Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

The latest News and Information on Databases and related technologies.

Pros and Cons of Horizontal vs. Vertical Scaling

Have you ever dealt with an application workload suddenly increasing and the demand on SQL Server begins to increase exponentially as a result? Maybe you’ve never had one of those “my solution to X problem just went viral, and everybody’s signing up” moments, but inevitably, at some point in your career, you’ll have to deal with a scalability limitation affecting performance and the business will look to you for a solution.

Getting Started With Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Open-source software (OSS) relational database management systems (RDBMSes) are becoming incredibly popular in the cloud computing world. In this article, I’ll discuss one of the most popular OSS relational databases, PostgreSQL, and the options you have for this database in the Microsoft Azure cloud. It’s worth noting these products are large with many detailed aspects, so consider this article a cursory, high-level overview of each offering.

Getting Started With Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Open-source software (OSS) relational database management systems (RDBMSes) are becoming incredibly popular in the cloud computing world. In this article, I’ll discuss one of the most popular OSS relational databases, PostgreSQL, and the options you have for this database in the Microsoft Azure cloud. It’s worth noting these products are large with many detailed aspects, so consider this article a cursory, high-level overview of each offering.

Comparing DBA, DBRE, and SRE Roles

As I navigate further into my career, I’m finding the scope of my role has shifted over the years. I thought I’d take some time to help relay the differences I’ve seen between traditional database administrators (DBAs), database reliability engineers (DBREs), and site reliability engineers (SREs). Before I start, I want to get a disclaimer out of the way: some of the comparisons here reflect only what I’ve seen and may not match what you’ve experienced.

An Introduction to Database Sharding With SQL Server

One of my favorite consulting questions to ask when dealing with a scalability problem is, “If you could change the system design with the knowledge you have today, what would/wouldn’t you change and why?” Sometimes it’s best to ask this question on a one-on-one basis with different developers, DBAs, report writers, and architects to get honest answers that aren’t intimidated by the other people sitting in a meeting or to avoid potential debating and arguing over a solution.

DevOps 101: The role of automation in Database DevOps

This is the fifth part in the DevOps 101 series and it’s time to talk about automation. Before we get into it, I just want to recap what DevOps is. Microsoft’s Donovan Brown sums it up nicely in a single sentence: DevOps is the union of people, process, and products to enable continuous delivery of value to our end users. The important thing to remember here is the order in which he talks: people, process, and products. That’s the way DevOps works.