The Types of Changes
Voice of the DBA
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The Managed Cloud Database Options
Voice of the DBA
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Simple(r) Coffee
Voice of the DBA
Starbucks has too many order combinations. about the challenges for their new CEO notes there are over 170,000 combinations of things customers can order. As someone who has visited a store often and stood behind someone placing an order, that sounds like an accurate number. Sometimes I hear people order things to drink that I had no idea were even possible. When there are too many choices, sometimes there can be a delay as the person tries to process the information and make a decision. Some people can't make a decision. Others enjoy the variety and keep making different decisions each time....
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The Lesser Used Functions
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Adding The Right Value
Voice of the DBA
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The Rise of Data Centers Centers
Voice of the DBA
For the last few years, we've seen no shortage of cloud migration stories and felt pressure from management who wanted to migrate our systems to the cloud. It seems that almost everyone I speak to has a story of having to move a system out of their owned or leased data center into a public cloud from some vendor. A lot of this is the movement of VMs from one place to another, which has me scratching my head. If we're just running VMs, surely we can do this cheaper in our own data center. Perhaps, though there are a lot of costs to setting up or running a data center, and it's not easy getting...
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The Learning Plan for 2025
Voice of the DBA
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Comforting Habits
Voice of the DBA
I was chatting with a friend recently about routines and some of the helpful or silly things we do. I mentioned that when I played adult baseball, we often had Sunday morning games and a routine of mine was to drive to town, stop at a 7-11, and get a large cup of coffee and an apple fritter. It was a comforting habit that I still have today, often stopping when I have a morning flight to do the same thing in the way to the airport. Only in Denver though, not when I'm flying out of other cities and returning home. Read the rest of
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Big Data or Small Data
Voice of the DBA
I went to San Francisco for , a conference sponsored by The premise of the event was that smaller sets of data are both very useful and prevalent. The speaks to me, as I am a big fan of smaller sets of data for sure. I also think that most of the time we can use less data than we think we need, especially when it's recent data. That often is more relevant and we end up with contorted queries that try to weight new or old data differently to reflect this. Maybe the best line for me is this one: Bigger data has an opportunity cost: Time. Read the rest of
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Learning to Grind
Voice of the DBA
When I was younger, I had a variety of jobs, but in most of the positions I had to work hard for stretches. Really hard, as in more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. Often as I was starting a new position, it took some time for me to develop some understanding, some skill, and some muscle memory. In some jobs, especially in restaurants, I also had to build the physical skills to be on my feet for many hours. In technology, I've often found myself unsure of how to approach a new position, aware I had knowledge gaps about how things worked, and often, I was naïve or ignorant of some piece...
info_outlineIn most of the organizations I've worked for or consulted with, patching was always a challenge. Patching hasn't usually been given a priority and is often skipped when operations staff is busy. This has resulted in lots of un-patched, or slowly patched systems. I assume this is one reason Microsoft continues to release RTM-GDR patches because some people won't patch at all unless there are critical fixes.
I also know that much of IT management sees patching systems like patching parking lots. Needs to be done, but tomorrow, after we do other important work today.
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