To Go or Not To Go: The SQL Server Conference Scene

As we approach the season of technical conferences, I find myself writing a proposal for my management outlining the benefits of attending them. Specifically, those that I believe to be the top two annual SQL Server technical conferences - SQL PASS Summit (PASS) and SQL IT/DevConnections (DevConnections). It’s also my goal to be in a position to attend one of these two conferences each year. To accomplish this task, I decided to showcase their benefits. This included: the variety of sessions/training offered, caliber of presenters, availability to vendors, non-session experiences, community/networking opportunities, and of course costs.

Sessions/Training:
SQL PASS Summit is designed specifically for SQL Server. It covers all things relating to SQL Server from administration, to performance tuning, to data warehousing, to SharePoint integration and beyond. The sessions are offered for experience levels ranging from novice to highly advanced/technical.

SQL IT/DevConnections is focused on development and programming across multiple technologies. The broad nature of this conference allows the training sessions include Windows management, .NET development, and of course SQL Server. Again, the sessions offered range from novice to highly advanced, however this is an expectation of basic programming and development knowledge.

Presenters:
These conferences each draw between 100 and 200 sessions. With such a high number of sessions it allows the presenters to draw from a variety of experiences and backgrounds. Past events have included Microsoft employees, technical authors, and the community’s top evangelists.

Vendors:
While the vendors the both events have a high volume of overlap, it is important to note the benefits of having them. By allowing the opportunity to see new products and features, as well as get one-on-one time with the company’s that we rely on, it also offers the ability ensure that the best products are being leveraged in-house.

Non-Session Experience:
Beyond the basic presentation session, there is still value of attending these conferences. These non-session experiences have included a discounted book store (many books of which have been written by the conference speakers), a computer lab to go through feature-specific lessons, discussion tables with subject matter experts, and even an on-site testing center to take certification exams.

Community/Networking:
Both conferences will offer the ability to network with peers in one environment that you will not likely find anywhere else. With DBA’s from around the world and community organizers and leaders within the community all in one location, these relationships can be the foundation used to bounce ideas off of, lean on for advice, as well as offer opportunities to get directly involved on both a local and national scale.

Costs:

SQL Pass Summit 2014      Location: Seattle, WA      Conference Date: November 4-7, 2014 Conference Cost:      Main conference: (if paid by June 27)      Optional: 1x Pre-conference workshop      Optional: Online copy of all conference presentations Travel (estimates):      Airfare:      Hotel: (4 nights at $150/night)      Meals: (4 days at $25/day - breakfast and lunch provided)  Total Estimated Cost: (with one pre-conference workshop)

$1,595 $495 $145 $500 $600 $100 $3,435

SQL IT/DEV Connections 2014      Location: Las Vegas, NV      Conference Date: September 15-19, 2014 Conference Cost:      Main conference:      Optional: Pre/post workshops Travel (estimates):      Airfare:      Hotel: (5 nights at $200/night)      Food: (4 days at $25/day - breakfast and lunch provided) Total Estimated Cost: (with 1 pre or post conference workshop)

$1,695 $399 $600 $1000 $100 $3,794

Conclusion:
You certainly can't go wrong with attending either of these conferences. They are both going to offer opportunities beyond what you can get by reading a book or attending an online class. I hope that this shows the bigger picture of what these conferences have to offer and encourages everyone to participate in them.

Welcome to the wonderful world of being on-call: Its too early for this....

As part of a team of 7 DBA’s, each team member does an on-call rotation for one full week starting on Monday at 7:00am EST. While recapping my on-call rotation for the past week with my team, it dawned on me that it’s been a while since I've blogged, and this could be a good insight to the world of on-call for those that haven't yet had the pleasure.

The week before I started my rotation there were a lot of questions running through my mind. What does it mean to be on-call? What qualifies as an emergency vs. standard work requested off hours? How to I guarantee I can meet my SLA if I get stuck?  As I expected those questions were answered in the next 7 days.

Being on-call means that you are the first line of defense. When a problem arises, you get the page and make first contact. It’s then up to you to assess the situation and define what steps are going to be taken. During standard office hours, this included an impromptu conversation with the primary DBA and, usually, resulted in that person resolving the problem and doing the root cause analysis. This is a privilege that you likely won’t have during off hours. Assuming that problems can absolutely happen twice, I then make a point to get together with the DBA once the problem is resolved to understand what actions were taken. Should this happen again off-hours or when they are not available I already have an idea how to resolve the problem.

DBAs quickly discover there is never a lack of work requested. When on-call, it is important to identify which requests require immediate attention and which can wait. It’s also important to understand that you, the DBA, and end-user requesting the work may not agree on the level of importance. My first instinct was to look at every email during off hours, thus allowing me to assess everything. After one night of sleeping in 30 and 45 minute intervals, I realized this was not effective.  This begged the question: “What is coming to me via email and what is coming through as a page?” No! It’s not 1998 with pagers. For my company, the term page refers to a text message sent to the on-call DBA’s Blackberry. Pages are sent automatically by our monitoring tool or by engaging the emergency hotline. By reviewing and confirmation that I’m getting actionable alerts on my pager I was also confident that I didn’t have to put eyes on every email.

I’m sure every DBA is briefed on the up-time SLA’s for their environment within their first week of being hired. This is a timeline that every DBA keeps in the back of their head, as it can be the life-line our jobs live and die by. This can also be the single biggest point of stress for a DBA when something is broken. It’s also important to note that for many environments, the uptime SLA is different during critical office hours and non-critical office hours. For this blog, I’m focusing on non-critical hours. This is also where having a defined escalation policy is of the utmost importance. No one is happy to get called at 3:30am because you’re stuck, but I can assure you that it is always preferred over taking no action and dealing with the same problem during critical use hours. While no one wants to point out their short coming,  I’ve never heard of a DBA getting terminated for waking up their manager, or even the manager’s manager in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for a DBA who takes no action when action is warranted.

So what didn’t I think of? How will this impact my home life? After the second night of being on-call, it was suggested to me that if I didn’t want to be hit in the head with a pillow every time I was paged, then maybe I should find other accommodations. This was something I absolutely overlooked. But I considered how I would feel if I were the one with the pillow and no reason to be woken and decided that using the guest room during rotations was a very doable sacrifice.

While being on-call for the first time or the time 100^th can be stressful. Understanding the expectations and having an action plan make it a bit less daunting.