December 14, 2010 at 9:18 am
I don't have an iPad. I am always looking for ways to be more productive. I need tools. Tools do things; not everything, but the right tool can fix some things better than others. I am not trying to predict the stock market over breakfast. I usually exchange email, surf the web, read, listen to music and watch videos.
I'm a DBA. That said, my administration duties require that I work on maintaining the SQL servers and keep them running. I want a device to just "do" and I want it to be mobile. The days of a stack of computer equipment to impress the geek squad are long gone. I don't have to make things complicated just for the sake of complexity or to confuse the boss. Provide a tool that works better for given tasks where I want it, and I need it. If I don't have to cart along a bag or box of peripherals on rollers, all the better.
I work in healthcare. Daily, I need to check the SQL servers at the hospital datacenters. Features of an iPad that are enticing are a 10 hour battery life, large viewing screen, and access to a plethora of applications like Life Topix. Using an iPad would increase my focus and provide immediate access. Let me give the iPad a chance to build my own SQL-wiki and design architecture while monitoring to provide corrective action when needed.
Thanks...maybe an "Apple" a day WILL keep the doctor away!
December 14, 2010 at 9:19 am
I think the real value in using a mobile monitoring device like the iPad is the fact you can display your results on other displays. You can use the new AirPlay feature on Apple TV to wirelessly show your graph/report/presentation on a larger HDTV. It's this collaboration feature that makes it most valuable. When you can show your entire team and the teams around you what's happening at any time in any place, that's invaluable to maintaining uptime of a business.
I say this because we have HDTV's scattered around our office complex. I manage a small team of DBA's who are responsible for both operations and helping with development projects so it's common for us to be scattered around the office throughout the day. Ideally if I could outfit my entire team with Ipads (I know, beyond the scope of this contest, but applicable) and connect Apple TV boxes to the HDTV's, we could be alerted graphically on the iPad instead of via text on a tiny smartphone. Whoever is free at that moment can react and when everyone comes to huddle, we could display it wirelessly on the big screen to show everyone the problem.
If the issue is programatic undoubtedly someone will ask when did the issue first started showing signs. At that point we could pull up historic graphs/reports on the iPad and again stream it to the big plasma on the wall so everyone can see when the issue first began. It would reduce troubleshooting time by a signifcant percentage since there are so many security hurdles today on our desktops/laptops that can slow you down. An internet device like the iPad can free you from the shackles of SOX/PCI so mobile monitoring can happen in real-time.
The iPad devices can also be used for forecasting server performance/needs. This would have a significant impact on our buying cycles. By using a mobile monitoring device one could always be prepared to show historical trends at a moment's notice. For those project meetings when you're trying to make a case and steer a project in a certain direction you can instantly show them proof of your case by pulling up performance reports on the iPad then wirelessly projecting that onto the plasma screens in the meeting room. I think it would reduce the confusion in project meetings by having readily available data at everyone's fingertips.
December 14, 2010 at 10:04 am
I'm the only DBA type person for my company.
That means I support 3 internal SQL Servers with a total of 60 databases running on them that keep the company running, and at the same time I assist our data center team where the software we lease to our customers runs. We've got at least 20 SQL instances (they bring up more all the time) with between 200 and 2000 databases running on them.
Several weekends a month, I'm involved with helping to manage a convention that donates the profits to a local Children's hospital. Invariably, either during the convention or during one of the various planning meetings something goes wrong in either the internal production environment or the data center. Sometimes I can solve the problem via my Android phone (which I love), but sometimes I need to get in there.
This usually involves me dragging out the laptop and finding a spot to plug it in and get to work. Finding this space and power takes time which I can't devote to the convention and am not yet able to devote to work.
Having an Ipad that would let me get in there would reduce the time it takes for me to get in there and fix whatever the situation is, and would allow me to give more time back to the convention planning team, while still servicing my company's needs.
While on vacation it would also simplify my life, no need to pack up the big heavy laptop at all, just bring the Ipad get in there and do what's necessary when I get that call that we all get while on vacation.
December 14, 2010 at 10:37 am
Being chained to my desk
Makes my work not the best
I can’t really enjoy my lunch
When I get paged saying my server is on the verge of a dump
A happy employee I’m not when I’m ready to go camping on our family vacation
And the boss comes over and says you need to monitor for errors from the new application
With an iPad in hand I could change this scenario
I can restore a DB while barbequing on my patio
The boss would let me go to training without worrying about coverage
I can resolve the problems without suffering an outage
My productivity would go up with my new found skills
And my bosses stress would go down so he wouldn’t need to update his will
December 14, 2010 at 10:38 am
Right now I have a rather old-standard cell phone (no iPhone, pretty much all I can do is make and receive phone calls 🙂 ) and a laptop. That's the standard equipment for folks like me in our company (a group of 6, 4 are working in shifts and two of us standard office time doing projects/optimization).
