June 28, 2011 at 9:20 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Changing the Oil In Your Server
June 28, 2011 at 11:12 pm
You highlight a sad but true fact about technical managers.
Does your organization give you the time and tools to keep your systems operating?
I have found that for the most part this time has to be dovetailed onto revenue-generating projects. "Oil Changes" do not typically make it out of quarterly planning meetings.
Or at you still trying to sell them on the value of changing the oil?
Sometimes I think organizations hurtle through space with no real idea that they're ignoring basic preventive maintenance on their systems. The ones that get by despite themselves only get more arrogant over time...my all-time favorite is "It supports the business and we don't have the time for that."
There are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue is taught by the whole community.
--Plato
June 29, 2011 at 6:50 am
To the extent it doesn't require additional money, yes. The existing DBA only had time to keep up with things but was able to make sure reindexing was done properly and so on. When I joined we were able to revamp processes to make things smoother. We have a number of memory bound servers but haven't pushed to get memory added to those yet. We've been following up on enough other stuff we're not sure if users are unhappy with the performance on those boxes yet.
June 29, 2011 at 6:58 am
Every place I've worked, I've been given the tools I need to keep the databases running, and the time to do it.
Management hasn't understood the details of what's been needed, but they've understood that the whole reason they hired me was because I do know those details, and they don't want to be bothered with them. They just want me to "go do that voodoo that you do so well!"
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June 29, 2011 at 7:30 am
Rebuild an index? What's wrong with it? Why didn't you do it right the first time?
"Changing the oil" is a good analogy for rebuilding the indexes, because indexes are something that keeps the database running smoothly, but they also degrade over time as a result of writes and have to be replaced eventually. However, there are design decisions on the part of the DBA or developer that can cause indexes to fragment quickly and require frequent maintenance.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
June 29, 2011 at 7:59 am
This is an excellent analogy and I'm going to use it during my next push to get time and tools for various kinds of scheduled maintenance on our systems.
When I started in this business, I worked for a guy who was very big on scheduled maintenance for the hardware and software. I took it in stride because my background in trucking and railroading had already made scheduled maintenance just a part of doing business. Sadly, I've not worked for anybody like that since, even when scheduled maintenance is accepted as critical in other parts of the business.
June 29, 2011 at 8:19 am
I'm going to milk this analogy further.
Everything has a cost, so a proper metric is required. Fleet owners have known for years that the manufacturer's oil change recommendations were fairly conservative based on guesses of service conditions, so a lot of oil and labor was wasted. They have moved to evidence based maintenance using oil analysis, not mileage or calendar, determining when service is necessary.
The precautionary principle is seductive, but can be very expensive. We need to use proper tools rather than guesswork to determine when maintenance is needed.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
June 29, 2011 at 8:23 am
For my experience, I have found that schedulling the maintenance is not the problem. It is actually getting people to do it. My company requires approval from many different parties to do any sort of maintenance on the servers and we are required to hold meetings and such and we can get a date but it always gets pushed back to months at a time...
June 29, 2011 at 9:13 am
Good article and points well taken. I just could not resist:
Hopefully everyone reading this realizes that servers don't actually have oil,
Funny you should mention this. Not long ago I saw a demonstration of an oil cooled server. It was very overclocked and they did this as a more effective way than air cooling. The high contact ratio gave superior cooling. They used vegetable oil - which degraded rapidly over time. Even with the recycling costs and having to de-gunk things about once a year it looks to be cost effective.
The point is that whatever strange concept you might have there is bound to be somebody even stranger that will try it, and likely there is a group of strange folks who will make the damn thing work. :w00t:
To the Brits FAB is Thunderbirds, to the Americans it's Fuel Air Bomb.
ATBCharles Kincaid
June 29, 2011 at 9:17 am
Charles Kincaid (6/29/2011)
... Not long ago I saw a demonstration of an oil cooled server. It was very overclocked and they did this as a more effective way than air cooling. The high contact ratio gave superior cooling. They used vegetable oil - which degraded rapidly over time. .
Which brings the question why vegetable oil??? There are excellent cooling oils available (such as used to cool x-ray tubes) that will last the lifetime of the device. I wonder it this is an example of 'greenwashing'.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
June 29, 2011 at 9:26 am
jay holovacs (6/29/2011)
Charles Kincaid (6/29/2011)
... Not long ago I saw a demonstration of an oil cooled server. It was very overclocked and they did this as a more effective way than air cooling. The high contact ratio gave superior cooling. They used vegetable oil - which degraded rapidly over time. .Which brings the question why vegetable oil??? There are excellent cooling oils available (such as used to cool x-ray tubes) that will last the lifetime of the device. I wonder it this is an example of 'greenwashing'.
The one I saw was using a transparent mineral oil. It was a non-conductive oil, so they just built a sealed Plexiglas (Lexan) case, poured the oil in and used a pump to circulate the oil through a small radiator (looked like an aftermarket automatic transmission cooler). To top it all off, they also had a few aquarium bubblers in there 🙂
June 29, 2011 at 9:56 am
Decades ago, mainframe computers were very mechanical and actually did use oil and hydraulic cooling systems for the disk storage systems. They even experimented with steering wheel input devices.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/maisonbisson/1634408/
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
June 29, 2011 at 10:26 am
I have used the same analogy with my customers. All to often they want the thing to run 24/7/365. They aren't willing to accept the cost of doing such a thing. So i lay it all out there...
Another analogy I have used with regard to indexing and SQL Server storage is legal pads. You always leave a few blank lines at the bottom... and when you need to you cut a page in half, rewrite half onto a new one and go forward. After a while it is important to rewrite the entire pad. Simple enough even for Executives 🙂
June 29, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Oil is cheaper than engines:hehe:
Cleaning out your trunk/boot will save you fuel because you aren't lugging a lot of dead weight around. Get those purge/archive strategies defined.
Keep it clean and tidy and it becomes obvious if you have a leak.:cool:
July 4, 2011 at 2:29 pm
i <3 the analogy...in fact posted an article with the same idea and still plan to expand it into a series
your article was not only a good read but a good reminder, so thank you on both accounts
sorry that this comes off as a shameless plug, but any feedback would be very appreciated...
http://www.sqlmashup.com/is-your-database-maintenance-required-light-o
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