Veteran DBA. HomeLab tinkerer. IT trend skeptic. Honest takes on real problems since 1999.https://sqlmac.com/https://sqlmac.com/blog/2018-year-end/https://sqlmac.com/blog/2018-year-end/2018 was a tough personal year — Alzheimer's, a cancer recurrence, a family move, and a winter that wouldn't quit. A Thanksgiving Day reflection.Thu, 22 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/2020-hot-mess/https://sqlmac.com/blog/2020-hot-mess/A 2020 year-in-review written in January 2021. WFH without structure, losing a close friend, PASS shutting down, and a few wins buried under the wreckage.Fri, 22 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/blogging-perspective/https://sqlmac.com/blog/blogging-perspective/After years of moving the blog around without writing, a recalibration: this blog exists for me, not an audience. An honest take on what that actually means.Thu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/cloud-computing/https://sqlmac.com/blog/cloud-computing/Everyone's laughed at the 'it's just someone else's computer' meme. But cloud resilience is a real question — and the answer isn't to avoid the cloud.Wed, 13 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/cyncial/https://sqlmac.com/blog/cyncial/By late 2021, a combination of COVID fatigue, relocation stress, and behind-the-scenes DBA work going unnoticed had pushed the cynicism to uncomfortable levels. A year-end vent.Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/database-administration/https://sqlmac.com/blog/database-administration/People have been predicting the death of the DBA for years. Steve Jones recently wrote about it — but his point was about the title, not the job. Here's what's actually changing.Thu, 12 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/end-of-2021/https://sqlmac.com/blog/end-of-2021/2021 was relentlessly busy — training a new DBA, a summer buried in projects, and a spontaneous trip to Yellowstone that made me realize how overworked I'd become.Wed, 24 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/failover-instance/https://sqlmac.com/blog/failover-instance/Microsoft rebranded traditional SQL clustering as 'AlwaysOn FCI' and it created genuine confusion. Here's what each technology actually does and when to use which.Mon, 12 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/groupby-ssms-shortcuts/https://sqlmac.com/blog/groupby-ssms-shortcuts/Brent Ozar's Group By SSMS shortcuts session is free and mind-expanding. Here are the shortcuts that stuck with me and why they matter for daily DBA work.Wed, 23 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/get-along/https://sqlmac.com/blog/get-along/A developer dismissed a legitimate performance concern and it stuck with me. Here's what the DBA/developer tension is really about and how to navigate it without the drama.Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/homelab-journey/https://sqlmac.com/blog/homelab-journey/My HomeLab started as a retired desktop running Proxmox. Then I got three free servers from a datacenter teardown. Then my inner monologue told me to rebuild everything with IaC in two weeks. It did not go as planned.Sat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/keeping-up-with-training/https://sqlmac.com/blog/keeping-up-with-training/Keeping up with SQL, DevOps, Python, and C# while working full time is a real juggling act. Here's how I think about it without losing my mind.Tue, 23 May 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/microsoft-linux/https://sqlmac.com/blog/microsoft-linux/In 2017, Microsoft cozying up to Linux seemed like a punchline. SQL Server on Linux, WSL, Azure running Linux servers — here's how that looked from the DBA seat.Wed, 26 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/mistakes-happen/https://sqlmac.com/blog/mistakes-happen/I let my ego run a SCRUM call sideways. Here's what I did about it and why owning mistakes quickly is better for everyone — including yourself.Fri, 15 May 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/moving-north/https://sqlmac.com/blog/moving-north/Wrapping up three years in Denver and heading to northern Wisconsin for a new role. The nostalgia is real, but so is the excitement.Wed, 11 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/new-decade/https://sqlmac.com/blog/new-decade/Written in January 2020, this was a prediction piece about where containerization, IaC, and DevOps were headed. Five years later, most of it landed.Fri, 17 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/office-conditions/https://sqlmac.com/blog/office-conditions/Two decades of cubicles, fluorescent lighting, and thermostat wars — a candid look at why open offices are failing workers and what needs to change.Thu, 19 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/pass-2024-day1/https://sqlmac.com/blog/pass-2024-day1/Day 1 of PASS Summit 2024 — a full-day query optimization precon with Brent Ozar covering SQL Server 2019/2022 features, ORM handling, and parameter sniffing.Mon, 04 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/pass-2024-day2/https://sqlmac.com/blog/pass-2024-day2/Day 2 of PASS Summit 2024 was a Postgres fundamentals precon for SQL Server folks, taught by Grant Fritchey and Ryan Booz. Here's what stood out.Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/pass-2024/https://sqlmac.com/blog/pass-2024/Heading to PASS Data Summit 2024 for the second time — this year with a plan for networking, pacing, and not burning out as an introvert.Wed, 30 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/postgres-failovers/https://sqlmac.com/blog/postgres-failovers/A SQL Server DBA's first encounter with Postgres failover — the access maze, the manual promotion process, and how it compares to SQL Server Availability Groups.Thu, 24 May 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/procedure-vs-technique/https://sqlmac.com/blog/procedure-vs-technique/A military aviator's distinction between procedure and technique maps surprisingly well onto IT documentation. One is a standard you follow; the other is how you get there. You need both — but in the right balance.Tue, 21 Feb 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/relationships/https://sqlmac.com/blog/relationships/Trust is the currency of being a great IT professional. Here's how to build it, what destroys it fast, and how to recover when you've lost it.Wed, 29 Jun 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/second-blog-post/https://sqlmac.com/blog/second-blog-post/A 2016 career retrospective and a look at what I want to accomplish in 2017 — SQL development, PowerShell, ITIL, community involvement, and the certification question.Tue, 07 Feb 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/sql-sat-584/https://sqlmac.com/blog/sql-sat-584/Session recaps from SQL Saturday 584 in Colorado Springs — stats, transaction logs, DevOps for DBAs, data virtualization, and VLF management. Plus: I won SQL Toolbelt.Sun, 26 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/sql-sat-denver-673/https://sqlmac.com/blog/sql-sat-denver-673/Session recaps from SQL Saturday 673 in Denver — personal branding, NoSQL, knowledge sharing, Extended Events, and data constraints. Plus: no duck from Idera.Wed, 20 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/technical-debt/https://sqlmac.com/blog/technical-debt/Technical debt is the compounding interest on every shortcut you've ever taken. It's 2020 — the check is coming due. Here's what it looks like in a SQL Server environment and how to start paying it down.Tue, 11 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/sqlsat-913-minn/https://sqlmac.com/blog/sqlsat-913-minn/My first SQL Saturday in Minnesota — a precon day with Monica Rathbun on SQL Server performance tuning, followed by a full day of DevOps and leadership sessions despite snow squalls in October.Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/corruption/https://sqlmac.com/blog/corruption/When storage goes sideways and you need to run DBCC checks across a lot of databases fast, here's a cursor-based script that targets databases under a size threshold.Sun, 16 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/disable-login-kill-spids/https://sqlmac.com/blog/disable-login-kill-spids/When reporting logins block nightly jobs and you've exhausted the polite options, here's a stored procedure approach: disable the login and kill the sessions.Tue, 25 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/dbatools/https://sqlmac.com/blog/dbatools/I held off on dbatools longer than I should have. Then I had to migrate 70 databases to a new AG and it sold me in an afternoon.Fri, 20 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/datetime/https://sqlmac.com/blog/datetime/DateTime supports integer arithmetic because of how it's stored internally. DateTime2 does not. Here's why, and what to use instead.Fri, 20 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/replication-error/https://sqlmac.com/blog/replication-error/Spent two days chasing a misleading SQL replication error. The fix was a missing db_owner grant on the distribution database for the Log Reader Agent account.Tue, 13 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/trashed-proxmox/https://sqlmac.com/blog/trashed-proxmox/I deleted a Proxmox volume I definitely needed, then spent an afternoon fighting a failed v8.2 install, a RAID reconfiguration, and a stubborn unsquashfs error. Chuck was nowhere to be found.Sat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/tsql2sday-101/https://sqlmac.com/blog/tsql2sday-101/T-SQL Tuesday #101 asks which tools DBAs depend on daily. I found out the hard way — by forgetting my laptop and spending a day improvising on a borrowed machine.Tue, 10 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/tsql2sday-96/https://sqlmac.com/blog/tsql2sday-96/A personal thank-you to the bloggers, speakers, and community leaders who shaped my growth as a DBA — and a nod to two colleagues who made the journey even better.Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/tsql2sday-learning/https://sqlmac.com/blog/tsql2sday-learning/T-SQL Tuesday #97 challenges the SQL community to share specific learning plans for the upcoming year. Here's mine — including one goal that has nothing to do with technology.Tue, 12 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/using-getdate/https://sqlmac.com/blog/using-getdate/Batching large deletes to protect tempdb is the right call — until a datetime vs. date mismatch turns your delete loop into an all-night affair.Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/windows-firewall/https://sqlmac.com/blog/windows-firewall/After upgrading to SQL Server 2019, automatic seeding silently stopped working on our AG secondary. The culprit was a Windows Firewall rule tied to an executable path that no longer existed.Tue, 12 May 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://sqlmac.com/blog/working-from-home/https://sqlmac.com/blog/working-from-home/A DBA's practical tips for working from home — covering remote access, video call etiquette, and staying productive when the office sends everyone home.Tue, 24 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT