Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the USA. It’s a day where we are supposed to be thankful for what we have been given and instead we mostly use it as an excuse to eat obscene amounts of food, watch 10 hours of NFL action, and force retail workers to work longer hours in the name of Capitalism.
With the emphasis on food this time of the year I was thinking if it were possible to classify “food groups” that every DBA should have as part of a balanced workload. Turns out the answer is “yes”, because I went ahead and did exactly that. I’m here today to introduce you to the five food groups every DBA needs. You’re welcome.
Of course we aren’t talking about real food here, and we are talking about tasks that every DBA needs to understand and perform weekly (or even daily). Next Tuesday, the 2nd of December, 2014, at 11AM CST (or UTC-6:00) I will be presenting a webinar with Karen López (blog | @datachick) titled “Solving the Accidental DBA Problem” for the PASS DBA Fundamentals Virtual Chapter.
As part of that talk we will dive into these food groups a bit more in an effort to help anyone who finds themselves suddenly thrust into the role of DBA for their shop. I’m excited to be building content again with Karen, and even more excited that I have the opportunity to get back into what I call “DBA Survivor” mode. Since writing my book four years ago I haven’t spent a lot of time in the area of professional development. I’m very thankful to have been given the opportunity to be a DBA, and even more thankful to have been given the opportunity to write a book to help others with the career as a data professional.
So, let’s take some time to not only review the DBA food groups, but let’s pair them with food we are likely to be eating tomorrow. Of course you don’t eat each food group separately, but all at the same time. It’s not really Thanksgiving if you just had stuffing, or just drank wine (except for Karen’s dinners, of course).
Discovery
Chances are if you are an accidental DBA you are not fully aware of each and every server and/or application you are responsible for. You need to take the time to figure out what exists in your environment. The best way to do this is to talk with as many people as possible, and not just your manager. Talk to the business end users, the server team, and developers. Find out what systems they are expecting you to be able to help with. You can also use 3rd party tools to help discover things like currently installed and running instances of SQL Server or even some other RDBMS that no one knows about.
For a food pairing, discovery is all about finding something on the table that you either don’t see often, or have never seen before, and trying a portion. For guests at our family dinners this usually means one thing: meat pie.
Recovery
If you have the letters “DBA” in your job description than you had better be able to recover data quickly whenever it is needed. Nothing will get you fired quicker from your job as a DBA than your inability to recover data for your business. Take the time to review the recovery plan for your shop, verify that your database backups are running, and test some restores to make certain that everything is working as expected.
Recovery is all about coming back when you think all is lost. For a food pairing, nothing will help you recover your appetite faster from a huge meal than some dessert, like pumpkin pie.
Performance
There is no question that many accidental DBAs focus on performance tuning and troubleshooting as their top priority, mostly as a result of these tasks offering the highest visibility for them across multiple groups. For accidental DBAs I make an effort to help them understand the importance of wait events, common DMVs, and proper index maintenance.
The best food pairing here is the inclusion of some vegetables. No, the mashed potatoes don’t count. Think leafy greens, like a salad, or spinach. They are going to help you perform better the next day, trust me.
Architecture
I see architecture playing a larger role even for accidental DBAs these days. Beyond database design there are questions about storage options, virtualization, high availability, and Cloud options. DBAs these days really need to be on top of a lot of architecture options in order to help businesses build reliable systems. In fact, I think the new job title should be “Cloud Database Architect”, as that better describes the role.
No question about this one, the food pairing here is the turkey itself. The turkey serves as the foundation for the entire meal. While the stuffing and/or potatoes are the performance, they can’t stand alone without the turkey. And like all good technical architecture your meal can be something other than turkey, perhaps you prefer a nice ham instead.
Security
Accidental DBAs need to have a deeper understanding of security than logins and permissions. These days a DBA has got to understand various types of encryption options, mitigation of risk with regards to data breaches, and how to effectively track permission changes over time. Failure to understand the implications of the security measures being proposed could result in your data being less secure than anyone realizes.
For a Thanksgiving meal pairing, nothing brings me greater security than a second glass of red wine. Of course since it is turkey someone will say that white wine is more appropriate but this is my blog post.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Great article, but perhaps it was a poor choice to make security the dessert off to the side in the picture.
Why is that a “poor” choice? (And it was done because of font size choices).
Many companies have dedicated security teams, and a DBA isn’t even a factor. But there are still things a DBA needs to understand, even an accidental DBA, with regards to security.
It presents security as off to the side. One could argue the SAN or general admin team is in charge of recovery if you use SQL agents for your enterprise backup software as well.
I think of the five things, the thing that people often don’t take seriously enough is security.
I guess in the end there was no “good choice” to be the one off to the side.
I have to say that in my experience the security element is often left off to the side by many companies, and that is if you are lucky. Quite often, to continue the analogy, it gets left in the fridge and forgotten about only being noticed once it has gone all mouldy and is no good to anyone.