Variety is the Spice of Life

Even though they all use the same software, every SQL Server environment is different. Each one has a few features installed. But have you worked in one company using clustering, replication, mirroring, and log shipping? How about full-text indexing and FileStream? How many different hardware configurations do you have? How many SAN vendors does one company use?

The checkups are enjoyable because I get to see a variety of configurations. There is always something new to learn. Seeing how something works in one environment can give me ideas for fixing or improving something in another.

Teaching Best Practices

Let me take you back a few years, to when I was handed the DBA title for the first time because the DBA left the company. At that time, I could write T-SQL and knew SSRS fairly well. However, I didn’t know auto-shrink and xp_cmdshell were bad. This isn’t knowledge we’re born with, it isn’t covered in most college textbooks, and a programmer won’t know. But I learned. Now, I get to pass on that knowledge.

Our sp_Blitz® script will check for things like databases in Full recovery without log backups being run, users with sysadmin rights, user databases on the C: drive, and auto-shrink enabled. When I see things that aren’t best practices, I can point them out and teach the users why. I can encourage them to change the settings, if applicable, or discuss why they have it set that way. They learn something new, and I get to impart my knowledge. We all win.

Community Contributions

Our very own Brent Ozar wrote the sp_Blitz® script. But there are a lot of other people’s queries we’ve built on. Adam Machanic, Amit Banerjee, and Dave Levy have provided inspiration. We recommend Adam Machanic’s sp_WhoIsActive, and Ola Hallengren’s maintenance scripts.

There are many SQL Server resources available to you, whether they are blogs, videos, books, or scripts. We don’t reinvent the wheel each time we come to a problem, and you don’t need to either. As Brent has blogged before, we send our clients to other people’s blogs for resources.

Ready the Parachutes!

Running a performance checkup is a great experience for me and the client. Solving problems and teaching people at the same time is the most rewarding job I’ve had! I think a huge factor to being successful as a consultant is having the desire to constantly learn. If that sounds like you, there may be a career path for you to explore.