That’s right I’m cashing in on the “50 Shades” franchise and twisting it to meet my own sordid needs to tell you about something that is critically important to every business. But why Shades of Brown if it is critical? Everybody knows that it’s red alerts that signify things are critical.
Well you may be right, but at some point in every data professionals career there will be a moment so severe that you will see other red alert moments as just a pesky minor inconvenience. At that point you’ll recognise that there is indeed a brown alert!
Subconsciously this probably came from one of my favourite shows as I was growing up, Red Dwarf. Many readers will no doubt argue that I have not finished growing up yet, the title of this series is probably a very good case in point. My argument however is that I have finished growing up, and instead have started to grow outwards instead.
The following is some dialogue from one of the episodes that probably helped shape this whole blog series. Leave a comment below if you can remember the title of the episode:
Holly 2: “Rude alert! Rude alert! An electrical fire has knocked out my voice recognition unicycle! Many Wurlitzers are missing from my database. Abandon shop! This is not a daffodil. Repeat: This is not a daffodil.”
Rimmer: “Well, thankfully Holly’s unaffected.”Kryten: “I suggest we go from blue alert to red alert, sir.”
Cat: “Forget the red. Let’s go all the way up to brown alert.”
Kryten: “But there’s no such thing as brown alert, sir.”
Cat: “You won’t be saying that in a minute. And don’t say I didn’t alert you.”
Right, enough of the introduction. Time to stop my slightly warped sense of humour (including English spelling) getting in the way of the crux of what the series is about.
Getting to the point
This series is all about problems you will face at some point in your career as a data professional specifically around the areas of Disaster Recovery and High Availability. As HA/DR is such an intricate topic please don’t expect this to be one of those one a day series.
I’m expecting this to take several months to complete, part of the reason for this is that there are a number of other subjects that you need to understand to put context behind the reason for doing and not doing certain things. I’ll be writing those other posts and interspersing them with this series.
Getting a head start
This post is just an anchor point for future posts. Please bookmark this page to make it easier for you to follow the entire series. I will be serialising a number of points that I make in my presentation “The Big Backup Theory”, so you can get a head start by attending the session when I present it at SQLBits XIV on Saturday.
For those of you attending SQLBits, stop by and say “Hi”. Unless of course I am on my way to the gents, that may cause a code brown alert in itself. For the rest of you I hope you will enjoy the rest of the series, I promise the verbiage becomes more professional from here on in.
