23Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Azure Automation

Azure
I introduced Azure Automation in a previous post. I've spent some more time exploring it. There's a set of documentation available as I noted before. Unfortunately, reading through the full set of documentation, I have some criticisms to offer. The layout of the documentation goes through "Common runbook tasks" actually more or less laying things out as I did, inadvertently, I assure you, in my previous blog post. The problem with that, as I found in that post is, the administration of the runbooks seems fairly straightforward from the screens. But, you can't do a darned thing with any of it until you have a runbook . Further, you can't have a runbook until that thing has some code in it. And, the documentation doesn't include documentation about code. Instead,…
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22Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 22 Comments

I Am Better Than You

DevOps
That is a patently false statement and total BS. It sure does crawl up your spine though doesn't it? Why then do we need to do this? I read an article, "How DevOps is Killing the Developer," and, frankly, was a little put off by this: Good developers are smart people. I know I'm going to get a ton of hate mail, but there is a hierarchy of usefulness of technology roles in an organization. Developer is at the top, followed by sysadmin and DBA. QA teams, "operations" people, release coordinators and the like are at the bottom of the totem pole. Why is it arranged like this? Because each role can do the job of all roles below it if necessary. Nice to know I'm almost as good as…
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16Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Microsoft Azure Automation

Azure
Microsoft just announced a new mechanism for managing your Azure resources, Automation. You can check out the documentation on it here. It's a mechanism to create runbooks using PowerShell that you can then combine with other runbooks inside a runbook, etc. Let's check it out. I'm doing everything you see here without consulting the documentation. I want to see how easy it is to put this stuff together. First, because it's still in preview, you have to sign up. Once you're accepted in the program, you get a new icon in your Management Portal. Next, you'll have to create an automation account. That's pretty straight forward. It's just a name, your selected region and the subscription you're putting it under. No immediate guidance on where, when or if the region matters that…
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15Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

SQL Server First Aid

DevOps, Professional Development
If you take basic first aid, say a CPR course, you'll learn a handy mnemonic for the primary assessment you have to make, A-B-C. That breaks down as Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Is there an open airway so they can breathe? Are they breathing? Do they have circulation, a pulse, are they alive in short. I recently took a two day course on wilderness first aid (on top of CPR training and first responder training and basic and advanced first aid training and Scout training and Scout first-aid training and I'm sure I'm forgetting some) that added to that, D-E. We now have Disability and Environment. In short, just how responsive is the person or do they have the possibility of spinal issues? What's the environmental situation, lieing on cold ground,…
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14Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Sharing a Good Idea

Professional Development
I posted earlier about my experiments with Microsoft Curah!. (yes, technically the period should follow the exclamation since the exclamation is part of the name, not the end of the sentence) Evidently people actually read this blog because it inspired Stephen Bennet to start putting together his own curations and collect them on his blog. I think that's a pretty interesting idea. I might try it myself (after I get back from SQL Intersection). Stephen's Curah! so far. Oh, and I kind of dislike the name. Curah! Just typing it I feel like I should be excited except I'm not. Anyhooo...
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10Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

I’m a Traveling Man

PASS, Redgate Software
We are coming into quite a busy time for my speaking schedule. I'm hitting the road. It does one thing for me that I truly love, I get to talk to people. So, if you have questions, want to chat, need to call me a pompous know-it-all to my face, I've got some opportunities for you. Next week, April 13-16, is SQL Intersection. You can register by clicking here. The following week, I've got two events. First, on Friday April 25th, Red Gate Software is hosting a free half day SQL in the City Seminar in the Chicago area. We'll be talking database deployment all day. Go here to register, but don't wait, seats absolutely are limited. And, since this is a Red Gate event, at the end of the…
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08Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Curation and Performance

Misc, SQL Server
I'm trying out a new web site from Microsoft called Curah! that is all about curation. Curation is basically what blogging started out as. Blogs, short for Web Log, was really just a collection of links you'd visited recently and what you thought about them. But it's grown into all manner of things, the least of which is a collection of links and what I thought about them. However, the concept of a useful set of links, why they might be useful, what you'll find there, these concepts still have value. Hence the rise of curation. As a concept, I get it. I don't think it deviates radically from what we do with our blogs, our resources pages (see the links above), and other similar functions. But, it is rather…
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04Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Speaker of the Month, April 2014

Professional Development
I'm really enjoying picking a speaker of the month. It forces me to sit through a lot more sessions at the events I attend. I had been getting rather slack about attending sessions. It's easy to get caught up in networking so much that you're not taking advantage of the learning opportunities. This month we're on to the East Coast to pick a speaker from the Boston SQL Saturday event. The talk was called, "What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a DBA." The speaker of the month is Mike Walsh (b|t). Mike's session was just a general discussion about the job of being a DBA. He didn't get into a lot of technical detail. Instead it was like a conversation with your friends talking about personality traits, work/life balance, restore…
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03Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Thanks For Stopping By

Misc
Yesterday I passed 300,000 views on the blog. Recently I went over 1,000 comments. My little joke on Tuesday garnered over 2,000 views alone. I just wanted to say thank you for stopping by and reading about my struggles to understand SQL Server, Azure, our amazing community and whatever else it is that I've posted here. I appreciate your time. On to the next 300,000.
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01Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 15 Comments

SQL Server 2014 New Defaults

T-SQL
Today, April 1st, 2014, marks the release of SQL Server 2014. There are tons and tons of great new methods and functions and processes within the product. We're all going to be learning about them for quite a while to come. One of the most exciting though is one of the changes to the defaults. In the past there's been a lot of debate around how best to configure your databases. What cost threshold should be set for parallelism, the max degree of parallelism, memory settings, auto growth, and all sorts of other settings affect how your databases work. But, Microsoft has finally done something smart. They've bowed to the pressure of hundreds and hundreds of DBAs, Database Developers and Developers around the world. They've finally done the one thing…
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