There’s been an interesting trend lately in several different sales calls where you’re walking through the software capabilities, listing out the different goals you have for the project, etc. The customer (be they internal or external) eventually gets around to infrastructure and how you’ve architected the solution. Now, if it’s on-premise, this leads to a lengthy discussion (why is it […]
Amazon AWS
The Cloud Does, Indeed, Not Fix Everything
Yesterday the post was about possibly using a move of servers to help ferret out things to review in your architecture (and not using it as a chance to necessarily block access that may have been lost control of). There was a good point made in the comments – John said “Those DTUs will kill your wallet if you don’t […]
Important Lessons/Reminders for SQL Server Performance
The post yesterday about moving one of our SQL Servers to RDS and a dedicated instance and all of that (read more here) was a(nother) reminder that sometimes you have to take a step back and start with the easy stuff prior to assuming you need to do the complex modifications to your system to get the results you want. […]
Surprising Results, Moving SQL Server to RDS
We’ve recently moved a heavily used SQL Server instance from a VM-based installation to an RDS (Amazon, SaaS) solution. The server instance was not dedicated (don’t get me started) and, under load, would feel the pain of that type of installation. We would see loading that would approach 90% with frequent spikes to 100% depending on what was happening, jobs, […]
Love/Hate Relationship with Unstructured Data
No doubt you’ve seen, and perhaps been working with unstructured solutions out there – DynamoDB, Azure Table Storage, and there are many other options as well. It’s pretty cool that you can define key/value pairs and just start dumping information into the system, really without regard to structure and columns and many of the things that have traditionally made up […]
When The Flu = Better DB Practices
Like too many of us, I’ve been fighting a nasty bout of the cold or flu or whatever it is that’s going around. And while I’ve been enjoying (!) the exhaustion and inability to think straight actually got me thinking about the many things that keep systems running so you’re not on the hook 24/7. One of the things that […]
Multi-Platform Development – a Pro or Con?
In working with different companies to try to define how they’ll best move forward with their data requirements, it’s increasingly obvious that multi-platform, where you have multiple database systems on tap to provide support for requirements, is an ideal solution. By embracing the platform-agnostic approach, and looking at the requirements and using those to determine what options to consider, you […]
What Do You See for 2018?
The end of the year (I’m not rushing it, just getting ahead of the curve to get your early thoughts), is when people start thinking through what’s coming up and what to expect. I’m curious what you would see as the top 3 things or so that you’d expect to see happening in the data space in 2018. Drop them […]
Vendor Lock-In Challenges
I have to admit, I approached the whole question yesterday quite differently that everyone else. I was worried more about new standards, development trajectories, compatibility and so-on. When I wrote about the vendor-specific database flavors… I missed what could certainly be the larger issue. John Shadows wrote: 100% cloud also means you have to play by the cloud rules all […]
Backup and Restore… No, Really.
I cannot tell you how many webcasts, articles, sessions and such have been done about backup and restore. But here we are again. Saying similar things, with different icing on the cake I suppose. Essentially – make sure they work, make sure you know how to use them, and test your “assuredness.” This applies whether you’re on-premise or in the […]