Our duty: being available (almost) 24/7 to keep the DB's (and some application) up and running. There is a separate hardware group taking care of the server.
We're not officially "On Call", so we're not really being compensated for being available "just in case". Therefore, we don't have the laptop with us at any given time and we share the weekends duty.
An iPad would reduce the time from receiving a call until I'm online due to the much more efficient startup sequence (the laptop takes almost 10min to start until every fancy stuff some folks required to have installed is loaded). Much more important: I wouldn't have to worry about getting a LAN connection to access the servers via VPN (WLAN is disabled on the laptops we're using due to possible interference/vulnerability when used in our facility - so "they" say at least). An iPad would also eliminate the time to get connected to the internet and dial into our system using VPN. I might not even need the phone call since I'm already alerted by the iPad I carried with me to my family picknick.
Overall an iPad would significantly reduce the time between receiving an incident (either by phone or by SQL Monitor itself) and the first analysis by providing much more flexiblity for myself (e.g. where to go) and being more convenient at the same time (compared to the laptop less weight, smaller in size and the like).
Another benefit would be the way we deal with the support after a system change (e.g. patch installation). We have to be on site during patch installation and the like and we're constantly afraid driving home after the standard checks since we can't observe our systems while we're on the road. During major changes therefore we have a 2nd person as a backup involved just because of the systems being not observed for that short period of time (for me it's 20min couch-to-desk).
An iPad could help to fill that gap. And if we can monitor the system all the time we don't need a 2nd person. This would reduce the "on call" time for each of us allowing us to spend more time "disconnected".
December 14, 2010 at 11:13 am
Steve-
If I had an iPad, the changes in my work would be obvious.
Currently, I don't have an iPad. I also don't carry a smart phone or own a laptop. It's mainly for financial reasons. My company won't provide them and I have a hard time justifying the expense on my own.
Having an iPad available would obviously change all that.
Your picture of sitting on a horse got me thinking of the somewhat remote areas that I find myself in. Eighteen months ago I received a call while I was fishing during the walleye opener on Lake Mille Lacs. I had to talk other people through some changes in order to fix a semi-emergency. The changes took several calls, getting other people on the line, seeing who was available, etc. If I could have connected myself, it would have been a quick fix. It didn't stop me from catching the largest walleye of my life though!
Scott Arendt
December 14, 2010 at 11:43 am
Hi Steve,
I'm a bit skeptical about whether an iPad would be useful in monitoring our SQL Servers remotely. It would certainly be interesting to try. Plus, I would LOVE to be able to install licensed copies of SQL Monitor and have all of those drool-worthy features! ding-ding...
December 14, 2010 at 12:18 pm
I have had an iPhone for a little over a year and it is amazing how much more responsive I can be. While it may sound like this is a high-tech leash or yet another tool pulling me away from non-work life it has actually helped me keep a foot in the real world. As most professionals in our line of work the separation of personal and work life is usually blurry at best and often a hard balance to maintain. With my main job and clients on the side I often get emails while driving my kids to school or Tae Kwon Do practice. Normally these emails would wait until I was at a computer, which would sometimes cause anxiety or require me to schedule outside time that I could dedicate with a laptop. Now, with my iPhone, I can shoot off quick answers that solve the question 90% of the time. The “Getting Things Done” method recommends that you handle any task right away that takes less than two minutes. The problem is when these tasks pile up while you are off the network and they turn into an hour of “work” at home after 9pm; time I would much rather be enjoying with my wife while watching a movie.
I also have both the Citrix and Log Me In apps on my phone and, in those few cases where I need to log in, this has been a life saver as well. Once, while I was waiting the 10 minutes for my son’s Tae Kwon Do class to end, I got a call that a client’s server was down. Turned out that only a service needed to be restarted, which I handled in about 5 minutes, and got them up and running without resorting to bouncing the entire server. All this occurred in less than 5 minutes and I happily watched the rest of my son’s practice. In the past, I would have gotten the call, troubleshot it over the phone for several minutes talking non-technical staff through different scenarios and finally resorting to them powering down and up the server. Most likely my son would have been waiting by my side hearing all of this instead of heading to the car telling me about his new skill he just learned.
