Are you frustrated because you can’t get the tools or training you need?  Does your manager keep saying “NO!” and make you do things the hard way?  The real problem isn’t usually budgets: it’s communication.  In this 20-minute video, I’ll show you how to make the case for the stuff you want, show you free resources to help convince your manager, and tell you about how I struggled with that same problem too.

Some of the links we covered:

• Merrill Aldrich’s Post on Leaking Money
• Brent’s Post on How to Get Budget Approval for Conferences
• Jeremy Clarkson Drives the Maserati Quattroporte

Liked this?  Here’s the free webcasts we’ve got coming up:

March 6 – How to Get Your First Job as a DBA
Kendra Little, Tech Triage Tuesday

You’d love to become a Database Administrator, but how do you get your foot in the door? Ten years ago, Kendra Little was in your position. Since then, she gained a job as a DBA, worked her way up to Senior DBA, and is now a partner in a database consulting company. Along the way, she’s hired junior DBAs and helped employers develop interview procedures for database administrators. In this 30 minute session you’ll learn what employers look for, steps you can take to make yourself a great candidate, and how to build the right resume to get your first DBA job. Register now.

March 13 – How to Succeed in Database Development Without Really Trying
Jeremiah Peschka, Tech Triage Tuesday

March 20 – Monitoring SQL Server: How to Pick Your Strategy
Kendra Little, Tech Triage Tuesday

Monitoring is critical to project your database servers AND your job: if you don’t know when a problem is occurring, how can you respond quickly? In this 30 minute session, Kendra Little will discuss availability and performance monitoring for SQL Server. She’ll summarize the tools available and give you guidelines to plan your strategy to tackle a monitoring problem. This session is appropriate for DBAs or IT Managers with one year or more experience with a production environment. Register now.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

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The tech event community is growing again.  Years ago, GeekCruises (now named InSight Cruises) pioneered the traincation concept, and last year SQLCruise brought that theme to the SQL Server community.  The new Startup Workaway brings tech founders to Costa Rica for startup sprints – a mix of work and play.  Red Gate’s SQL in the City invites database geeks to Los Angeles and London for a day of sessions.  If you want to learn and play, there’s a lot of fun options.

Now Denny Cherry, a longtime SQL Server community member, MVP, and author, and his wife Kris have formed a new event: SQL Excursions.  The first event is in Napa, California in September.  I talked to Denny about launching the new event.

Brent: Congratulations on launching SQL Excursions!  What made you take the big step?

Denny: Thanks Brent we are thrilled to be getting SQL Excursions off the ground. Kris and I put SQL Excursions together for a couple of different  reasons.  I wanted to be able to do some more speaking and teaching which is something which I love to do, and we wanted to put something together which would give spouses / significant others a way to go on the trip and having something fun for everyone to do.  As you’ve probably noticed, Kris comes on a lot of my trips with me, and to  often she ends up going to the dinners and parties and doesn’t really have anyone to talk to that isn’t a SQL Server person, and apparently she doesn’t find talking about SQL Server all day exciting. We see these events as a way to get some great technology information to the technology folks, and get the significant others to see a small piece of what we do, while giving them some fun events to go to.

Brent: I can see why Kris would love this.  What kinds of events is she planning during the day while the SQL Server training happens, and what kind of training are you doing?

Tom LaRock and Denny Cherry at the PASS Summit 2010

Denny: On Thursday and Friday during the day the guests of the attendees will be off on a full day wine tour, which we haven’t set the price for yet (we need to know the interest level before we can set the price).  On Saturday there will be another full day wine tour for all the attendees and their guests which will also be an optional day.  Tom LaRock and I haven’t set the training schedule yet.  We will be putting up a survey with some topic options that we’d like to talk about so we can have the community vote on which of those topics will be covered.  The training will all be 300-400 level sessions.

Brent: How’d you pick Napa as the first location?

