Awards program honors the hard work that makes other people’s lives easier

CAMBRIDGE, UK, May 25, 2011 – "If you've ever woken up at night wondering what your servers are doing, you might be an exceptional DBA," says Brent Ozar, a new judge for The Exceptional DBA of 2011 Awards, which open today for nominations at www.exceptionaldba.com.

In its fourth year, The Exceptional DBA Awards, hosted by SQL Server Central and sponsored by Red Gate Software, provide a public forum for celebrating the hard work that DBAs put into their jobs to make other people's lives easier.

The awards are open to all those currently employed as a SQL Server database administrator.

Five finalists will be chosen by a panel of expert judges. In a final vote, the winner will be selected by the SQL Server Central community and the judges.

The Exceptional DBA of the Year receives full conference registration for the 2011 PASS Summit in Seattle, four nights' hotel accommodation, $300 towards travel expenses, and a trophy to keep. The winner and the finalists receive a copy of Red Gate's SQL DBA Bundle with 36 months of support and upgrades. The finalists will also be awarded with certificates of recognition.

You just might be exceptional

This year's awards program aims at helping DBAs realize how exceptional they might be, with guidance on preparing the nomination form and a free poster offering tips from the award judges.

It doesn't take a phenomenal achievement to make an exceptional DBA, according to Ozar, a Microsoft Certified Master and MVP who specializes in performance tuning, virtualization and SAN Storage. The deciding factor often comes down to dedication.

"There are exceptional DBAs everywhere who know their servers have to be bulletproof-reliable around the clock. They put extra time into engineering their servers to work right every single time. They don’t wonder whether their backups can be restored – they know because they take the time to test. It's these extra steps that make them exceptional."

Ozar joins judges Steve Jones, editor of SQL Server Central, Brad McGehee, SQL Server MVP and author of the book How to be an Exceptional DBA, and Rodney Landrum, author of several SQL Server books and regular contributor to SQL Server magazine and simple-talk.com.

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Media contact: Bob Cramblitt, Cramblitt & Company

info@cramco.com; 919-481-4599