For my personal clients I also have the Zendesk and Freshbooks app allowing me to update a support ticket and send out an invoice if necessary.
Now, while all this is great, the screen on the iPhone just isn’t ideal. Handling servers is possible but a bit tedious, especially when we are dealing with more than restarting services. When it gets to complex configurations pinching and zooming around a screen is a big loss in time. Plus, viewing monitoring reports or websites on a small screen just isn’t conducive.
There are also times where you do have 10 minutes between locations that you have time to get some work done or are attempting to show a colleague the latest changes you made to their pet project. The small size of the iPhone just doesn’t lend well to a daily productive work tool. Plus, while laptops are the tool of choice for today’s mobile executives, more and more of my colleagues are switching to netbooks because they are smaller, easier to throw into a satchel or put on the conference table and easy to give presentations from.
That’s where an iPad comes in. Having a light-weight tool that can hold its own in a meeting, remote desktop into any of our machines allowing for full performance and presentation of our latest projects, up to the minute monitoring of our servers and a great high-level view of my email, calendar and tasks would be invaluable.
In this case the iPad would be a tool to help balance my ever increasing demand on instant answers in any of my work locations as well as a way to handle the impromptu “2-minute” tasks that occur in and out of my home life, allowing me to get back to my family more often and with less worry that a client is shopping for another consultant because I’m too out of touch.
Any tool that allows me to be fully committed as a dad and a husband is a tool that I can get excited about!
December 14, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Great topic! I like the idea of a mobile device that is smaller and more portable than a laptop, but larger than a mobile phone to use for quick dashboard performance monitoring -- during meetings, traveling for work or just being at home and needing to check on a server issue quickly and efficiently is a tangible value. I manage 20+ SQL Servers and a couple of Oracle servers as well and I could make use of the iPad and SQL Monitor to see, at-a-glance that the servers I manage are performing as they should for the user experience. I'm always trying new tools and new ways to get more done with less from wherever I may be since I really don't have set hours (our shop is 24/7 with only a small (2.5 staff) DBA staff). We have to build most of our database monitoring tools since our budgets are so tight right now and being in the public sector makes it that much more dynamic and challenging. I'm curious if these iPads also have 3G capabilities. That would extend the boundaries of where and when the DBA work is done, as well. This wouldn't be the only tool, but a great tool to bring a database shop more value and efficiency.
December 14, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Wow an iPad to use for work. What will you think of next? Having an iPad could be a huge benefit to me. As a DBA I go oncall and have to be able to respond within 15 minutes to the page and within another 15 minutes start taking care of the issue. So I have a less than 30 minute tether to the nearest wifi connection. I can't always count on a wifi connection to help out either. Some block the use of secure VPN which I am required to use. When I am taking college classes I have to skip any where I'm on call as the school blocks secure VPN. With the iPad, I could connect using 3G, which would 'untether' me. It would even allow me to respond while enjoying a park, the zoo, or other places.
I might be able to get permission to put SQL Monitor on a DEV server, but I won't hold my breathe. Instead I'll imagine myself being able to work 'untethered' for once.
Steve, whether I win or not thanks for letting me dream.
-SQLBill
December 14, 2010 at 2:32 pm
I can work remotely just fine with a laptop when I have it with me. I'd just like something more portable, since my hobby is inline skating and I can be a long distance from my laptop when I'm called by work. Now if they just made the thing crash-proof, I'd be covered.
(I hope to live until the day when you can do this with a smart phone, but I may be too old to be able to read the screen.)
December 14, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Hi Steve,
You noted in the editorial how a number of people were using their iPad at SQL Connections this year. My reason is really the same, the iPad is more convenient in a remote environment. Working for a very small company (4 people) every person has to be putting in 110% if we are going to make the company succeed and new devices like the iPad and soon the various Android models are going to really help out people like us to stay connected to our customers no matter where they are located, nor where we happen to be. Having full RDP connectivity back to my office and thus full access to everything is required. It is true that my laptop can do this for me, but it is also true that an iPad can do it as well, takes less space and typically has a better battery life. Battery life alone makes the iPad such a big winner to me. Traveling from Missouri to Kansas to see a client typically means balancing my laptop and tethered cell phone on my lap simple convenience wins there. Then of course there is the family vacation, whether it is going back to Japan for a visit to in-laws or taking them to some destination in the U.S., trying to do work on a laptop is unwieldy compared to using a tablet device. Get the email push that something is down? bring out the laptop and all the attachments or bring out the iPad? We all know which you prefer!
