SQL DIY DBA Coach In A Can
November 14, 2010 by Becky Smith · Leave a Comment
Are You A Do-It-Yourself DBA? Just because you’re technically gifted doesn’t mean you feel totally comfortable having the responsibilities of a database administrator. The day-to-day care and feeding of a SQL database includes daily, weekly and monthly (and annually) repeated management practices.
Let our DIY DBA tool help you remember all the activities and best practices performed by world-class SQL DBAs. Over 80 best practices in a simple PDF that you can use for walking your IT management through trends or trouble you see on the horizon.
Need a bit more help than a list of “what” to do? We also have an online version that can include leading how-to advice from thought leaders in SQL magazine, links to internal performance support tools, checklists and topics and that can be configured to send out reminders if you use contractors for out-tasked work.
Online mentoring, learning and performance support tool for all SQL People challenged with being their own DBA. We will be making a very compelling offer soon. Also coming are tutorial vids showing how the DIY DBA productivity tool will keep things running with DBA best practices
SQL in the Cloud
August 7, 2009 by Becky Smith · Leave a Comment
What is Cloud Computing?
The Cloud is a metaphor for the Internet; it abstracts the incredibly complex infrastructure that comprises Cloud computing. Cloud computing is a way of offering dynamically scalable and virtualized business computing resources as a service over the Internet instead of on-premise (within your own data center).
What’s the draw of Cloud computing? It gives you breaks on time, revenue, and resource options at every level. Normally you’d buy hardware and software packages and install them on your corporate machines; with Cloud computing you buy services instead. You buy only what you need, when you need it. You can buy infrastructure (Infrastructure as a Service – IaaS) – rent-a-data-center, if you will. You can buy specific platform services (Platform as a Service – PaaS), such as the Microsoft Azure Services Platform or the Amazon Web Services for custom application development. And you can buy Software as a Service – SaaS, for ready-to-use end-user applications as varied as spreadsheets, teleconferencing, sales force management, and customer relationship management packages.
Timely response in today’s competitive environment is necessary for survival. Agile methods are de rigueur for both application and database development, but are often constrained by time-to-provision or by lack of budget to acquire the necessary delivery mechanisms. Cloud computing lets you quickly provision very complicated installations on a pay-as-you-go basis, saving time and money. No longer are you locked into some fixed, outdated computing center that may or may not support your latest business initiative.
Scale-up/scale-down for seasonal work load adjustment has always been an issue for IT administrators. Typically, you have to buy for the biggest workload that you expect, so for a good part of the year you’re paying for excess network, CPU, and hard disk capacity that you’re not using. One of Cloud computing’s claims to fame is the ability to quickly adjust to the volume of users and/or data on an as-needed basis. For a U.S. accounting firm, for instance, those weeks immediately preceding the 15th of April will require additional computing resources, perhaps as much as a factor of ten over normal use. Immediately following this deadline, the firm can scale back and pay only for the resources what they use, when they use it.
Cloud computing is rapidly evolving into public, private and hybrid variations. Public Cloud computing is characterized by services available over the Internet, typically from 3rd-party providers. The Public Cloud is constrained by network bandwidth, perceived security exposure (real or not), and legal or compliance requirements, among other things. Mounting your data warehouse in the Public Cloud might not be something that you could easily do without lots of advance planning and preparation, and if the data transport pipe is not wide enough, you might never be able to make this happen.
In response to Public Cloud limitations, we’ve seen the development of the Private Cloud and its companion, the Hybrid Cloud. Private Cloud computing is housed entirely on-premise; the services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) are more tightly managed than Public Cloud services and may not be as responsive as Public Cloud services. Access to the Cloud network is restricted, and bandwidth is limited only by the enterprise’s budget. Compliance and security issues can be addressed with greater assurance than if the firm were using an external Cloud provider. Data never leaves the building. Initiatives that are using a hybrid solution, that is, combining the best of the Public and the Private Cloud – using the Private Cloud where security is the biggest driver and using the Public Cloud where time-to-market is paramount – are defining and describing a new way to do business.
