I’ve written before about interviewing a Database Administrator (DBA) and general hiring techniques. I’ve talked about how an interview should be a conversation, not a trivia contest. I always describe the interview process as being a lot like being on a blind date. You shouldn’t be looking to stump someone during an interview. Memorization of obscure facts such … Read more
No matter what our profession, we all have our favorite set of tools to help us get the job done. Database Administrators will have a set of scripts that we use in order to gain insight into the server instances under our care. I often see beginner DBAs look to the counters provided by Perfmon (AKA, the Resource and … Read more
If your DBA is still adding Windows logins to your database servers then they are doing it wrong. Using logins (versus Windows groups) is an inefficient method that hasn’t been considered a favorable practice for almost ten years. Oh…sure…it works. I won’t argue that point. But if you are administering hundreds of database servers and you are using … Read more
Last year I wrote a book review about The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture. The short of it is this: there is a shortage of fact checkers. And no, having facts checked by a community of users (AKA: Wikipedia) doesn’t work because those are the same amateurs that are running … Read more
“Signs point to yes.” – Magic 8-Ball prophecy You have probably heard this line at one point, the one that says “the best DBAs are the ones you never see or hear?” I used to think that was a result of some sketchy personal hygiene choices and later on understood it to mean that if … Read more
