We’ve been chasing issues with performance across a series of applications where there are multiple cloud providers (specifically AWS and Azure) in play. The application is a fairly typical .net web-based application that does calls to Azure SQL DB and AWS RDS at various times and places. The issue we’ll see from time to time surrounds lag time between the...
Azure
Mixing Flavors of SQL Server
It’s been an interesting ride, optimizing SQL Server, figuring out best use cases for the different flavors of SQL Server that we have come to rely on, and we’re seeing those choices pay off in terms of management, performance, and cost savings. The “flavors” I’m speaking of? AWS RDS SQL Server, Azure SQL DB specifically. Our event platform is based […]
Analytics, Reporting and Fine Line of Privacy
It can be very challenging to pull together reporting, analytics, data privacy expectations and support for legislation for information in your systems. People – those users that you support – are learning to request more and more from reporting. They’re expecting systems to be smarter about the information stored in your databases. Azure does amazing things with analytics, looking at […]
Complexities of "It Just Works"
There is a lot of talk about technical debt – that thing where systems have been allowed to run because, well, they work. Why poke a sleeping troll, or whatever that saying is. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke. But this leads to technical decay that can be hard to quantify and hard to pull into any kind of […]
Selecting a Data Platform
The whole process of selecting the right platform and the right tools to support it is continuing to become more and more complex. It’s not just a matter of selecting a provider, but an approach to getting the job done. There are many different things to consider at different levels of this choice, and it will depend quite a lot […]
Data Drift, Data Maturation and Working With It
Azure ML datasets have a new tool just out, that of looking at datasets and monitoring for data drift. Not the latest fad in racing, but rather the changing of data over time. This is quite important to be aware of on a few different levels as you work with these datasets that track behavior (more later this week) and […]
Cloud Services… and the bill for them. DBA Opportunity?
So much has been written about DBAs, the cloud and the impact cloud-based resources and services have on the role of the DBA. There’s no doubt the impact has been substantial. In many cases, however, it’s been a good thing. The mundane “noise” of managing databases has become a game of options. You have the option to have a fully-managed […]
Security or Convenience?
According to MorningBrew, the current Smartphone market is a bit of a complicated one. While nearly half of the world relies heavily on these devices, the market for them is unstable right now, as people either hang on to their older models or opt for more affordable ones. Upgrade, Upgrade, Upgrade!Samsung’s newest model, the Samsung 10+ 5G costs a pretty […]
Old Guidelines Still Apply
Back in the day… standard advice was to get that SQL Server off the Internet, public-facing access, if at all possible. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn’t because of application access and other issues with moving it to a private segment. But the key is to remove those sensitive layers of access to SQL Server – control the surface area […]
Multi-Database Solutions
tl;dr There is no easy answer. But it’s important. It can be really challenging to work efficiently in a world where not only is the hosting environment typically a hybrid of on-site, off-site, public and private cloud configurations, managed and self-managed services… but also where you have multiple databases gathering different bits of information and you’re in a position to […]