Cloud computing is more than just managed hosting or an extended in-house IT facility, it’s the attitude that makes the difference. Cloud computing is built around a service attitude; it’s tightly bound to a service-oriented architecture based on a virtualized infrastructure. It’s all about providing service to any authorized user, anytime, anywhere, to any device, and to do it quickly. In order to make this happen, the infrastructure has to be totally shared, highly scalable (elastic, even), standardized, and highly efficient. The only way to achieve these criteria is to virtualize the infrastructure stack – servers, storage, middleware, data, applications, processes – and make it available on an as-needed basis. Service delivery has to be automated, since it’s request-driven. When there’s a call for more computing power or additional storage capacity, these need to be delivered promptly with little or no intervention by the Cloud service provider staff. When resources are no longer needed they’re returned to the Cloud environment and made available to other business units who might need them, again with little or no intervention by the service staff. And lastly, the user experience must be standardized and enhanced, for without high user buy-in a Cloud computing service initiative could easily fail.
Follow my SQLinTheCloud tweets on www.twitter.com/SQLinTheCloud.
SMB and SSBs – Our Specialty
July 6, 2009 by Becky Smith · Leave a Comment
Your business is your baby. Protect it like you would any precious asset. That includes protecting your operations and being able to use your business information no matter what happens. Access to your information is the difference between being in or out of business. Why not make sure you are giving yourself all the advantages you can afford?
Business interruptions come in many flavors…incidents happen all the time. Your best protection for your information and your computers is consistent
- monitoring
- management
- maintainenance
Continuous availability starts with continuous oversight. Work with us to lay out your uptime requirements and match them to your budget.
SQL High Availability
July 6, 2009 by Becky Smith · Leave a Comment
Never Go Dark! Few systems can claim this performance level. There is no RTO, the systems users never know anything happened. There is no RPO, no data is lost, no recovery point is specified because everything is there, just as if nothing happened.
SQL Incident Recovery
July 6, 2009 by Becky Smith · Leave a Comment
Why not make sure you are giving yourself all the advantages you can afford?
Business interruptions come in many flavors…incidents happen all the time. Your best protection for your information and your computers is consistent
-monitoring
-management
-maintainenance
Continuous availability starts with continuous oversight. Work with us to lay out your uptime requirements and match them to your budget.
SQL Uptime
July 6, 2009 by Becky Smith · Leave a Comment
That’s what we’re all about…
SQL Backup/Disaster Recovery
July 6, 2009 by Becky Smith · Leave a Comment
The drivers for BC/DR in owner-operated, familiy-owned businesses are not in synch with those of larger and more highly regulated organizations. Traditional BC/DR came out of these types of industries: government agencies, financial firms (mortgage, banking, insurance, etc.) and pharmaceutical mfg. SMBs simply have no time or money to spend like traditional BC/DR consumers. Perhaps a look into how it all began will shed light on what’s changing and how these changes are making SMB issues affordably addressable now.
SQL Optimization
July 6, 2009 by Becky Smith · Leave a Comment
Business continuity is about business operations. Disaster recovery is about IT coming back on-line. Since we specialize in SQL Server-powered business solutions, we think SQL continuity deserves its own category. SQL-based business applications can have a high degree of resilience “baked in” if you know what design decisions to make, how to develop applications running on top of SQL Server so they are more reliable and restorable with minimum business interruption, and why deploying them in the right configurations can make or break your business protection strategy.
SQL Resiliency
July 6, 2009 by Becky Smith · Leave a Comment
SQL Continuity is our take on the very specialized discipline of continuous operations of Microsoft SQL Server-powered business processes and SQL Server-based business applications. Most companies tell you about BC/DR – business continuity and disaster recovery – as if these were interchangeable terms. They are not.
SQL Core Infrastructure for Uptime
July 6, 2009 by Becky Smith · Leave a Comment
We bring high availability to owner-operated family businesses Read more