April 14, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Musène Jonas (4/14/2009)
I am so clear, but these check have to be made every week if i do not want to loss many data
Sorry, I don't understand.
Index maintenance has nothing to do with data loss.
Backups need to be made to prevent data loss, and if your business allows the loss of a full week's data I'm surprised.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
April 14, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Musène Jonas (4/14/2009)
these check have to be made every week if i do not want to loss many data
Yes, both for DR plan and also to safe guard your databases. You would have to consider this maintenance plan. Now you can either add or delete some steps if you dont need them, thats why i said it depends on your business model.
thanks,
April 14, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Gail and Krishna are right. It depends on your business needs.
You need to be aware of natural windows where down time or slowness will have minimal impact to the business. So how much time is available?
Maintenance need to be often enough to ensure performance stays good.
And backup strategy needs to be done so you can restore with minimal downtime and risk to the business.
So the answers you get depend on how you answer their questions.
For example - many inserts. A thousand could be many to one person, while another may think nothing of a million inserts.
A 2GB database may seem large to some, while others may not think it's large until you are close to a TB or more.
The more complete you are with your descriptions, the more likely you can generate some feedback to help you.
Or at least some links to some other articles that might help you with some of the pieces.
I don't do the db maintenance - I work on our data warehouse and applications. But I did let the person who handles this work know
what type of backups we needed, and what times would work for us with our load and rebuild as well as our user base.
So you also may have others in your business that can help you with some of this.
Greg E
April 14, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Let me explain you the real situation. There's someone that have a SQL Server 2000 database and Dynamics has Software and he's the one that backed up his database while he's not a DBA. I told him that he needs a DBA to take care of the DB. In this way i want to proove him with the opinions of other specialists the necesity of a DBA. I know everything to do I'm SQL Server 2005 Certified
April 14, 2009 at 2:11 pm
If you'd said that in the first post it would have saved a lot of wasted time.
Now, knowing that we're helping you prove to someone that he can't do the work himself, what do you want from us?
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
April 14, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Why the need to 'prove' anything?
Can you just teach them what they need to do?
And explain the 'why' along the way?
I help my coworkers all the time - not everyone knows everything.
You never know when they can return the favor.
Greg E
April 14, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I need you to explain him through me the necesity to have a DBA.
Please be hard, if you can send to me the explaination via e-mail i would welcome. I want that he realize the necesity through other specialists
e-mail : katijon22@yahoo.fr
April 14, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Musène Jonas (4/14/2009)
I need you to explain him through me the necesity to have a DBA.Please be hard, if you can send to me the explaination via e-mail i would welcome. I want that he realize the necesity through other specialists
e-mail : katijon22@yahoo.fr
Just show him this thread, that would be suffice.
April 14, 2009 at 2:33 pm
There are lots and lots of 'involuntary' DBAs who started out knowing nothing and managed. I'd much rather help him learn how to manage the server (if he's interested) than tell him that he's incapable of managing.
If he's not interested in learning to manage the server and thinks that it will manage itself, that's a different story.
Why don't you ask him to sign up here and we can have this 'conversation' directly.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
April 14, 2009 at 2:35 pm
And if hes still not sure, he can post here with any concerns he has and we would be glad to help your friend out 🙂
April 14, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I think that if you help them with some of this, especially if you explain your thought process of how and why you would choose to do something a certain way, it would be better than us trying to give advice on something where we only know a very little of the situation.
Show them your skills.
Simply to say that a DBA has a well rounded background, and looks at several factors before deciding how to apply that knowledge to provide the correct solution for the situation at hand might be enough.
If I was to be cruel, I'd ask if they knew about the 3 envelopes.....
but that would do nothing to help them learn.
Greg E
April 14, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Thanks, he's just a Commercial Director, may be he's afraid to spend
April 14, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Musène Jonas (4/14/2009)
Thanks, he's just a Commercial Director, may be he's afraid to spend
I would say it's a DBA's primary responsibility to show someone how a poor maintenance of their databases might lead to a disaster like that of Journalspace. Check out this blog:
http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/01/why-back-up-ask-journalspace/
April 14, 2009 at 2:49 pm
[font="Verdana"]I'm going to take a little time and go back to some basics here.
The people who are using the database you are looking after have certain expectations as to what is okay in terms of their data. So for example, they may be okay about losing up to a day's work ("oh, we can redo that if we need to") or they may only be okay about losing an hour's work.
Your backups are what you use to ensure you can meet their requirements for preventing any potential loss of data. So if, for example, they are okay with losing up to a day of data, then a daily backup should be adequate. If they want to keep every hour, then you would need to add hourly database log backups. So depending on what the "business requirements" are around data loss depends on what you decide in terms of a "backup strategy."
So what do you do? You talk to the people in the business about what is acceptable. You then write than down as an agreement. This is known as a "service level agreement" (or SLA). Based on what is in that SLA, we can then make recommendations on what you need to do.
By the way, SLAs generally cover availability, performance and disaster recovery as well. So here's a quick intro for those:
Availability: how often the server is available to be used. In your case it sounds like extended business hours. That means you need to choose times for your backup and maintenance outside of those hours. You also have to do things like monitor the amount of space being used to ensure the databases don't grow too big and stop.
Performance: how well the server is running. This is a really complicated subject, but suffice to say this is why you run your index maintenance.
Disaster Recovery: okay, the business can handle losing some data. But how long can it handle not having a server if the server dies? Again, a complicated subject, but you should have some idea of what's necessary to do to ensure that you can be up and running again within a good time frame. By the way, this overlaps with a more general "business assurance" topic -- but that's a far broader subject, but you may have heard of that.
So go back to your business people and get those kinds of questions answered. Then you can come back to us and we can make recommendations on what you need to do to meet the requirements.
Hopefully that makes sense! 😀
Final recommendation: there are some great books on this stuff. I think there are even some available free to download from this site. You might want to spend some time reading up on what a DBA (Database Administrator) is expected to be able to do.
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April 14, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I tend to agree with Bruce. You need to spend time explaining the implications of your needs and actions to business people. Not in technical terms, but in terms of their work delays or losses. Let them determine what cost they are willing to pay to meet certain levels of service.
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