Yes, I’m back on a cruise ship with another 360 degree video. Lest you think I’m being wildly irresponsible (or responsible perhaps?) with your consulting and training money, be aware that this particular cruise was free thanks to the fine folks in the casino department at Norwegian Cruise Lines. In between beaches and blackjack, let’s go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
Here’s what we covered:
- 00:00 Start
- 01:22 Petr: How would you convince a customer running our app on SQL Server 2022 in a sync AOG to enable delayed durability on their production databases? Our load tests show a 10× improvement in write throughput and elimination of commit latency spikes, with acceptable data?loss risk.
- 05:30 HeyItsThatGuyAgain: You’ve done a lot to support the “Accidental DBA.” Do you recommend any resources for the “Accidental Data Team Manager?”
- 05:51 How Did I Even Get Here: I am one of only 4 DBAs at a big university that lumps Dev and Prod together. I am our only SQL Server DBA and I assist with Oracle. This is my first DBA job. I can study what I want in my free time but I’m overwhelmed. Do you have any advice for how to decide where to explore?
- 07:17 ArchipelagoDBA: We have been using defautl sampling for our statistics updates. We have now noticed that this is causing low quality execution plans. Are there any risks to go flat out enforcing FULLSCAN for all or are there better to gradially roll it out to help with specific queries?
- 08:31 SteveE: Hi Brent, How is the adoption of AI development tools looking out in the real world? Are you seeing many clients using fully automated AI development tools, an uptake in assisted programming using chatbots or are teams still using traditional methods?
- 10:10 Subash: I need to take migration assistance report for 2025 servers.. For upgrade 2019 to 2025 so that my manager asked the compatibility changes report before upgrade I checked in DMA 2025 option is not available..i checked in SSMS 21 version available till 2022 not for 2025.help
- 10:56 EagerBeaver: Hi Brent, can parameter sniffing happen on a query (not SP)? I run the same query twice with different parameter and second query got same cardinality estimation as the first one. Index statistics for used index are recalculated and 2 parameter have vast difference in Equal Rows.
- 13:48 I_like_SQL_Server: Hi Brent, We have some wide and large tables with unindexed foreign keys (3rd p db). There are too many FKs so I cannot index them all, how should I think and how do I prioritize? You have a modul in Mastering index tuning about FKs but it doesn’t take up this specific challenge.
- 15:02 Stumped: Every day something causes the log file in one of my very large databases to grow to over a terabyte, which fills the drive. How do I find out what is doing that?
- 16:18 2400BaudSpeedster: I dislike copilot and can’t figure out how to like it. Is there anyway to avoid copilot integration besides not upgrading past a certain version? Any suggestions on how to get over it and somehow embrace it?
1 Comment. Leave new
@How Did I Even Get Here & other first time DBAs.
You say that this is your first time as DBA and you are the only SQL DBA. Brent says to check in with your manager, also check in with your team. They should have at least some view as to your most important question, which is how does the stuff I support fail? What are the most common problems that have to be fixed here?
I don’t know what your manager will say, so I’ll give you what I tell my team members.
The first thing to learn is what have you got/are responsible for and how to fix it when it breaks. My first day on any job and I want to know what is the BCP, where are the backups, what HA/DR do we have? What are my timescales for getting stuff fixed. Beyond that, what SQL tech are we using, are there AGs, Log Shipping, SQL Replication, parts of the BI stack? Learn how to check if what you are running, is running well, how it breaks and how to fix it when it does. Because it will break.
Learn tooling. If this stuff isn’t deployed, make a case for it when you learn it, or at least understand what is does for you and how to do that for yourself. Stuff like – Brent’s sp_Blitz, Adam Machanic’s sp_whosiactive, Ola Hallegren’s maintenance solution, Powershell and the dbatools library.
That is going to be the bedrock of your skillset as a DBA. Beyond that, the world is your oyster. Meet your manager’s expectations, find out the mid to long term goals of the organisation, and find out what aspects of this job you enjoy and follow that path. Expect stuff to change, be flexible, your goals and interests will change too as you do this work.