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. 

  • Automate Yourself to a Coffee Break

    I’ve worked as a production DBA in a few companies, and in those positions, I’ve always worked to make my position one of “insurance,” with me able to respond when things go wrong. My goal has been to understand, improve, and enable an environment that runs smoothly, which allows me to take leisurely coffee breaks and not hurried (and harried) sips of coffee as I walk from the coffee pot back to my desk.

    There was a good article published recently about the mindset of a DBA and how automation is an important part of your job. If there’s something you can easily automate, then it’s probably something you should automate. There are plenty of tasks that are easy to script into jobs, set alerts for, or have the system perform some action when they occur. If the system is performing that work, then you have time to deal with other, higher value tasks.

    What are those higher value tasks? Well, what things do people complain about, but you never get the time to work on? Perhaps tuning queries? Maybe practicing your skills for a disaster? Finding time to analyze the performance of systems and plan for the future? There’s probably no shortage of things that you wish you had time to deal with because there is no shortage of busy work you’re assigned.

    Do yourself a favor. Look for places to introduce automation through T-SQL scripts, Powershell commandlets, alerts, and more. Practice writing some small program to manage a task for you. It might seem like it will take longer than doing the work, and it will. However the next few times you’re asked to complete the same task, it should take you much, much less time.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 1.8MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.