December 14, 2010 at 4:48 pm
How could I do my job better, a little quicker, or in a new way with a new light weight tablet device?
I was given a B&N Nook as a gift and have found a way to replace all of my Microsoft books/manuals with just this simple device. I learn best by reading. Keeping my manuals and print outs from helpful websites close to my fingertips helps when I am scratching my head over some issue that I have read about before (I don’t just manage our databases, but also am a full systems administrator and assist with help desk). Before the advent of tablets, you could open up the PDF version or the website on a laptop and read it off the screen (for some reason it will not sink in properly when I do this) or transfer it to your phone and read it there a few sentences at a time (sorry, I have not done this since I was reading “See Dick. See Dick run.”). So I have found this electronic medium very unwieldy unless I have printed it out and then mentally digested it properly, but this means a lot of large manuals and a lot of paper printout all over my desk. With the Nook I have found it solves my issue very well, but still has limitations. The Nook is an E-Reader, nothing else. So, yes, I am reducing my bookshelf size to a virtual library by purchasing or transforming the help files into PDF files (by printing to CutePDF) and then side loading them onto the Nook. This means I am moving the books from my desk and using the Nook to access the same information, but because the Nook (non-color) is not very good at web browsing, I still need to print out pages from websites where I have found information, again so I have it at my fingertips when the need for that information arises again. So I still have the volumes of printouts sitting at my desk that I have to rifle through during my day. Yes, I could print them out to PDF and side load them onto the Nook, but takes more effort than just having the ability to browse to the information I need and then read it directly off the device. So in the end I have found that reduction of the paper sitting at my desk would assist in my daily work and make it easier to find what I need.
Having other tools available on a quick start device would also be helpful. Then if an issue arises I can be on top of it pretty quick instead of going to my laptop, turning it on, waiting for the login, waiting for all of the startup programs to start (even with Win 7), turning on the wireless, log into the VPN, connect to the server, and then fix the issue.
There are my two bits... I think I saw Spot barking at Jane as she was running by...
December 14, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Ok, so I’ve never posted before, but I read a lot of posts and forums, so this is new to me. I have the wonderfully diverse job of DBA for operational and BI SQL Servers and I have just been added to the development team of a new enterprise data warehouse project; however I am concerned that I can’t effectively manage both roles. Also, my boss wants me to network and connect with other SQL Server experts more often.
How much easier would both those tasks be with an iPad?
At the moment I switch between development tasks and e-mails/management studio to ensure that everything on the SQL Servers are running properly, being a not for profit/non government charity organisation I don’t have any budget to buy tools like SQL Monitor, so having both a tool to display the status of the servers and a separate device to view that status would save me considerable time each day. My other reasons are the same as everyone else, an iPad would mean that I could read and reply to posts whilst travelling to and from work, monitor servers whilst in meetings and be able to work remotely. An iPad would greatly increase my synergy and effectiveness at work.
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December 14, 2010 at 9:26 pm
How would I create new synergies with the ipad resulting in doing my job better and quicker?
I don't know if this qualifies, but I have an ipod touch I just won in a contest last year. I love that little piece of technology as it is awesome to surf the web when I don't want to power up my laptop, it's awesome to play a quick simple game that doesn't require a lot of brainpower, and it also allows me to check emails/keep in touch with family. I can only imagine an iPad would allow me to do all of these things, while also allowing me to have the ability to monitor my SQL servers.
My company sponsored blackberry alerts me fairly often because with 200+ servers I monitor, I'm bound to have something wrong on at least 1 server most every day at least once a day and usually multiple times per day. Usually, when I receive the alert to my blackberry, I have information of what happened, but not information of why it happened. This is when I have to get my laptop out, login, connect to the vpn, open outlook, then wait for SSMS load. This is at least a 10-15 minute exercise. With the iPad, I could check my databases by using the Red Gate application and know the why the event happened, and then be able to deduce if this is something I need to fix? Or is this just an anomaly, a network blip, or something that is nothing now but is about to be red-hot in a matter of minutes?
So, in short, I believe the iPad would allow me to be more productive in the off hours, because I wouldn't be able to use my iPad much at work, unless I'm in a meeting, but I usually take my laptop to meetings.
Anyway, I'd love to have one not just for play/entertainment but also to help make my life easier by removing those 15-20 minute spaces of wasted time trying to figure out what exactly is causing me to miss important family time with my wife, daughter, and son.
Thanks for your time.
Holland G Humphrey
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