Denny: We picked Napa as the first location as lots of people love wine, and I’ve never heard of anyone not having a good time in Napa.  For people that decide to come to Napa a couple of days early or stay a couple of days after (like Kris and I are doing) there is tons of stuff to do in downtown Napa. There are several extremely good restaurants, as well as several tasting rooms.  All this is just a short few minute walk from the hotel that we have selected for our first SQL Excursion.

Brent: I noticed you said walk, and that’s a really good thing.  I, for one, love wine tastings, and driving home afterwards isn’t an option!

Denny: Drinking and driving is never an option, no matter what event you are at.  The great thing about Napa is that the downtown area has lots of stuff to do right there.  For official events which are away from downtown and away from the hotel, we’ll be getting shuttle vans to get everyone to where we are going.  If someone wants to venture out on their own Napa is just that short walk or few dollar cab ride away.

Brent: Both you and Tom do a lot of travel – I see you at all the big conferences. With SQL Excursions, this is yet another event – are you still going to all the other events like the PASS Summit and TechEd?

Denny: You are correct we both do a lot of traveling to do presentations and I don’t see SQL Excursions taking away from any of these other conferences. Conferences like PASS, Tech Ed, EMC World, and Connections are a major part of my continuing professional education and I will always do my best to attend, and speak (when they’ll have me), at them.

Brent: Who’s the perfect person to go on SQL Excursions Napa?

Denny: I would say that someone who is a mid to senior level DBA who is looking for two days of solid 300-400 level material while having a  great time in Napa with other data professionals.  Now you definitely do not need to know anything about wine to come to Napa, god knows I don’t know much about wine. During lunch in addition to learning about SQL Server, we’ll also be having some instructors come in to teach about wine, and how to find a  wine that works for you.  If any of this sounds like a good time to you, this is definitely an event to look at.

Brent: What do you want your attendees to take away from the event that’s different than typical events?

Denny: Oh course we want our attendees to get some great SQL Server knowledge out of the week.  We also want them to have a great social experience that at the larger conferences people aren’t always able to do because they get left behind and lost in the mass of people that are there.  At our Napa SQL Excursion it’ll be a small group, so there won’t be any getting left behind with everyone having the option of getting together with the group for dinner after the sessions.  We’ve got some  great after events that we are still working on getting setup which will make for a great way for the attendees and their guests to mingle and have a great time.

…

Brent again here.  I think this event looks like a lot of fun, and I wish I could attend – but if I add any more travel to my fall schedule, Erika’s going to helpfully arrange my belongings out on the front door.  Thankfully Denny’s one of the attendees on this month’s SQLCruise Alaska, and I look forward to talking with him about the event there.  As I wrote in my post How to Get Paid to Take a Cruise, anybody can start their own community and training events.  What’s stopping you from attending – or hosting – one of these fun events?

You can learn more about SQL Excursions here.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

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Here’s my bookmarked links for October 26th through October 30th:

SQL Server Links

• Windows Azure Platform Launch Update – The blog notes that “a number of new features in Windows Azure will be made available for the first time” – but it’s at PDC, not the Professional Association for SQL Server Summit. This should be your clue that cloud-based SQL Server isn’t targeted at DBAs, folks – it’s targeted at developers.
• Don’t be a DBA – Be a Data Professional – Buck Woody explains that your real job isn’t tied to the exact version/edition/brand you’re using – it’s tied to the value you provide.
• SQL University: Diving into Authorization – Do you understand the differences between GRANT, REVOKE and DENY? K. Brian Kelley dives in for SQL University.
• SQL Server with NetApp SAN – Collection of best practices documents from NetApp.
• Checklist for installing SQL Server 2005 as a clustered instance – Your first cluster is painful – get help from Cindy Gross’s simplified checklist.
• How People Abuse Their SQL Server Transaction Log – Things NOT to Do – A laundry list of SQL Server abuses.
• Merrill Aldrich : Using Historical Perf Counter Data For Storage Planning – Dives into some of the cool metrics you can get from the Quest Spotlight repositories.
• Suggested Max Memory Settings for SQL Server 2005/2008 – I like hard-coding the maximum memory size for SQL Server whenever it’s not being shared with multiple applications. Glenn shows you some guidelines for the right numbers.
• SQL University: Authentication and Authorization – K. Brian Kelly talks about his specialty – making sure your data stays yours.
• Amazon EC2 – Now an Even Better Value – Amazon’s prices are lower now for SQL Server in the cloud.
• SSMS Tools Pack 1.7 is out! New feature: SQL Snippets – Great free tool.
• Deterministic Functions – Steve Jones talks about how to determine whether something’s deterministic – it affects caching of execution plans, too.
• Developing Data-tier Applications Using Visual Studio 2010 – Video showing off what’s coming for DBAs long term.
• Templates for New Query Window – Buck Woody shows how to force yourself into commenting your code better.
• High Availability Improvements in SharePoint 2010 – Woohoo! It’ll support SQL Server database mirroring out of the box.
• Introducing Amazon RDS – The Amazon Relational Database Service – MySQL in the cloud, cheap.

#SQLPASS Links

• Starting the Travel Tips Meme – Great tips from Kevin Kline for the upcoming PASS summit.
• What Should PASS Strive To Be? – Jack Corbett’s thoughts on #SQLPASS’s directions.
• A Rendezvous With Destiny: PASS 2009 (#sqlpass) – If you’re going to the PASS Summit, you need to watch Jimmy May speak.

Tech Links

• Losing Net Neutrality: The Worst Case Scenario [Net Neutrality] – If you don’t understand the talk around “net neutrality”, this post will illustrate how the net will look like if we don’t have net neutrality.
• VCE-101 Thin Provisioning Part 1 – The Basics – Thin provisioning involves creating storage arrays without actually having as much storage as you think. Doing it right requires some awareness at the OS level.
• ScreenFlow 2.0: top Mac screen recording app gets even better – This is the tool I use for my podcasts and screencasts.
• Motorola DROID review – Engadget’s review of the highly awaited Android headset. Comes out with more cons than I’d have expected.
• Free Public Careers CVs – This is going to change the way geeks get hired.
• Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 – Free turn-by-turn navigation for Android phones. Interesting because Google is basically competing against the iPhone on price now – rather than paying for turn-by-turn nav, you can get an Android phone and get that for free.
• Dunbar’s Number isn’t just a number, it’s the law – Humans can’t handle having more than 150 friends.
• Now Available: The Virtual Storage Console vSphere Plug-in – If you manage VMware and you have a NetApp SAN, this lets you get better insight into your virtual server storage from inside VMware tools.

The Junk Drawer

• Newspaper circulation chart over the last 20 years – What a cliff. Scroll down.
• I Got Nowhere To Go – Tom LaRock questions why people are starting up all kinds of new sites that do the same thing as ones that are already popular & successful.
• Best Buy drops the price on the Netflix-streaming, Blu-ray playing Insignia Blu-ray player – $100 for a Blu-ray player is one heck of a breakthrough price.
• Book Review: Twitter Wit – Tom LaRock reviews a book with tweets.
• The Power of Being Personal on Your Blog – Wanna know why you should be personal? Ask a blogger who’s already been wildly successful.
• Which Religion Should I Follow? – Flowchart to pick your Jeebus.
• Caffeine & Edibles : Baconnaise – Man, if only there was some way I could get both bacon and mayo on my sandwich faster….ah-ha!

These bookmarks are automatically imported from my bookmarks at Delicious.com. If you’d like to get up-to-the-minute updates on what I’m bookmarking, you can subscribe to my bookmark RSS feed.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Here’s my bookmarked links for the week ending Friday, October 16th:

PASS Election Links

• The PASS Board of Directors Election – Joe Webb shares his opinion about the election.
• Vetting the PASS Board of Directors candidates – K. Brian Kelly weighs in on the debate.
• PASS Board of Directors Debate – Transparency and Vision – Steve Jones talks about the process of nominating candidates for the election.

