Digital World, Digital Locks One of the biggest digital assets that any company has is its secrets. These include passwords, key rings, certificates, and any other digital asset used to protect another asset from tampering or unauthorized access. As a DBA, you are very likely to manage some of these assets for your company…
Category: General BP
Shrink That Database…Seriously?
Yesterday afternoon my storage administrator came to me and asked me to look at his Enterprise Vault database and make sure that they were receiving the proper maintenance because he was running a routine over the weekend to remove some e-mails that had exceeded their retention period and it was painfully slow. He was only…
Fun With Recruiters
I love it when I get those special kinds of emails from recruitment agencies who claim they have the perfect position. I got one of those kinds of emails last week, I thought I would share it (as well as my response). Title: Front End Web Development Lead Position Type: Direct Placement Location: Bothell, WA,…
DBA Best Practices: A Blog Series
Introduction After the success of the “Demystifying DBA Best Practices” Pre-Conference that my good friend Robert Davis, a.k.a. SQLSoldier [Blog|Twitter] and I delivered at multiple events, including the PASS Summit 2012, I have decided to blog about some of the topics discussed at the Pre-Con. My thanks go
Keeping Track of Details
After creating a few new SQL accounts this morning, I thought I would share how I keep track of minor details like this. We use SharePoint for our department to track documents, procedures, processes, etc. This is a great place to track minute SQL Server details like accounts and databases. For example, we have over…
Final Thought from SQL Saturday Pensacola Pre-Con
For my final blog about SQL Saturday #132, I wanted to leave you with one all-encompassing piece of advice that I received from the pre-conference training on Friday prior to the event. The pre-con titled “Demystifying Database Administration Best Practices” was presented by Microsoft Certified Masters Robert Davis (twitter|blog) and Argenis Fernandez (twitter|blog). Of course, I will preface this…
Vendor Support–The Good And Bad
When you go out and buy yourself new hardware or software you have the option of purchasing maintenance agreements at the same time. For software this generally provides the ability to constantly upgrade to the latest and greatest product. For hardware this tends to provide onsite support for when things go wrong and an SLA…
SQL Rally 2012 Recap and Session Files
SQL Rally 2012 was hosted by the North Texas SQL Server User Group. More tha anything, it was nice to be back in the area where I grew up. I was born in Houston, but I grew up in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. It really brought back a lot of great memories for me like…
The Importance Of Good Documentation
Believe it or not I’m not actually talking about server documentation here (for an excellent post on that go read Colleen Morrow’s The Importance of a SQL Server Inventory). I have spent the last 12 days dealing with a single production release. It is being considered a significant release, but to be honest it really…
Something Technical This Way Comes
To quote Ray Bradbury in Something Wicked This Way Comes: “Everything that happens before Death is what counts.” Wow! How simple and profound. Do you live your life as if it counts for something? Do you have a passion? Are you living your life for that passion? My passion is best practices for SQL Server and I am…