Clip the coupon, Go on a cruise

So you still are not sure about broaching the SQL Cruises idea on the powers that be?  Let me offer one more way that you could try the big sell…

At my job we already have budget set aside for tools and licensing of Quest products, so for me the offer of free stuff was initially just a nice benefit.  Hey, maybe someone out there could use that to help him or her offset the costs of training I thought to myself (and wrote a blog about it.)

But then I had an idea.  I could still take advantage of this free licensing even though we already were going to purchase it.  I whipped out my fancy management calculator and crunched some number and confirmed it could be done.   Since both training and licensing are capitol purchases and come out of the same pool of money, why not move some around.  Bosses always like to see you move $ from one bucket to another if it saves on the bottom line and that is just what I did.

By leveraging the $8,000+ worth of software licensing being offered by Quest, I suggested that we move some capitol funds from the licensing bucket to the training bucket.  With an overall net savings, I was able to get another training under our belt this year, such as Immersion and SQL PASS since my SQL Cruise attendance already been approved.   Pretty awesome, eh?

So even if you already have budget for licensing, don’t take it for granted that it could not benefit you in other ways.  Always look for opportunities to bring something back from training to the company that sent you there.  It will help ensure the next time you ask for it, you are more likely to get it with less haggling.  Saving the company money is usually right up there with improving stability and performance as a priority.  The difference here is that you can show them real dollars upfront before they invest.

Quest has given you, and through you, the company that is paying for you, a coupon worth possibly more than $8,000.  Clip it, bring it, and use it.  Don’t turn the page, it is real money!

So you want to go to SQLCruise?

… but not sure how to get your boss’s approval on that?

If you go to the SQL Cruise site, you’ll find tons of reasons on how to smooth your manager over.   Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) has various posts talking about that and my husband, John, actually wrote a post from a manager’s point of view that you can share with your manager.   He was not sure about the whole training on the cruise ship concept when I made him carry my bags asked him to join me on the train-cation last summer and he wrote about his experience.

If those posts still get a no-no from your manager, you are in-luck because the announcement just out today from SQL Cruise that all cruisers will get FREE All SQL tools from Quest.   Yes.  Free.  All.   You read right.    It’s Litespeed, Spotlight, Foglight (which by the way, the most awesome tools for diagnosed your wait stats), Toad, Benchmark.   You name it.   Go to their site here, and check out their collection of SQL Tools.   That is what you are going to get, on top of the many uber-cool swag that is going to be announced soon.

So here’s what you need to do:

Download those awesome tools, RIGHT now (if you haven’t already).   Do an eval against your own environment and write down a summary of the benefit of these tools (you can’t just make this one up, you actually need to sit down and install, and evaluate a lot of things).   Just use a couple of tools to start with.  I suggest Spotlight and Foglight.   Heck, throw Litespeed in there too.    Those are the three tools that I know has helped my team tremendously do our job and be aware of potential problems before they become one.

When you are done, present that document to your manager during your 1-on-1 (if you don’t have 1-on-1, you should set recurring one today) and do your sales pitch on how these tools can help your company.  If you peek her/his interest, the next question should be the cost, which you should already have it ready.    Yes, you might see a frowny face, since those tools are not cheap (which they shouldn’t be since they are pretty awesome), and that’s your cue to have this conversation:

You:
No worries, we can get these tools way cheaper

Manager:
Really?   How?

You:
By sending me to SQL Cruise!   See as an attendee – I will get all of these tools for free and that’s over $8000 on value, and if you send me to SQL Cruise – the training will cost only $895 for Alaska one, plus the cruise, which around $900 and travel to Seattle which will be around $400 (I’m just throwing the number here, you get the idea).   That’s like a quarter of the actual cost!  And we get all of these tools for free AND I get the knowledge to bring back and can share that to our entire development team, and don’t get me started with the networking benefit that WE (here’s the key, it’s the company and you, not just you) will gain from this event

Manager:
Speechless

You:
Here’s the paperwork for it, you can just sign it right here for me to expense all of this cost

There ya go.   Now get going and do your homework and hopefully I will see you at SQL Cruise Alaska!

PS.  A big shout out to Quest for their awesome-ness.   Thank you for supporting SQL Community!

On the 7th day of SQL…

Gaston - arrogant dude from Beauty and the Beast. Because I can

Following in Tim Ford’s (blog|twitter) footsteps, I also went non-technical with my favorite post for this awesome twelve days of SQL, which is one of Brent Ozar’s (blog|twitter) collection of bad great ideas that I’m very honored to be a part of.     I struggled to pick a favorite for this series since, well, there are many of them and it’s hard for me to just pick one,  but I hold this particular near and dear to my heart since this is a simple fact that we all know, but sometimes overlook (me included).

