Voice of the DBA

Tag: Cloud Computing

  • Encryption Not Restriction

    Encryption will be more important in cloud computing
    Encryption will be more important in cloud computing

    I believe in encryption. I have an encryption talk that delivers the very basics of what encryption options exist in SQL Server, and I would think that most data professionals that develop or manage databases should understand encryption and how to enable it. I find lots of people don’t understand, and I’m glad that I can try to teach them a few things about when encryption is and how it works in SQL Server.

    Cloud computing use is growing, and while we don’t have a good definition for what a cloud computing means, more and more organizations are considering looking at moving some of their applications, and data, to the cloud. As we move this data, many DBAs have concerns over the security of the data they are supposed to protect. These are valid concerns, and they should be at the forefront of your mind if you plan on moving anything to any type of service provider.

    One interesting point brought up in this op-ed is that customers ought to have their data encrypted, but the keys used for the encryption should be controlled by the customer, not the service provider. That’s sound business strategy, and it should be the case with all your data, not just data sent to the cloud. If you use a service to rotate and store your tape backups, you ought to have encryption on those tapes, with keys managed by your company. Just as you ought to have the keys inside your company if you use locks on the shipping containers holding the tapes.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Cloud Concerns

    cloud concerns
    The biggest concern with cloud computing isn’t security.

    When I get feedback about cloud computing from DBAs, the main concern seems to be data security, or the perception of problems with security from a cloud provider. That’s natural as sending your data to the cloud doesn’t necessarily remove the responsibility for security from the purview of the DBA, yet you don’t have complete control over the way the data is managed. Various providers are working on their security and passing certifications, though this doesn’t necessarily make many DBAs feel comfortable with databases in the cloud.

    However security may not be your number one concern. Outages and business continuity should be your primary concern. As noted in this article, cloud service outages have been more common than lost data. It’s much more likely that the service will go down, and if it does, what do you do? Contacting a cloud services company, and receiving fast answers aren’t likely when a cloud outage usually affects a large number of customers.

    However business continuity is important. If your database, or application server goes down, what would you do? In most cases you would sit in your office waiting for the cloud provider to come back online. That’s not much different from in-house failures where you may wait on the network or OS administrators to recover a host server. In a few of the disasters I’ve experienced, I only had slightly more control than I’d guess a cloud provider gives me.

    In either case, having good backups and a strategy to bring your system online in the event of an extended outage is important. I suspect that will mean hybrid public/private cloud applications that can function from an alternative location will need to be an architectural requirement for many businesses.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Grow Your Skills

    Look to grow your skills on a regular basis.

    The cloud is scary. Without a doubt the idea of outsourcing parts of your organization’s technology department should concern you if you manage systems. Anything outsourced, whether to another firm or automation, means there is less work for you to do. Even in the places where automation grows, we find that sometimes the growth of systems occurs so fast that there are still things for a worker to do, but that’s a losing battle in the long term. At some point the automation will catch up and less people will be needed to manage the systems.

    However the news isn’t all bad. There are some systems that will always be managed inside of a company. Whether because of regulatory requirements, performance needs, or even just the stubbornness of management, I am sure that some percentage of systems at most companies will remain in-house. Those will be the minority of systems in some places, and since many of us change jobs at some point in our careers, we should be concerned.

    I would argue that all of us working in technology should be looking to improve our skills in whatever field we work. However we should be growing the skills in the hard parts of our jobs, in the parts that we struggle to automate or describe. The easy parts of our jobs will become more automated, more likely to be managed by a tool or outsourced. The hard parts, the thoughtful parts, those are the skills we should concentrate on when improving our skills.

    Outsourcing isn’t all bad. As Toyota has outsourced some of their systems, they are not looking to shrink their IT department. Instead they are focusing on delivering new products and services for their customers. Make sure you are prepared to take advantage of new opportunities if your company follows a similar path.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • The Future of DBAs

    truck data center
    Is this the future of many data centers?

    At SQL Saturday #169 in Denver I sat in on a panel that talked about cloud computing. There was a consultant, a customer, and a Microsoft representative that give different perspectives on what their experiences were with Windows Azure. It was an interesting talk and the more I learn about the cloud, the more potential situations where I think it applies. It’s not for everyone, but there are a lot of places where it can work, and I would encourage you to learn more about cloud services and cloud computing.

    One really interesting question was asked. Do you know the skills needed for modern Microsoft data centers? Truck driver. A truck driver can drop off a shipping container with servers pre-configured inside and just plug it in to power and network, often with no cooling needed. A fenced in parking lot, open to the atmosphere, makes a nice, inexpensive, low maintenance data center.

    That’s simplified, but it has interesting implications for networking, hardware, and system administrators, but what does that mean for DBAs? How will our jobs change if these shipping containers run SQL Server services on Azure or AWS? It’s a good question, and one that I know worries many people that manage SQL Servers.

    On one hand our jobs don’t change. We still need to manage the data, enforce quality, design tables and manage indexes. We must ensure the data is available, intact, accessible by clients. We import, export, and even recover it at times. These are all the core skills of a DBA. On the other hand, we have new challenges to manage. Our recovery process will change. We will need to learn how to scale out our data and applications. We will need to better set expectations for performance, and perhaps more closely expand and contract the resources we use to match the demand we receive. In order to do that, we’ll also have to better understand the financial costing models that vendors provide, along with gathering more knowledge on the actual value our organization receives from more, or fewer, resources.

    The idea of remote computing, whether as hosted VMs or a platform that provides database services, is going to be a part of many of our careers. We might as well embrace it, understand it, and find a way to fit in.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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