Voice of the DBA

Tag: Friday Poll

  • What Differentiates Enterprise?

    Now THIS is Enterprise Edition.

    There seems to be regular disagreement from SQL Server professionals about what features are most important for future versions and which bugs should receive the highest priority. However one thing that many customers complain about is the lack of features in the Standard Edition (SE) that exist in the Enterprise (EE) or Data Center (DC) editions.

    In SQL Server 2000, it used to be that a customer had to buy Enterprise Edition (EE) to get clustering or log shipping. In SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition got clustering, but no partitioning or database snapshots. SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 added new features, some of which are only available in EE and DC editions. In each case, as SQL Server evolves, some features get moved down to SE, while others do not. The distinctions between editions are arbitrarily made, with the idea that some features are “Enterprise and are used for large scale SQL Server installations. However there are also size limits on the editions that limit the number of instances, nodes in clusters, memory, processors, and more.

    Is that the best way to separate the editions of SQL Server? It seems that I rarely find many people that agree with the different mix of features and limits that are built into the different editions.  This Friday I wanted to get your opinion:

    What should differentiate Enterprise (or Data Center) edition from Standard edition?

    Do you think there should be a feature distinction? Or a hardware distinction? What would you change about the way things are done, or what makes the most sense to you, as a SQL Server customer.

    In my mind, I’d like to see SQL Server priced on scale, and not on features. I’d like to see all features in all editions above Express. However charge me by the core, or some formula of cores + RAM that might make licensing cheaper for those low end dual core systems we have now, maybe equal for 4-8 cores, and then scaling up as people move to more cores, and handle larger workloads.  Let me add licenses as I add hardware, and easily move those licenses around as I move my instances between physical servers.

    Licensing is always a controversial subject, and one that we rarely agree on. However I’m curious what people think about the plan that might seem the most fair to them.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Looking at SOX

    What do you think of SOX?

    We republished an editorial recently that I wrote early on when the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) was starting to become a part of daily life for IT people. SOX was really written to the rest of the business, requiring accountability from the executives in a corporation. However it seemed to quickly become a burden for many IT departments, with the interpretations of the act requiring additional documentation for all actions. There were often security changes required that interfered with the way in which many technology groups operated.

    The act was passed in 2002, nearly a decade ago. Now that it’s been a part of public corporate life, I wanted to ask the data professionals out there what they think of the act and its impact on their jobs. For this Friday’s poll:

    Does SOX impact your work?

    Is there an increased level of effort and work for you or is it just a part of your job now that you accept and are used to? I would think that after years of being subject to the regulation that most people would be used to it by now.

    I know when the act was first passed there was concern that our IT department would be understaffed for the documentation that was required. However we were an ISO 9001 certified organization, and we quickly realized that much of our work to maintain our ISO status could be re-used for SOX compliance as well.

    The biggest hurdle we faced was in implementing better separation for development and production groups to ensure that systems were accessed by the appropriate individuals. It seemed to me that this was a change for the better at my company, providing better security for us.

    Let us know this Friday how SOX, or even PCI/HIPAA impact your workload.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Max Memory

    What's the most RAM you have in a server?

    Recently I upgraded the memory in my laptop. For a few hundred dollars, I went to 16GB of RAM, which means that I can more easily run Virtual Machines without a noticeable slowdown on my system. Combining that with an SSD as a second drive, and I have laptop that I think performs well.

    For servers, 16GB wouldn’t be much RAM. In fact, I heard from a friend recently who had enough RAM in one of his servers that my jaw dropped open a little.  I know hardware has advanced a lot in the last few years, but I wonder how much of that has filtered down to the average company.

    It’s time to brag a bit today, and let others drool over your SQL Server. Give us the answer to this poll question if you can.

    What’s the largest amount of RAM in one of your database instances?

    I’m looking for the biggest box you have, and then maybe you can let us know how it’s used, or how many people it supports, or some other metrics. Perhaps even tell us the database size, so we can guess what percentage is in cache.

    Let us know today just how much RAM you have and how proud you are of your large instances. I’ll say that 16GB is the largest server I have here at the ranch. The SQLServerCentral database servers have 24GB of RAM in their virtual machines.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts