Conferences

#DevOpsDays #Nashville in the books

Headed back home after a successful Ignite presentation at DevOpsDays Nashville. This was an awesome conference; I’ve blogged in the past about some of my concerns with the single track format, and finding speakers that manage to reach a very diverse audience of engineers, managers, coders, analysts, etc. I had no such concern this time around; I feel like I got something out of every presentation I heard. Very well done.

On a personal note, IGNITE TALKS ARE HARD, Y’ALL. 5 minutes, 20 slides is tough to pull off, particularly when you have a penchant for verbosity (editing is NOT my favorite thing to do). I originally proposed this as an Ignite talk because I’m just really starting on my DevOps journey, but in hindsight, I spent WAY more time editing and preparing for this discussion than any SQL Server presentation I’ve ever done. The plus side is that I can reuse a lot of this material in educating my team when discussing the depth of these directions.

Headed home with lots to think about.

2017-10-18 by Conferences DevOps Professional Development SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

#SQLSatATL, #DevOps, #Cloud, & the Future of the DBA

Last weekend was SQLSaturday Atlanta 2017, and I was not only an organizer, but a presenter. In the future, I’ll need to balance that a little better (especially when we’re dealing with a lot of unknowns for the day, like a new building). Overall, I think my presentation went well; had a lot of great hallway conversations with folks later, and got some good feedback. You can find the slide deck here, or look on the Code, etc tab above.

However, during my presentation, a couple of questions came up that I didn’t have a great answer for; mostly it was revolving around the first bullet point on this slide:

Why, if DevOps as a philosophy encourages better communication between development and operations, do I believe that there will be increased segregation between those roles? I fumbled for an answer during the presentation, but then went back and realized what I left out in my explanation, so I thought I’d take a stab at rebuilding my argument and explain where I was going with this:

DevOps is built on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) model.

Services logically represent business activities; they are self-contained, and the inner workings of each service are opaque to the consumers. Services can be built using other services, but that rule of opacity stays true; when you consume a service, you don’t care what it’s doing under the covers. It just has to provide a consistent output when given a consistent input.

The Cloud Paradigm is also built on a SOA model.

Software-as-a-Service is built on a Platform-as-a-Service, which is in turn built on an Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Communication between service layers must be consistent and repeatable, but processes and procedures within each services should be opaque. Furthermore, the consumers of a service are not the same; for example, if you have a web portal displaying account information to a client. The client consumes Software-as-a-Service; they just want to see their account information. They don’t care how many servers are involved or how the network is laid out. Software-as-a-Service consumes from the Platform layer; they may have a requirement that they use a particular database system, or OS, but specific configuration isn’t exposed to them. Software engineers define performance expectations (e.g, “we need to commit 1000 transactions per second”), and leave it up to the Platform (and Infrastructure) engineers to meet that expectation.

The traditional tasks associated with SQL Server Database Administration can be roughly divided into two roles: Development and Administration (Operations).

From this slide, I outline the general breakdown between skills:

 

SQL Server as a product spans the top two layers of the Cloud Paradigm:

Basically, I believe that traditional development skills belong to the Software-as-a-Service Layer, and traditional administration skills belong to the Platfom layer.

So by segregation of responsibilities, I mean that as companies embrace the Cloud paradigm, the current role of a DBA will fork into both Software-as-a-Service engineering (Dev) and Platform-as-a-Service engineering (Ops). I need to clarify that thought more in future presentations, because I may be using those terms differently than others would.

Thanks for reading, and if you attended, thanks for coming!

-Stu

2017-07-19 by Conferences Development DevOps SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

#DevOps – Starting the path

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my first DevOps conference (DevOpsDays Nashville), and the first conference that had absolutely nothing to do with SQL Server since graduate school. The conference was great; I met some new folks, and had some great moments of insight early on. The DevOps community is a very welcoming community, but as a relatively new explorer, I quickly got lost. The sessions ranged from culture to technology, and somewhere in between; the speakers were very casual, and to be honest, a little unstructured. It was very different than my previous experiences at tech conferences, where even professional development talks were goal-focused.

One the last day of the event, during one of the keynotes, I encountered the following tweet:

Paul Reed’s piece is interesting, because it helped me begin to form a schema around all that is DevOps; he defines the following frameworks underneath the umbrella of DevOps:

Automation and Application Lifecycle Management – basically, the tools needed to insure micro-deployments and increased time-to-market. The focus here is on Continuous IntegrationDeploymentDelivery, and Configuration Management.