PASS Summit Links

• What color should my hair be for #sqlpass? – Denny Cherry believes in democracy.
• Important Info for PASS Summit Volunteers – Colin Stasiuk is organizing folks for the upcoming Summit.
• Free Registration for the Summit… SQLServerPedia / Quest Software / Brent Ozar THANKS!!! – We hooked up Colin Stasiuk with a free pass to PASS for his outstanding work with the community.
• What is Professional Development? – Jason Massie is helping to jump-start a Professional Development virtual chapter for PASS.

SQL Server Links

• Table Variables Are Only in Memory: Fact or Myth – Grant Fritchey demolishes another popular performance tuning myth.
• Filtered Stats to Counter Data Skew Issues – If you’ve got “lumpy” data, filtered stats can help you get better query plans.
• SQL Server Legend – Data Files and Threads – SQL Server checks to see how many physical drives are involved, not how many data files are involved, when starting new threads.
• Free T-SQL Database Maintenance Scripts – Brad McGehee points to some excellent script resources. I’ve been using Ola’s scripts on a recent project.
• Raw Materials: Preparing for Disaster – The real meaning of a disaster for DBAs.
• SQL University and why you should be attending – Great feedback on Jorge Segarra’s blog series.
• UDF Overhead – A simple example – Quick demonstration code showing how user-defined functions can impact SQL Server performance.
• Tracking expensive queries with extended events in SQL 2008 – Paul Randal writes about a subject I gotta dive more into.
• SQL University Hoops Practice – Another funny entry in the SQL University series. Here, Tom LaRock is drilling the basics.
• Amnesia Again, I Think, but I Don’t Remember, Really – Tom LaRock’s blog entry is worth it just for the Cookie Monster picture.
• SQL Lunch/Call for Speakers – Another neat community service for education – 30-minute presentations twice a month.
• Things to consider when setting up database mirroring – By Paul Randal. Pay close attention if you’re running mirroring on multiple databases.
• SQL Server and Jumbo Frames – It’s the legendary /faster switch! Well, no, but it’s close. Impacts iSCSI too.
• What a backed up Database Mirror looks like – Database mirroring works great – until it doesn’t, and you’re backed up, and you have no idea how long it’s gonna take before you can fail over.
• Interview With Rod Colledge About The Book SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action – Great interview, covers things DBAs need to know.

IT Links

• Unscheduled 50-Minute Outage of My Windows Azure Apps in USA-Northwest on 10/16/2009 6:00 AM PT – This is why you can’t take anybody’s word when they say, “Don’t worry, our cloud has built-in high availability.”
• Augmented Reality to the max with Layars for iPhone 3GS – Just added this to my iPhone to play with on the road the next few weeks. You look through the iPhone’s camera, and Layars overlays useful info over the top like restaurant reviews.
• Good advice can come from anywhere, but so can bad advice! – When someone gives you tech advice, think about their background. When someone’s got a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
• Hitachi implicated in Sidekick outage – Storage Soup – More fingerpointing.
• EMC denies blog claim that its SAN was involved in Sidekick outage – TMobile Sidekicks lost their data recently, and there’s some finger-pointing going on.

The Junk Drawer

• Static – XKCD comic about protection. You. Must. Read. This.
• Headline Fail – Somebody clearly had it out for Mr. Colon.
• How to Defeat Burnout and Stay Motivated – Common-sense tips on how to do a better job.
• CULTURE: The Gentlemen’s Guide to Dressing – This sounds odd coming from somebody who hands out vendor t-shirts, but look – if you wanna be stylish, read this.
• Flowchart Excellence – Make sure your flowchart doesn’t suck – check out these killer examples.
• Afraid of Presenting? Try Toastmasters – It’s probably too late to improve your speaking skills before the PASS Summit next month, but there’s always next year!
• The Public Speaker :: How To Add Humor To Your Talks – Great tips.

These bookmarks are automatically imported from my bookmarks at Delicious.com. If you’d like to get up-to-the-minute updates on what I’m bookmarking, you can subscribe to my bookmark RSS feed.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Here’s my bookmarked links for September 25th through October 2nd:

SQL Server, Cloud, and Tech Links

• Viva la Famiglia! – Brad Schulz shows how to use T-SQL to determine family relations. This is freakin’ awesome.
• PASS Board 2009 Slate of Candidates – Candidates are Brian Moran, Jeremiah Peschka, Matt Morollo and Thomas LaRock.
• PASS Elections and UStream | SQLRockstar – Tom LaRock is on the ballot again this year for the PASS Board of Directors, and you can ask him questions live in a video chat.
• Vote for Mr. LaRock – Grant Fritchey, author of SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Distilled, endorses Tom LaRock for PASS Board.
• Off-Hours Work: A Guide For Managers – If you have to rally the troops to work after hours, here’s how to do it with minimal morale loss.
• Interview with Kevin Kline – Tom LaRock interviews the former president of PASS.
• One Million Pageviews – StackOverflow hits the one-million-pageviews-per-day milestone. And yes, the back end is just one single SQL Server on relatively cheap commodity hardware with local disks, not SAN.
• HOW TO: Get Started with Google Wave – I think I’m the only guy who’s not jumping up and down clapping about Wave. I think it’s technically awesome, but it doesn’t solve challenges that I can’t solve right now with other methods. I’m going to ride this one out (get it – ride – wave – okay, maybe not) and wait a couple of months to see if it has staying power. (This from a guy who signed up for Twitter the instant he saw it years ago.)
• ROI from MCM: A look back 6 months later. – A Microsoft Certified Master talks about the changes it’s had on his billing rates and negotiations.
• YES WE CAN!!! – Jen McCown’s announcement about winning the SQLServerPedia Dream Trip contest. Very cool.
• DPM 2010 Beta is available now – Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager is a very different way of backing up your databases (among many other things) and I’m interested to see what they brought in this new release. Says “can backup SQL servers with ~700-800 DBs” – makes me wonder what that bottleneck is.
• The ABCs of Management Studio Shortcuts – List of keyboard shortcuts for SSMS. Control+I is a neat trick.
• The old INNER JOIN syntax vs. the new INNER JOIN syntax – I got lucky – I started with the “new” syntax years ago and never looked back. It’s way better.
• Sessions for new DBAs at PASS – Bill Graziano suggests which sessions make sense for first-time attendees and new DBAs.
• Free Training in October at the Quest Connect vConference – Kevin Kline and I will be doing presentations and taking questions in our booth.
• Pre-Compiled Stored Procedures: Fact or Myth – Grant Fritchey plays Mythbuster.
• Inside Amazon’s Cloud: Just How Many Customer Projects? – An analyst estimated customers are launching 50,000 virtual servers a day on Amazon EC2.
• SQL Management Pack Survey – Live on Connect – Use Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (the artist formerly known as MOM)? Now’s your chance to influence development of the SQL Server management pack.
• Google Docs OCR – Another example of how cloud computing changes everything. The more we move services like this into the cloud, the more we can find creative uses for the data.
• Strong Password Generator – Uses T-SQL code to generate strong passwords. Interesting example.
• Consolidation Planning – Mike Hillwig is looking for feedback on his server setups.
• 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines – Lots of “ah-ha” moments about how to make your web site look better and attract more permanent visitors.
• SQL Server Best Practices: Guard the Backup Files – You know the deal: the only reason we do backups is so that we can do restores. Buck Woody talks more about it.
• First Look: Zipcar app for iPhone hits the road – Find nearby Zipcars with your iPhone, then unlock them. I gotta play with this now that I’m in a city with Zipcars.
• Windows 7 coming to netbooks in all its myriad forms – YES! We won’t have to put up with the bullshit 3-app “Starter Edition” on netbooks – you can get ‘em with any version of Windows 7.
• Random Gradient Wallpaper Generator – Does just what it says on the box. Windows only though.
• Run Everything Virtualized and Deduplicated : aka Chuck Anti-FUD – Talk about cutting edge – people are talking about running their virtual servers on SANs that are being deduped. That would reduce the storage footprint required for a lot of Windows machines, for example, that all share a lot of the same binaries.
• How do checkpoints work and what gets logged – By Paul Randal.
• No, I will not do your homework for you – When posting forum & StackOverflow questions, think about phrasing them in a way to make sure nobody thinks you’re posting homework assignments.
• SQLIOSim Parser by Jens Suessmeyer & Yours Truly – SQLIOSim pushes load through your SAN storage and can simulate SQL Server IO patterns. However, like SQLIO, the problem is interpreting the results, which get dumped out to text or XML. Now there’s a utility to make it easier.
• Mississippi leads the way: 3 MCM’s a requirement in State IT RFP – Mississippi is requiring Microsoft Certified Masters if a consulting company wants to compete for a particular project. Wow. Just wow.
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise edition and Virtualisation – When you use Enterprise Edition, you can install 4 OS guests for free. Andrew Fryer explains.
• Heard it from a friend who… heard it from a friend who… – Yet another hilarious blog posting from Colin, aka @BenchmarkIT. This guy’s on a roll. This time, he’s talking about a daisy chain of purity check info.
• Toys and Tools – Mike Hillwig’s favorite SQL Server utilities. (And yes, there’s a lot of Quest stuff in there, and no, I didn’t put him up to that.)

