Voice of the DBA

Tag: Redgate

  • iPads for Christmas

    Recently I mentioned that having a smartphone has made me much more productive. I’m on the move fairly often, and the ability to respond to emails and keep in touch with people, take notes, and check on SQLServerCentral from almost anywhere in the world has become very valuable to me. It certainly is a double edged sword as it is also hard to get away from work. Setting those boundaries is important, and smartphone or not, I would encourage you to make sure you have some boundaries with your employer.

    The iPad is a new device that changes the game in terms of what we can do with mobile devices. It handles remote connectivity in a way unlike smartphones, but is less cumbersome than a laptop and works in many situations where you might not want to carry, or power up, a laptop.

    Back in October, I got an email from my employer, Red Gate Software. Wibke, in the Marketing department, asked for people with iPads to take pictures of themselves using the new SQL Monitor software to remotely monitor servers. It seemed fun to my wife, who got me on a horse for the picture you see here.

    It was contrived, after all, I couldn’t really check on the SQLServerCentral servers from a horse. The ranch is too large, and my wireless signal won’t reach out to the far side of the barn. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t monitor my servers from outside if I had wireless connectivity. You, however, can see how the SQLServerCentral database cluster is running by connecting to the remote demo instance of SQL Monitor and see in real-time how our servers are performing.

    The idea of using an iPad to monitor your servers, and even get work done, however, isn’t contrived. I used my iPad to show off SQL Monitor at SQL Saturday #59in New York City, and I have a friend that manages many of his Windows servers using iTap, a remote RDP program for the iPad. At SQL Connections this year, I was surprised to see quite a few people checking their email in Outlook using RDP technology from an iPad. I asked a few people what they thought and while it was more limited than using a laptop, most of these geeks thought the iPad was more convenient in a remote environment.

    But I Don’t Have an iPad?

    Not many people have iPads, and most of my geek friends find them to be an expensive toy. I mostly agree, but I have found you can definitely use these devices for work. So I’m going to give you a chance to have your own iPad and let me know if you agree.

    Red Gate has decided to sponsor three contests, all of them related to SQL Monitor, and all designed to get you an iPad in time for Christmas. I have 10 iPads to give away, along with 10 licenses of SQL Monitor to install on a server and let you begin using your iPad for work right away. That’s decimal ten, not binary 10, so there will be quite a few winners.

    Actually there will be 30 winners, since Brent Ozar and Grant Fritchey are running their own SQL Monitor/iPad contests and each giving away ten bundles of their own. You can read about Brent’s contest on BrentOzar.com, and Grant’s contest at ScaryDBA.com. Brent is asking where you might go and use an iPad for monitoring while Grant is asking about how this might help you find a better work/life balance.

    My contest is asking a little different question. I’d like you to think a little bit about how you could create new synergies with the iPad. How could you do your job better, a little quicker, or in a new way if you had a small, lightweight tablet with a large screen that gives you the connectivity to reach other computing resources. I’m looking for some creativity and a thoughtful way of freeing yourself from a desk and at the same time bringing some additional value to your employer.

    Think about it a bit and write me an interesting paragraph in the discussion for this editorial. I’ll judge the entries submitted before Friday , Dec 17, 2010 and ship off some iPads to the ten best over the weekend.

    Good luck and send me an interesting note. You can only enter one of the three contests, so think about which one make the most sense for you:

    The fine print rules:

    1. The contest is open to professionals with SQL Server monitoring responsibility. Entrants must be 18 years old or over.
    2. Entries must be received by Friday, December 17, 2010. The contest organizers accept no responsibility for corrupted or delayed entries.
    3. Employees of Red Gate, the contest organizers and their family members are not eligible to participate in the contest.
    4. Entries are limited to one per person across the three simultaneous contests hosted on www.sqlservercentral.com,www.brentozar.com, and www.scarydba.com.
    5. The organizers reserve the right, within their sole discretion, to disqualify nominations.
    6. The organizers’ decisions are final.
    7. Red Gate Software and those involved in the organization, promotion, and operation of the contest and in the awarding of prizes explicitly make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the quality, suitability, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose of the prizes awarded and they hereby disclaim all liability for any loss or damage of any kind, including personal injury, suffered while participating in the contest or utilizing any prizes awarded.