Cultural Issues – Reed breaks these out into a relatively fine grain in a manner that he didn’t do with technology, but he defines three subsections of culture: Organizational Culture, Workflow, and Diversity. Each of these areas has a slightly different area of focus, but they all deal with the “soft, fuzzy, human interactions that lie just beyond the technology.” Organizational Culture can refer to breaking down silos, restructuring, and/or management & leadership. Workflow refers to the application lifecycle methodology, such as the conjunction of Agile and Lean methods.  Diversity is a focus on bringing different voices into technology, including feminist, LGBTQ, and minority perspectives.

The Indescribable – finally, Reed finishes with basically an “everything else” definition. Some organizations which have pioneered DevOps practices don’t really call them that; they’ve just organically grown their own processes to focus on efficiency, including minimizing silos and rapid delivery.

I have to admit, it helped me to reframe my perspective on various lectures using this structure; that may not be true to the spirit of DevOps itself (which de-emphasizes artificial constraints), but it’s given me some room for thought in terms of the areas I want to study and learn. The technology is interesting, but I don’t see myself working in those areas anytime soon; my real focus will be on organizational culture and workflow. As a manager, I want to increase my efficiency by building a team, and I think the path I’m on is to figure out how to push my team of system engineers and database administrators to prepare for continuous integration.

More to come.

2016-11-16 by Conferences Professional Development SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

Oh, The Places You’ll Go! – #SQLSeuss #SQLPASS

Last week, I had the privilege to speak at the annual PASS Summit; I got to present two different sessions, but the one I’m the most proud of was my Lightning Talk: Oh, the Places You’ll Go! A Seussian Guide to the Data Platform. I bungled the presentation a bit (sorry for those of you who want to listen to it), but I feel pretty good about the content. I’ve presented it below, with the slides that I used for the talk.

The goal of this presentation was to explore the Microsoft Data Platform from the perspective of a SQL Server professional; I found this great conceptual diagram of the platform from this website a while back, and wanted to use it as a framework. I figured the best way to teach a subject was the same way I teach my 3-year-old: a little bit of whimsy.

Enjoy.
You have brains in your head

And SQL Skills to boot

You’ll soar to great heights

On the Data Platform too

You’re on your own, and you know what you know,

And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go.

You’ve mastered tables, columns and rows, OHHHHH MYYYY
You may even have dabbled in a little B.I.

You’re a data professional, full of zest,

But now you’re wondering “What comes next?”
Data! It’s more than just SQL,

And there’s a slew of it coming, measured without equal.

Zettabytes, YotaBytes, XenoBytes and more

All coming our way, faster than ever before.

So what should we do? How should we act?

Should we rest on our laurels? Should we lie on our backs?

Do we sit idly by, while the going gets tough?

No… no, we step up our game and start learning new stuff!

 
Oh, the places you’ll go!

ARCHITECTURE

Let’s start with the Theories,

The things you should know

Designing systems as services,

Are the route you might go.

Distributed, scalable

Compute on Demand

The Internet of Things

And all that it commands.
Infrastructure is base,

Platform is in line

Software and data

Rest on top of design

Once you’ve grasped this

Once you’ve settled in

You’ve embraced cloud thinking

Even while staying on-prem.
But beyond the cloud, there’s data itself.

Structured, polyschematic, binary, and log

Centralized or on the edge,

Some might say “in the fog”
Big Data, Fast Data, Dark, New and Lost

All of it needs management, all at some cost

There’s opportunity there to discover something new

But it will take somebody, somebody with skills like you.

Beyond relational, moving deep into insight

We must embrace new directions, and bring data to life

And there’s so many directions to go!
ADMINISTRATORS

For those of you who prefer administration

System engineering and server calibration

You need to acknowledge, and you probably do

You’ll manage more systems, with resources few.

Automation and scripting are the tools of the trade

Learn powershell to step up your game.

Take what you know about managing SQL

And apply it to more tech; you’ll be without equal
Besides the familiar, disk memory CPU

There’s virtualization and networking too

In the future you might even manage a zoo,

Clustering elephants, and a penguin or two.

 
But it all hinges on answering things

Making servers reliable and performance tuning,

Monitoring, maintenance, backup strategies

All of these things you do with some ease.

And it doesn’t matter if the data is relational

Your strategies and skills will make you sensational

All it takes is some get up, and little bit of go

And you’re on your way, ready to know.
So start building a server, and try something new

SQL Server is free, Hadoop is too.

Tinker and learn in your spare time

Let your passions drive you and you’ll be just fine

DEVELOPERS

But maybe you’re a T-SQL kind of geek,

And it’s the languages of data that you want to speak

There’s lots of different directions for you

Too many to cover, but I’ll try a few
You could talk like a pirate

And learn to speak R

Statistics, and Science!

I’m sure you’ll go far

Additional queries for XML and JSON

Built in SQL Server, the latest edition.
You can learn HiveQL, if Big Data’s your thing

And interface with Tez, Spark, or just MapReducing

U_SQL is the language of the Azure Data Lake

A full-functioned dialect; what progress you could make!