Writing, Blogging and Networking Links

• Books or Blogs: My Perspective – Scott Lowe, a published author, talks about whether or not writing books still make sense. I’d add that books force you to a higher level of technical accuracy due to the number of editors you have to get through.
• Tips for Networking at PASS – Great tips on how to meet fellow database administrators and why it can pay off.
• Shirts for Speakers? – Of everything in my closet, my very favorite shirt is my PASSCamp Germany polo with my name monogrammed on it. You could have knocked me over with a feather when Christoph and Oliver gave that to me. It made a huge impression, and I’m still really proud to wear it.
• 9 Ways to Make Your Writing More Compelling – Does what it says on the label.
• Tweet 2001: A Social Media Odyssey – OCDQ – Obsessive-Compulsive Data Quality – A ton of links about how LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networks can work for data people.

The Junk Drawer

• The 50 most interesting articles on Wikipedia « Copybot – Good way to blow an hour and learn stuff.
• Nine Workspaces Where Famous Folks Get Stuff Done [Workspaces] – Most of these are publicity shots, but they’re still useful to see how people like Steve Ballmer set up their offices.
• Penny Arcade! – The Distinction – What if football was an RPG? Wait – it is! Final Fantasy Football….
• Tokyo Preview: Honda EV-N concept is retro-adorable, has unicycle storage – Please, please build this car. Let the world have an electric car that has some semblance of personality.
• 9 Secrets of Truly Happy People – You don’t become happy by saying “Yes” to people in an effort to make them happy. You have to pay attention to yourself and your own needs too.
• Me, Darth Vader’s brother, Guy Kawasaki and the hijacker from The Usual Suspects. Just, you know, hanging out. – In which The Bloggess comes up with alternate versions of The Little Engine That Could, like “The little engine that can’t take a hint.”
• Eff You, Penguin – Not safe for work – uses funny animal photos with NSFW captions.
• Penny Arcade! – Love Bombs From On High – Jesus loves me, this I know, because he gave me Gyromancer and…

These bookmarks are automatically imported from my bookmarks at Delicious.com. If you’d like to get up-to-the-minute updates on what I’m bookmarking, you can subscribe to my bookmark RSS feed.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me: