Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Logging is a fundamental part of software development. While an app is being developed, we rely on logging to confirm our inputs and outputs match our expectations. In production, logging can be an invaluable resource for tracking down bugs or measuring how users interact with the app. We can also consider logs as a sort of time-series value, where a timestamp is associated with a user’s specific action. These logs can be structured, gathered, and analyzed to provide teams with more information.

So, you have an interview lined up for a sweet new gig as a SQL Server database administrator (DBA). What interview questions will you be asked? How can you make sure you ace the interview? What will make you stand out from the other candidates? There are no concrete answers, because… “it depends.” However, you can count on at least two major components of your interview – a technical component and a non-technical component, often focusing on soft skills.

Moving your database to the cloud using a PaaS option such as Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance reduces the maintenance overhead required from the database administrator (DBA). The DBA no longer must worry about managing backups or configuring high availability, for example. That said, the DBA still needs to tune the database’s performance and monitor SQL workloads. The Azure Portal offers several services to quickly identify performance issues for Azure SQL Databases.

As cyberattacks become more sophisticated across ever-expanding attack surfaces, it’s easy to assume the security team will take care of risk management and mitigation. Indeed, employees—both within the agency and across the contractor community—are one of the greatest risks to the government’s security postures.

A main focus for database administrators (DBAs) is to ensure server environments are optimized and performance is at its peak. Whether you’re a DBA starting in a new role and are evaluating an existing environment for the first time, or you’re a senior database professional with the ongoing task of maintaining optimal performance, following key SQL Server best practices for installing, configuring, and ensuring new instances of SQL Server are consistently deployed is all in a day’s work.

This thread came in a weird way as a result of seeing yet another re-run of the classic movie “Back to the Future” the other day. Bear with me on this one, and hopefully it will start to make some sense.

There are a large number of best practices around SQL Server performance tuning – I could easily write a whole book on the topic, especially when you consider the number of different database settings, SQL Server settings, coding practices, SQL wait types, and so on that can affect performance.

Did you unconsciously open Instagram, Facebook, or WhatsApp several times throughout the day on Monday, only to get a “Couldn’t refresh feed” message? Did you try again every 20 or so minutes? Did you maybe even restart your phone, not once thinking websites as large as Facebook could possibly go down and believing it must be your own technology? Rejoice: it’s not you, it’s them.

Many devices—such as switches, routers, firewalls, servers, and printers—support syslog protocol. This standard for sending log messages within a network offers critical information about your system. Consequently, monitoring your network and its syslog messages should be a top priority. Many IT professionals use log and syslog monitors or viewers to gather logs and syslog messages from across their network in a centralized location.