There’s LINQ and C-Sharp, and so many more

Ways to write your code against the datastores

You could write streaming queries against Streaminsight

And answer questions against data in flight.
And lest I overlook, or lest I forget,

There’s products and processes still to mention yet.

SSIS, SSAS, In-memory design

SSRS, DataZen, and Power BI

All of these things, all of these tools

Are waiting to be used, are waiting for you.

You just start down the path, a direction you know

And soon you’ll be learning, your brain all aglow
And, oh, the places you’ll go.

And once you get there, wherever you go.

Don’t forget to write, and let somebody know.

Blog, tweet, present what you’ve mastered

And help someone else get there a little faster.

Feel free to leave a comment if you like, or follow me on Twitter: @codegumbo

2016-11-03 by Blogging is FUN! Conferences Professional Development SQL SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

One (Last) Trip to the Emerald City for #SQLPASS

On Monday, I’m flying out to the Emerald City (Seattle, WA) for the annual gathering of Microsoft database geeks known as the PASS Summit; as always, I’m excited to see friends and learn new stuff. However, this will probably be my last Summit. Over the last few years, my career trajectory has taken me away from database development and administration, and it’s time that I start investing in the things that now interest me (technology management, and operational culture). My goals for the next year are to attend conferences like the DevOps Enterprise Summit and the SRECon; I want and need to learn more about making IT efficient, and managing large-scale applications.

I’m not entirely disconnecting from the SQL community; I still plan to stay active and involved in our local chapter (AtlantaMDF), and part of the organizing committee for our SQL Saturdays. I still want to be a data-driven professional; I’m just not a data professional. That’s a subtle distinction, but it’s important to me. I’ll still sling code part-time and for hobbies, but I’m really trying to hone in on what I enjoy these days, and it’s process, procedures, management, and cultural change in IT (all IT, not just SQL Server).

So, this year will be different for me; instead of trying to network and schmooze and elevate my own SQL skillset, I’m going to hang out in sessions like “Overcoming a Culture of FearOps by Adopting DevOps” ,“Agile Development Fundamentals: Continuous Integration with SSDT“, and
“Fundamentals of Tech Team Leadership“. I may visit some courses on Cloud development and Analytics, but mostly, I want to enjoy spending some time with folks that I may not see again for a while.

I truly hope to see you there; I owe a lot to all of you, so I’m probably going to have a huge bar tab after buying rounds. Should be an exciting week.

2016-10-21 by Conferences PASS Professional Development SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

#DevDataBhm inaugural event

I’m presenting today at DevDataDay in Birmingham.  First time in a while for me, but I’m excited about the opportunity to go to sessions again and learn something (more on that in a bit).  I realize this blog has been a bit dusty for a while, but I’m gonna try to do better about that.

TOPIC:   Theory of Cloud Database Administration
SPEAKER: Stuart Ainsworth
ABSTRACT: The cloud is more than just a marketing term; it’s a model for designing scalable, distributed systems and assigning ownership to various components of those systems.  Data is a crucial part of that model, and there are lots of challenges ahead.  This presentation will explore the history of cloud computing, the current state of data in the cloud (using SQL Server 2016), and the impact on career choices for data people.

2016-08-20 by Conferences SQL 0

Reason 1234 for attending #SQLPass: The stretch

I’ve done a lousy job of encapsulating my thoughts about the Professional Association for SQL Server’s Summits for the last few years, but here’s a quick thought about one of the reasons I love this conference: the stretch.

What do I mean by stretch?  It’s the exposure to new ideas, new concepts, things I may never use.  It’s easy for technical people to get obsessed about our struggles of the day; we invest a lot of mental energy into figuring out problems that require immediate solutions, so we often pick educational sessions that fit into our current solution requirements (i.e. I’m having issues with ETL, so let me go pick up a few sessions on BIML).  That’s satisfying, but it’s not a stretch.

The stretch is thinking about issues and problems which I don’t see ahead.  It’s the creative detours, the opportunities to explore ideas that are just, well, fun to think about.  There’s two benefits to this; first, by allowing the mind to wander, it actually gives me a chance to have an inspirational moment about my current issues (the “aha” moment).  Second, by learning a little bit about something foreign to me, it gives me an advantage if the situation ever arises that I may need to know something about that topic (i.e. we don’t use Azure now, but we might in the future).

What’s your stretch at Summit?  I’m going to squeeze in a class on R, and maybe some USQL.