This post serves to remind me that, as a Production DBA, I need to be aware of everything that touches my servers and databases.   I’m not talking about fancy Change Management process (that could be a separate post on its own) but it’s the awareness that other groups sometimes don’t have, or hey, sometimes we as a DBAs forget too.

I’m talking to maintain a centralized log about every change that happens on the server.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not just a need to keep track of the things we DBA’s and our developers do, we also need to be aware of other teams small tweaks on the server or network, such as, oh I don’t know, replacing the network card or swapping the processor, or something silly like that.  Even subtle difference like changing the network cable or plugging it into a different switch port can have huge impacts and I need to know!   For the network or sysadmin teams, that might be nothing, but that could have huge impact to our DB performance if we are not aware of it.  Ever try and troubleshoot a port speed mismatch without the support of the netadmin?  Or that pesky (but well intentioned) SAN admin who thinks you can do just fine with a RAID5 instead of a RAID10?  Not to mention tools are almost designed so that notification is an afterthought, that SAN admin can do the whole thing on-line without your knowledge and there is no down time, huh.  Did you ever think the marketing hype of “no down time” would be abused?  How many times have you heard an admin claim, “no one will know” only to hear help desk phones start ringing without warning?  Subtle changes can make a big difference in the big picture, and don’t even get me started on load testing in the test environment.  Anyway…

My favorite post is written by Jonathan Kehayias (blog|twitter).  He is a co-author of this awesome book, Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting (every SQL Professional should have this book – and no, Brent didn’t make me say this).  I have gotten to know him during SQL PASS 2010 when he dropped by to my office with Brent and whipped out some fancy extended events code to help me out identify some of the performance issue that I experienced.   He’s a well respected member of the SQL Community, an intelligent fella’ , MVP and I would love to just pick his brain anytime I can.

Without further ado, here’s the post:

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jonathan_kehayias/archive/2010/08/03/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-small-change-to-a-production-database.aspx

Coming next, a dear friend of mine who I met in person during another of Brent’s bad idea, SQL Cruise.   Karen Lopez (blog|twitter) is incredibly talented and has an ocean of knowledge about database design/architecture.   She’s very active in the community, a renowned speaker, an icon for Women in IT and an awesome person to hang out with (even at a character dining in Disney.)     Please check on her blog tomorrow to see what her favorite post of the year.

Enjoy

Free Conference at SQL PASS

I’ve been invited to this event coordinated by Brent Ozar (Blog | @BrentOzar) called Free-Con.   It is free (yes, really) and it is the most unique event I ever be part of.     I sat in the same room with 15 other people that I truly admired and adore.   You can read about the event itself on Brent’s post here so I won’t go over it in detail on what’s all about.    What I do want to mention here is what I personally get out of it.  

First of all, I feel honored.   Initially, I also felt very intimidated.   I looked around the room, and I saw an author of one of my favorite SQL books,  Grant Fritchey (Blog | @GFritchey).   I had to buy his book, SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled (Expert’s Voice in SQL Server) twice since the pages on the first one got rip off from me flipping to that book so many times and I get to shake his hand today.     

So what do I get out of it?

See, I am a production DBA.   Well, I manage a small Production DBA team.  When I say small, it really is only one other DBA in my team so I still get to do all the dirty fun stuff us DBA have to do.    I’m not a consultant.   I do, however, want to be a Rockstar DBA and an expert within my own company.   Brent Ozar cover this very topic on one of his post here and Free-Con today gave me more ammo to achieve that.   One of the most important thing that I take home from it was  how to communicate like a consultant to the business as a production DBA.   Since I have no desire to be a consultant (at least right now), I need to be able to apply everything I learned today from the presentation and the discussion within the audience to my role and for me, that’s my missing piece of puzzle.  

Let me ask you something.   How many of you ever be in the situation that you were so frustated because you know what was the root cause of some major issue you had, but when you presented that to the business and made recommendation, they totally dismissed it.   The business went ahead and hire a consultant, an expert,  and they came back with the very same recommendation you have.    Sound familiar now?

I am very fortunate that my employer by far is the most awesome employer I ever have.   They supported me in any way that most of production DBA out there will drool and they actually respected me like I am an expert.   However, I’m still far from it and I still need a whole lot of learning  but I believe that I’m in the right track to get there.     I know what more I need to do such as  building my brand and be able to project everything that I do around that brand including how to communicate to the business owner within my company.   I need to do more product review or white paper, to promote myself  within my own employer, more than I already have.    

This present a huge challenge for me that I am happily accepting and looking forward to it.     Thank you, Brent, for letting me to be part of it.    It’s score 10 on my awesome scale, and yes, they are 1-10 scale.