Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Server Hardware or Coffee?

    I actually chuckled out loud in my office recently. I was reading a piece about Expensify and how they learned some lessons from their database architecture over time. It’s a good piece, but at one point the author talks about two Dell servers. There’s a dual core 2.8Ghz CPU with 500GB of storage for US$700. This could be upgraded to an 8 core, 3.7GHz CPU with 64GB of RAM and 10TB of storage for around US$3,200. However, the author says don’t be cheap. Why?

    That’s less than the company spends on coffee each month.

    I thought that line was funny, and it proves a point. It can be easy to think about the cost of hardware as being high because it’s a large ticket item for most of us. When you view it in the context of the scale of business, then it’s cheap. If any of us spent $3000 a month on food, we might not think $3000 for a server is expensive. When you look at the cost of your labor that might need to babysit an underpowered system, a few more thousand dollars seem like a bargain for memory or CPU resources.

    The author also notes that while EC2 charges for managing your systems, it’s still a steal, and for many of us, capacity isn’t a big issue. We do find that one single system runs most of our workload. If it doesn’t, then we could buy more, or a second system, for a relatively low cost. At least, compared to the rest of our business.

    There certainly are some of you that have a large workload, or you have spent substantially more on server hardware. I think many of my systems have been tens of thousands of dollars, but there are good points to be made. Today’s computers are very powerful, and even though we have more data, a single server is likely able to handle many workloads.

    If we write good code.

    That’s a big caveat, but training your staff to code better, having them spend time learning to query hierarchies more efficiently or quickly splitting strings, can pay off with much happier servers and customers. While I am a fan of using hardware to avoid spending too much time tuning queries, I also think continuously improving the skills of your development staff is much more important and might be the best IT investment you can make. Assuming, of course, that you treat them well and they enjoy working for your management staff.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.9MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Wasting Time

    This editorial was originally published on Oct 11, 2012. It is being re-run as Steve is on vacation.

    I ran across this infographic on wasting time at work. From the title I was thinking this would point out the ways in which people avoid work, and perhaps it does, but it’s really geared towards showing us the framework and structure that many people have for work. I agree with the first two sections of the page that show email and meetings waste a lot of time. I certainly think they have in many jobs for me, especially when they are used as “catch-all” techniques for including everyone that is remotely relevant to an issue.

    Interruptions at work are hard to quantify as a problem. They definitely can be, but stopping by someone’s office to ask a question or take a quick break can be a way to recharge yourself between long periods of concentration. The issues come into play when the other person is in the middle of focusing on a task and you force a context switch on them. Recovering from the interruption can take time, time that’s often wasted as a person tries to remember exactly what they were focusing on.

    Meetings certainly interrupt the day, but since they are often planned in advance, you can be mentally prepared for the break. It makes me wonder if there wouldn’t be some benefit to scheduling some “open time” in your day where you plan on taking a break. Others that needed a minute of your time would know to come find you at that time.

    Time is very valuable, one of the most valuable resources we have at work. Management should be aware of this and working to limit interruptions, whether through email, meetings or anything else that prevents work from getting done. The fewer meetings and emails you require of your developers, the more time they have to work on the tasks they are being paid to complete.

    Steve Jones

  • Thursday Night Networking Dinner Meetup at Summit 2016

    This year PASS announced that Thursday night would be an open night at the PASS Summit, with no events scheduled. Typically Microsoft has sponsored a party at Gameworks, but not this year. PASS has a list of events at the Summit, if you want to browse. Many of these events do require invitations, which means attendance will be limited.

    Andy Warren and I decided to put together a couple of events for Thursday night, hoping to give many of you an alternative that’s both fun and good for your career. We came up with two items, and we hope that some of you will choose to attend. I’ll talk about one here, and the other in a new post.

    Please pass the word on to others that you know might be attending the summit. Tweets, blogs, etc. are appreciated. We’re using the hashtag #sqldinner, so please feel free to add that to your promotion.

    Thursday Night Dinner Meetup

    For many years, Andy and I have run the Monday Night Networking Dinner. This year, we decided to expand that to Thursday night, but with a twist. We are looking to organize small groups of people for a quiet dinner. We are asking for anyone interested in meeting fellow database professionals to come to the Convention Center lobby on Thursday around 5:30. We’ll have signs to help guide you.

    In the lobby we’ll have some facilitators to help you find/build a group of four with a shared interest, anything from technical to sports to politics. Once you have a group you’ll move over to the ‘restaurant board’ to look at a list of area restaurants. We’ll tag each with whether they are in walking distance (< 1/2 mile). Pick a restaurant and you’re off to dinner! Our goal is to facilitate, but self organizing is fine. Our hope is this is a chance for you to network with some new people and enjoy a nice dinner with some new friends.

    Around 5:45-6:30, we’ll try to organize people into groups of 4 that can go out for a dinner at a local restaurant. Please feel free to self-organize and leave if you have a group, but the idea is to network with some new people and enjoy a nice dinner with some new friends.

    I’ve gotten a number of restaurant suggestions (still looking for more), at various price ranges, and will have information available that night. We will have the various restaurant names on cards, to help you choose, but also try to spread the load so people aren’t waiting too long. We will also have a whiteboard with various topics and ideas in the Community Zone during the day Thursday for you to come read and consider which items are interesting to you. Feel free to vote on existing topics or add your own.

    This is an opportunity to try something new, and certainly a chance to get out of your hotel room if you don’t have other plans. If you have a group of 2 or 3, then feel free to come by and meet another new person or two that might want to join you.

    Again, I hope this works out well and please help me and Andy pass the word. Even if you have other plans Thursday, I’m sure there are plenty that won’t, so encourage them to meet someone new on Thursday night.

  • The 2016 Home Lab

    Everyone needs a home lab. At least, everyone that works in technology and wants to grow their career or get better at their craft. I’d hope that’s most of you, but if not, that’s fine. If you’re happy with just cruising along at work, I wish you the best.

    For many people, especially those wanting to learn, they need some lab. There are plenty of free software choices you can make to build a lab. SQL Server, SSMS, Visual Studio Code, Virtual Box, you can get these for free. The thing you’ll need to provide is the hardware. From my own experience, to learn about many features, you’ll want at least 2-3 VMs, or instances that can run different versions, provide some separation, and even a spare instance when you blow one up. If you want to experiment with the AlwaysOn technologies, you might want 4 or 5 spaces. You can do lots of this in Azure, but many people don’t want to commit, or have open ended costs. Or they don’t want to eat up bandwidth.

    I’m not a hardware geek, and honestly don’t care what I run. It just needs to go fast and work well. I rebuilt my desktop, on advice from Glenn Berry, but I just followed advice. I didn’t try to determine if part A was slightly better or worse than part B. I just needed the SSD/MB/CPU/etc. to work.

    I’m sure plenty of you might be considering a lab, or might need to upgrade. I ran across two great posts that give you a few ideas on what might work for you. Allan Hirt showcases a great portable lab, which I may adopt as a traveling companion. However, if you want another desktop that might run a slew of VMs for experimenting with SQL Server features, Glenn Berry from SQLskills has his own post that you can use for advice.

    If you’ve got recommendations or ideas, or questions, please add them to the discussion. If you’re proud of your own setup, let us know. If you have found Azure (or AWS) to be a friendly, cost-effective place for a lab, I’m sure people would love to know that as well.

    Steve Jones