Voice of the DBA

Tag: administration

  • The Speed of Azure

    We should be able to deploy a new SQL instance as easy as this.
    We should be able to deploy a new SQL instance as easy as this.

    As database administrators we seem to be slow to embrace new technologies and paradigms. There was a lack of enthhusiasm from DBAs for SANs years ago, and virtual machines more recently, at a time when many other technology professioanls were embracing these ideas. Even today there is resistance from some people, and sometimes with good reason. SQL Servers are not like other servers and have much different hardware requirements. Too often the virtual machine and storage administrators do not appreciate that SQL Servers need different architectures.

    Lately the cloud services push is seeing lots of resistance from DBAs. Various vendors and media hype the idea and potential savings, which then convince management that systems need to be moved or built in the cloud. There are some applications that fit better in the cloud, but not all of them. I certainly don’t want sensitive information in the cloud, at least until we work out some of the legalities for who owns, controls, and responds to subpoena about data.

    The applications that make sense seem to be those that are distributed with lots of paying clients. I ran across a blog that looked at some of the companies that have moved into the Azure cloud with pieces of their businesses and been quite pleased with the results. Quite a few of these are cost-scalable by clients, meaning that a new user or customer is paying some fee that makes it economical to add new databases and servers for that client. If they leave, you can shut down their server.

    It’s definitely easier to start an application in the cloud rather than move an existing one. The architecture is different from an on-premise application, and that means code changes. Not something many companies want to engage in, given the past success of such projects. However the cost savings can be significant for new projects, if those new projects involve investment in equipment, facilities, people, or some combination of all of those.

    However one of the biggest items I see mentioned why companies like cloud platforms like Azure is the speed of deployment. To me that means that the IT infrastructure people, from storage to admin to DBAs, are falling down on the job. There’s no reason we can’t deploy new machines as quickly as Azure these days.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Starting with Azure

    I’ve been meaning to do this, and I finally had the chance recently to start working with Azure. Red Gate is investing in cloud tools, and more development tools, so it’s something I need to work on.

    I went to the Azure page, and noticed a “Member Offers” link.

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    When I clicked through, I could see the benefits. Below this screen shot is the list of stuff you get, depending on your MSDN subscription. You can see the exact benefits on the MSDN benefits page.

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    I clicked the activate link and was taken to the Windows Live login page. After signing in, I got a page that asked me to create an account. It listed my specific benefits and the requirements for an Azure account.

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    Since I have a mobile phone and a credit card, I clicked the arrow to proceed. The first thing is to verify your account with a mobile phone. I assume this gives me some sort of two factor authentication as well as a way for them to reach me for billing issues.

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    After receiving a text and entering it, I was taken to the billing area. I know this freaks many people out, however I’ve had a number of friends use the MSDN subscription trial and not been billed after 5 or 6 months. I’ve had a few that have been billed, but it’s been low amounts, in the $5-10 range. Grant Fritchey (b | t) is one of them, and with all the writing he’s done on Azure, some presentations, and research for Red Gate, he hasn’t had issues.

    It’s your career, it’s worth $5 a month. If you find you’re spending more, shut stuff down. I’d give it a try, however, if there is any chance your career will include work in the cloud.

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    Once you enter a credit card, they’ll get to work.

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    The welcome screen gives you lots of options. I’m sure I’ll end up here quite often across the next few months as I try to be sure that I’m not running up my cost. I can expense it back to Red Gate, but I do try to spend wisely.

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    What now? There’s lots of options.

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    I have a few things in mind, but I’ll probably start with a few light experiments based on some presentations I’ve seen. Buck Woody has a nice set of resources to get me started, and I’ll likely give one of these a try.

  • Customizing SSMS–Results

    This is a short series on some customizations in SSMS to make it visually more appealing.

    As a presenter, I’ve learned how to change the way Management Studio (SSMS) looks to make it easier for people to see the screen on a projector. I had wrongly assumed that so many people knew many of these tricks, which is a poor attitude on my part. That should be especially apparent as I saw a presentation recently where the speaker didn’t know how to make things easier to see.

    In a previous post I talked about changing the query font size. In this post we’ll look at result sizes.

    The Defaults

    This is what I see, and it’s not easy to read.

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    The results are much smaller than the query itself. How can we change this and make things easier to read?

    I wrote about one way: using results to text. This works well, but it isn’t the best solution for everyone, and you still want to change the size of your results. The technique I’ll show you works for that as well.

    Customization

    If you go to the Tools | Options menu, in the Fonts tab as I showed in the last post, you’ll find there’s a drop down titled “Show settings for:” at the top. If you select Grid results, you can change the font settings.

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    The default is 8, and I usually up that a bit.

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    Once that is done, you click OK, and get this note:

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    Make sure your tabs are saved, since you need to restart SSMS. Once you do, your results will be much easier to read.

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    Note that in the drop down for settings, there is an item for “Results to text”. If you change that, your text results will be larger.

  • Disabling Resource Governor

    I had known that the Resource Governor is always running in modern versions of SQL Server. It’s core to the operation of the SQLOS, though it can’t be used to do anything unless it is enabled.

    You can read more about it if you have Enterprise Edition, and I’ve thought it was a good start to controlling and throttling the resources inside SQL Server. I’d like to see it expanded, and I do like the CAP addition in 2012.

    However I wasn’t aware you could prevent someone from enabling Resource Governor. Apparently you can, as shown in this blog: Disabling Resource Governor permanently (somewhat). Amit Bansal shows that if you set trace flag 8040, the Resource Governor cannot be enabled. This prevents changes by junior administrators, developers, etc. that might not be aware of the consequences of their actions.

    Personally for me, I’m not sure I like this. To me this is a case where you don’t have trust among your staff, or good communication, or perhaps something else. None of those are good situations.

    I don’t know that I’d ever use this, but you can read Amit’s post for more details.

    Note that this doesn’t remove Resource Governor, and your DAC still resides in the internal pool, which always has guaranteed resources.