A Holiday Weekend (in the US)… Are You Prepared?
Holiday weekends are nice – and you should be able to truly enjoy it by being on call, but being prepared.
One of the more complex things to do when setting up your systems is to NOT be the single point of failure – the bottleneck in getting things done or responding to issues that may arise. "Issues" have a funny way of coming up just as you head out on your weekend escape for that long weekend. If you can do a few things ahead of time, you can enjoy more of your time off, whether it’s at night or weekends or vacations.
Here is some food for thought in being prepared:
– Have a list of recovery steps for small issues. You probably know the quick fixes already, the things you do to put things back on track. Write down those quick fixes, make sure you’re not the only person that knows how to put things right.
– Have a written escalation plan with "in the meantime" steps. In other words, if X, Y and Z happen, it’s bad. CALL ME, but in the meantime, contact users, let them know it’s going to be a few hours to recover. Call the boss. Get a vendor support service in the loop, etc. That way things are rolling as you come back in the office and your time is optimized, as is recovery.
– Think through things that need to happen while you’re gone. Write them up. Let people know *everything* they need to in order to get it done in your absence. If there are passwords, document them (and secure them of course). If specific steps are to be completed, write them down. Also write down what the outcome should be.
Here’s a quick example:
If the system slows down, check for index fragmentation. Use the DBCC command (specify it) look for the values (specify them) that indicate fragmentation. If fragmentation exceeds XX%, run this DBCC command (specify it). These are things that potentially a stand-in DBA could help out with and keep you off the clock.
Worst case, make sure you can get into your systems remotely to do admin/maint. type tasks. You’ll at least save yourself the travel time.