2015-10-29 by Conferences PASS SQL SQLServerPedia Syndication 1

#SQLPass #Summit15 Gear: My KarmaGo

Just a quick post as I’m packing up for the Professional Association for SQL Server Summit 2015; this year, I’m carrying a mobile hotspot with me: my Karma Go.  Just to state the obvious, yes, I am aware that the Washington State Conference Center has free wifi. I also know that wifi gets horribly overloaded in certain areas (like the keynote rooms) when thousands of device-carrying database people begin tweeting at once.  I also know that most people have hotspots on their phone, but I don’t (corporate phone; unlimited data, no sharing).

So why the Go?  Besides the fact that I want to stay connected with more than just my phone, I also like the fact that it offers a reward for sharing.  You see, Karma’s data plan consists of two parts:

  1. Pay-as-you-go data.  I filled up with a bunch of data (mostly to use when my home internet goes down), and I refill when I run out.  No monthly subscription,  so I’m not paying twice for unused Internet.
  2. Sharing earns data.  If a new user connects to my hotspot, they get 100MB of free data, and I get 100MB of data added to my account.  Easy-peasy (my SSID is “Free Karma By @codegumbo”) .

Checking the coverage maps (Karma runs on Sprint LTE), it looks like I’ll have great coverage.   Let’s see if I can stay connected through the keynote this year 🙂

2015-10-26 by Blogging is FUN! Conferences PASS Professional Development 2

Speaking at CodeStock 2014

So, this announcement’s way overdue; in about 2 weeks (July 11-12,2014), I’ll be presenting a couple of sessions at CodeStock 2014 in lovely Knoxville, TN.   I haven’t been to CodeStock since 2009, so it’ll be interesting to see how it’s grown.

The Elephant in the Room; A DBA’s Guide to Hadoop & Big Data by Stuart Ainsworth

DATE & TIME

Jul 11th at 9:55 AM until 11:05 AM

TRACK

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LOCATION

400b

RATING (0 VOTES)

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Speaker(s): Stuart Ainsworth
The term "Big Data" has risen to popularity in the last few years, and encompasses data platforms outside of the traditional RDBMS (like SQL Server). The purpose of this session is to introduce SQL Server DBA’s to Hadoop, and to promote understanding of how schema-less data can be collected and accessed in coordination with the traditional SQL models. We’ll cover the basic vocabulary of the Hadoop platform, Microsoft’s integration efforts, and demonstrate how to get started with "big data".

 

Managing a Technical Team: Lessons Learned by Stuart Ainsworth

DATE & TIME

Jul 12th at 11:10 AM until 12:20 PM

TRACK

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LOCATION

400b

RATING (0 VOTES)

0

Speaker(s): Stuart Ainsworth
I got promoted to management a couple of years ago, and despite what I previously believed, there were no fluffy pillows and bottles of champagne awaiting me. My team liked me, but they didn’t exactly stoop and bow when I entered the room. I’ve spent the last year relearning everything I thought I knew about management, and what it means to be a manager of a technical team. This session is intended for new managers, especially if you’ve come from a database (or other technical) background.

2014-06-26 by Conferences SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

Speaking at the #SQLPASS #Summit14

I know I’m a day late with this announcement, but I haven’t blogged in months, so what’s the rush?  I am very excited, however, about presenting a full session and a lightning talk at the PASS Summit in Seattle in November.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: A DBA’S GUIDE TO HADOOP AND BIG DATA

Speaker(s):  Stuart Ainsworth

Duration: 75 minutes

Track: BI Platform Architecture, Development & Administration

You’re a SQL Server DBA working at Contoso and your boss calls you out of your cubicle one day and tells you that the development team is interested in implementing a Hadoop-based solution to your customers. She wants you to help plan for the implementation and ongoing administration. Where do you begin?

This session will cover the foundations of Hadoop and how it fundamentally differs from the relational approach. The goal is to provide a map between your current skill set and "big data.” Although we’ll talk about basic techniques for querying data, the focus is on basic understanding how Hadoop works, how to plan for growth, and what you need to do to start maintaining a Hadoop cluster.

You won’t walk out of this session a Hadoop administrator, but you’ll understand what questions to ask and where to start looking for answers.

 

TEN-MINUTE KANBAN

Speaker(s):  Stuart Ainsworth

Duration: 10 minutes

Track: Professional Development

The goal of this Lightning Talk is to cover the basic principles of the Lean IT movement, and demonstrate how Kanban can be used by Administrators as well as developers. Speaker Stuart Ainsworth will cover the basic concepts of Kanban, where to begin, and how it works.

Kanban boards can be used to highlight bottlenecks in resource and task management, as well as identify priorities and communicate expectations. All this can be done by using some basic tools that can be purchased at an office supply store (or done for free online).

2014-06-26 by Conferences PASS SQL Server SQLServerPedia Syndication 0