“Database administrator” is a job with a lot – a LOT – of different flavors, and no two days are the same.
Here’s a decent example of one DBA’s day, with a bit of commentary on the side.
7:00 a.m. – Wake and have breakfast
Our DBA isn’t on call this week, so there’s a full night’s sleep and a plate of waffles – or a bowl of cereal – on the agenda every day.
Being on call – waking up or staying late to deal with top level emergencies – isn’t big fun, but it’s certainly one way to ramp up your database skills, fast. Of course, when there are too many emergencies, something’s not right…
8:00 a.m.- Handle emails, alerts, and issues
First things first: email! There are a small number of alerts to look into, a couple of messages that need an answer, and six or seven newsletters to catch up on.
Email is a fine invention, but people and systems abuse the privilege. Alerts are a key example: tons of alerts aren’t important, aren’t actionable, and just teach a tech team to …ignore alerts. Hopefully, that’s not the case without star DBA.
The rest of the morning passes with error log reviews and Kerberos connectivity troubleshooting.
It’s pretty common to find “error log review” on a DBA checklist, but that’s the kind of thing that should really be automated. Kerberos? Well, there’s only so much automating you can do for connectivity issues.
12:00 p.m. – Review code during a working lunch
Some folks from the development team have scheduled a code review for today, so our DBA shows up with several notes (and two index recommendations) in hand.
Code review! There’s the place where a DBA absolutely shines. The idea is to work with developers on new SQL code, BEFORE the code hits production!
1:30 p.m. – Watch a training video
The newest version of SQL Server has some excellent high availability and disaster recovery options to brush up on. Luckily, there are several good resources that cover the material, and a half-hour to devote to them.
Technology moves fast, and so training is essential. Our DBA is one of the fortunate ones, able to grab a few minutes a week to study up.
2:30 p.m. – Mini-security audit
A major security audit could come at any time, so it’s best for the SQL team to stay on top of any potential vulnerabilities. This mini-audit includes a check of permissions and configuration settings.
Back to drudgery. Security is SO important. It’s too bad there aren’t better native tools to help SQL teams keep a handle on it.
4:00 p.m. – Query tuning
The team has identified a few stored procedures that could run more efficiently. So, there’s a quick talk with the head developer and then they start work on the slowest queries.
And back to the fun stuff! Here’s some insider info: DBAs absolutely ADORE making queries and systems go faster. If only that fabled “Go Faster Button” existed…
But, we can do so much more
No matter how well staffed, a DBA team always has another 100 tasks on the checklist each day. At MinionWare, we aim to automate as many of those tasks as possible, so your team has the time to improve and innovate.
Our management software does a lot. Just looking at our DBA’s day, above, Minion Enterprise can free up time by:
- Preventing emergencies. (This will be especially important when our DBA is on call again.)
- Using smart, consolidated, actionable emails.
- Providing custom error log searches, so our SQL team is notified whenever the dreaded “SSPI handshake” error shows up.
- Centralizing SQL Server metadata. This can help with code reviews, by making the codebase of the entire SQL enterprise searchable.
- Automating and centralizing security audits. Instead of regular mini-audits, our DBA is simply notified of critical changes to security, no matter where it shows up. (That includes changes in Active Directory!)
- Providing reports on version levels and security patches. (A big part of security is keeping your SQL instances up to date!)
- Centralizing data about indexing and index usage, including missing indexes. This gives the SQL team a big head start on performance tuning.
Get in touch at Sales@MinionWare.net for a demo and a trial. Make the most of your day!