SQL Server Links
Things Denny Cherry Knows Now – a quiz went around the blogosphere this week about things database administrators wish they would have known when they started, and I really liked Denny’s answers. I especially still struggle with his #1 answer – sometimes I need a good strong dose of tact. I also got a big laugh out of SQLBatman’s answers, which included gems like “Rebuilding master does not require two pounds of bacon.”
Bit vs Char(1) – Aaron Alton is on a roll. If you’re not subscribing to this guy, you should.
Update Statistics Before or After Index Maintenance? Colin Stasiuk shows the answer with scripts you can run yourself. After you’ve learned the right answer, go check your maintenance plans and put your tasks in the right order.
Microsoft Customer Advisory Team on Database Mirroring – I love love love mirroring. It’s really simple disaster recovery for small businesses who can’t afford a full time DBA or large disaster recovery plans.
Do a large number of log files affect performance? – Linchi Shea finds out. I aspire to write blog posts as good as Linchi’s: backed up with scripts and graphs. His blog posts are better than my whitepapers.
SQL Live Mesh Update – Jamie Thomson started a free T-SQL code library on Live Mesh. You get the scripts automatically synced to your computer. It doesn’t get much easier than that! Put your scripts on there, and you can take ‘em from workstation to workstation, always having the latest ones available.
Cloud and Virtualization Links
IBM Software Now on Amazon with Pay-As-You-Go – Amazon already offers Microsoft SQL Server on a by-the-hour basis, and now they offer DB2 as well, plus other IBM software packages.
Script for HBA Load Balancing in VMware ESX – multipathing, the science of using multiple host bus adapters (HBAs) to access your SAN, is a heck of a lot trickier than it looks. Take a quick glance at this article and you’ll understand why. I’m not advocating that you actually DO the work described in the article, but just read it, and you’ll have a higher level of appreciation for how hard it is to manage virtual servers on a SAN. When your virtualization vendor says, “Just virtualize it and it’ll perform,” hand them this article and ask how easy it looks.
Network teaming in Hyper-V – put two network cards in a server, set them up for teaming, and you’re protected from network failures like unplugged patch cables or switch failures, right? Not so much. This is an art (not a science) in physical servers already, and it gets worse with virtual servers.
Junk Drawer
Interviewing Tips – SQLBatman explains how interviews are like dates. No, really.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Storage Automation – Jason Massie and I talked a while back about shared versus dedicated spindles, and as time goes by, the balance swings even more in favor of shared spindles. In this blog post, Stephen Foskett talks about some of the advances in storage automation.
K. Brian Kelley’s Goals for 2009 – I get emails from people who say some of my stuff sounds too canned, as if I’m a motivational speaker or I’m writing Chicken Soup for the DBA. To those people I say: I’m not the only one, har har ho ho. I really liked this blog post, and I find myself coming back to it every few days saying, “This is really the recipe for success for a DBA.”
Quest SharePoint Community preparing to launch – but you didn’t hear it from me. They’ve cranked up their blogs and you can subscribe to those.
Bandwidth Bandits Beware – Jay Lee describes a tactic to stop people from stealing images from your blog. I used this, and give it one finger up.