    Important dates

    1. Deadline for entries: Friday, December 17, 2010.
    2. Winner announced in week commencing Monday, December 20, 2010.

    Good Luck to you all and leave me a comment in the discussion for your chance to win. (hint, I talk a touch more in the podcast for what I’m looking for)

    Steve Jones

  • Live Monitoring

    My employer, Red Gate Software, recently released a new product called SQL Monitor. This is the 2.0 version of SQL Response, enhanced and renamed after a lot of feedback and input from various DBAs around the globe. It’s very cool and in preparation for the release, they asked if we could install the software on the SQLServerCentral servers. I was happy to have it on the servers for additional monitoring. Even though I don’t have to manage the databases, I wanted to make sure whoever is managing them has some tools.

    Then my boss asked if we could make the data public. He mentioned that the early look at the console showed a lot of alerts, potentially some less than optimal configurations, and more. I said we should definitely show the site, and at The Future of Monitoring, the try it online link shows the live SQLServerCentral database cluster.

    That’s live, as in a few seconds delay to process the data, but if you look at instance 1, the graphs are changing in real time. Keep in mind that it might appear slow with the huge SQLServerCentral community checking the servers, but you probably don’t have a million wannabe administrators checking out your servers.

    We haven’t changed much at all in the configuration since we made the data public, but over the next few months we are going to slowly tune and configure the server live, informing you of the changes, and showing the before/after data. If you’re following along, you can track the performance differences yourself as well. This is a real world performance because just like most of you, we have resource constraints while managing and tuning servers. We can’t optimally design, build, and manage our servers as that’s not our primary job, but we’re trying to get better by using SQL Monitor to help us keep better track of the servers and work more efficiently.

    One of the coolest things I’ve seen is that our IT staff actually has iPads to watch over servers, and they love it. There’s a slide show on the front page of the monitoring site showing lots of people running SQL Monitor with tablets. Maybe I should take on some DBA chores and see if they’ll get me one. Maybe you can convince your boss to get an iPad with a copy of SQL Monitor as well. 😉

  • SQL Source Control Webinar

    We had our first public SQL Source Control webinar, on the new product from Red Gate Software, my employer. I MC’d a private one a month or so ago, and sat in on one at SQL Saturday #28, but this was the first public one.

    I think it went well, a minor demo crash, but overall it worked well. However with 150+ attendees the questions came fast and furious. Some dups, but mostly good questions and we ran long trying to answer.

    I couldn’t comment on a lot of them, but we have the transcript, I have sent it to Red Gate, and have them working on answers. Can’t guarantee it will be done tomorrow, but by next week I’ll have answer out.

    If you believe in Source Control, this is a good product. It eases the burden of tracking changes, but doesn’t eliminate them, and there are holes.

    This is a process, however, and I’m not sure it’s fundamentally different, even with the product, from what I wrote about years ago: Version Control Part 1 – Dealing with Code.

  • SQL Source Control Webinar

    SQL_68x68_SrcCon One of the new products that Red Gate Software has released recently is SQL Source Control. I saw a demo of this product back in March as it was nearing completion, and I thought it was pretty cool. I have struggled with source control for years, and build a process that was mainly manual, and one that I’ve seen others use over the years.  It worked well, but it was prone to errors unless I was allowed to chastise developers on a regular basis for not adhering to the process.

    friends_of_rg_logo Today I acted as emcee and moderator for a semi-private webinar that demo’d the product to the Friends of Red Gate, a group that is by invitation only, but lets some customers interact with Red Gate similar to how the MVP program grants some people access to Microsoft.

    This was the first time I actually acted as a moderator, having been an attendee or presenter in the past. It went well, I think, though I definitely had a little dead air and struggled to keep up with questions and find a smooth way to interrupt the presenter. I would rather be the one presenting and let someone else handle the other work for sure.

    I think we’ll be scheduling more of these on a regular basis for some Red Gate products to get the word out more and show how they can be used to solve problems. This is one of the few that I’d purchase myself if I was doing DBA work, so we’ll start here and see what happens.

    I’m also hoping to do some other more regular webinars from SQLServerCentral, on more technical topics, across the next year.