Allen Kinsel - SQL DBA

SQL Server, SQLPASS, and other random things

PASS Value Allocation

By Allen Kinsel, 1 hour and 30 minutes ago

Listening to the SQL community over the years, I thought Id take a second to put a quick thought out about why I believe PASS makes almost every decision it makes as an organization.

As a non-profit, Its all about money value, and its use to support the community.  Almost every decision that is made within the organization has a value cost, whether that value is actual dollars that need to be spent, or if its a volunteers time, nothing is free or limitless.  Just because Microsoft decided that the top tier SQL engine will now cost 58k per processor, doesn't mean they are giving that money away freely to user group organizations.

If you're unhappy with where the organization is allocating its resources, Contact them directly, or probably even better contact all of the board of directors (protip: email format )  let them know you want things to have a different priority, if that fails, they have elections every year, VOTE!

Whose got my DAC?

By Allen Kinsel, 7 days ago

What is the DAC?

The Dedicated Admin Connection, Commonly called the DAC is used to manage SQL Server when a regular connection wont succeed.  Here's what SQL Books Online (BOL) has to say about the DAC «This diagnostic connection allows an administrator to access SQL Server to execute diagnostic queries and troubleshoot problems even when SQL Server is not responding to standard connection requests.»

DAC Errors

Occasionally, while troubleshooting SQL servers in a large environment, especially one thats managed from many different geographic locations you could come up with this error, if more than 1 person is using the DAC.  It should also be noted this only happens if you have remote DAC enabled in your environment

Error 17810

Could not connect because the maximum number of '1' dedicated administrator connections already exists. Before a new connection can be made, the existing dedicated administrator connection must be dropped, either by logging off or ending the process. [CLIENT: 127.0.0.1]

Since I could still connect with a regular connection currently, I set out looking for a query to determine who was using the DAC connection.  I whipped this up, and since I couldnt find anything in search, I thought id blog it

select conn.session_id, sess.login_name, sess.nt_domain, sess.nt_user_name, conn.connect_time, conn.last_read, conn.last_write, sess.host_name, conn.client_net_address
    from sys.dm_exec_connections conn
    join sys.endpoints edp
        on conn.endpoint_id = edp.endpoint_id
    join sys.dm_exec_sessions sess
        on sess.session_id = conn.session_id   
    where edp.is_admin_endpoint = 1

This should return everything you need to know about who is using your DAC connection so you can ask them to disconnect, or KILL their connection.

Convincing your boss to pay for your training

By Allen Kinsel, 10 days ago

 

Things are tight

It seems like budgets are being cut everywhere, and IT training seems to be one of the first places cut.  In an earlier post I outlined where you could get a lot of valuable training for relatively little cost.  In this post I will explore a few methods that have worked for me over the years to get your boss to say YES to paying for you to refresh your fountain of knowledge.

The direct approach

It may seem obvious but, if you don't ask your employer, they cant agree to send you to a SQLSaturday, or to the annual SQLPASS Summit.  So sometimes its just as simple as broaching the subject with your boss.  But before you try that continue reading!

Explain the ROI

Many times the people who make the final decisions about training forget what a struggle it can be to not only stay current on technology but to actually excel with it.  Last year PASS put together a very good list of ROI points  This could be used for any SQL event, make it work for you.

Volunteer

If you volunteer for SQLPASS (at the local or national level) you may be eligible for a discount admission to the annual summit.  This discount can range anywhere from 100$ all the way up to a full comp (free) admission.  Armed with the discount, and your ROI documentation it can be quite a bit easier to convince your boss to send you to a weeks worth of invaluable training that they perceive to be discounted.

Offer to partner

A few years back this might have been unheard of but, I've recently decided to start trying this method to get approval for some training.  Try to combine the ROI documentation with an offer to pick up 1/2 the tab for the training.  For instance, split the cost, ask them to pay the airfare to a SQL Saturday, while you pick up the hotel, food and ground transportation.  Another idea, offer to pay the airfare/conference registration(Free if you volunteer enough) and let them pick up the rest to send you to the SQLPASS Summit.  Either way its a win-win for both parties, you get to make a small investment in your career, and it shows your employer your serious about that career.

Mix and Match

Hopefully you can take a few of these ideas and mix-n-match them to reach the ultimate goal of getting your desired education.

Accessing Top Quality Training

By Allen Kinsel, 15 days ago

Where did the Training go?

With the economy being what it is, many companies are cutting back on training budgets yet our need for knowledge as database professionals never stops.  Luckily the SQL Server community is one of the liveliest around and there are solutions.

Online

I'd estimate that  almost everyday of the week you can find live webcasts about various subjects in the SQL Server arena, the problem here is that many of these top quality training events aren't well publicized.  I never knew about them until joining Twitter a few years back.  As it turns out, many SQL user groups around the world stream their meetings online via live meeting, there are PASS VC's webcasts, Vendor sponsored webcasts, and the list goes on and on.

Local Events

Local events usually put on by your Local PASS Chapter, these are usually monthly events put on by your local PASS Chapter.  The added bonus is that these events provide networking opportunities. 

Regional Events

For the time being these usually are SQL Saturdays.  Held at various metropolitan areas across the US these are currently one of the best bets going for very cheap, very good, education.  I would highly recommend that you consider traveling to one of these if they are within a reasonable drive, or better still, a cheap flight 

National Events

Generally speaking these are SQLPASS and SQL Connections.  I'll just say that these are topflight, all in wonderful opportunities, and if you have the chance Id highly recommend that you attend, everything I said about the other training events, is 10 fold when dealing with a week long immersive opportunity.

PASS TPS #1

By Allen Kinsel, 21 days ago

TPS reports, love them or loathe them, they are a necessary thing for most of us working in corporate America.  I firmly reside in the loathe camp, Just ask my boss.

In this case though, I've decided to start putting out regular updates about what Ive been up to for PASS.  I hope the benefit is 2 fold, 1 to allow a greater transparency into what happens behind the scenes and more importantly for me to have a place to reference what we did and when!

Summit 2009 wrapup

We sent out quite a few different surveys during/after the 2009 summit, some of them are listed:

The members of the program committee

The speakers

The «suggestion box»at the PASS booth

The Session Evaluations

The purpose of each of these sets of questions were unique and helpful (some more than others but I digress)

I wrote about the 2009 session evaluations previously

The other surveys were tallied and the results reviewed to see what we could do better, and to see what we're doing well as an organization.  I hope to write about some of these results later.

Summit Session Evals

I've written about this one before.  We had some technical difficulties with this one this year and I hope to iron it out.  One of the bigger mistakes we made this year was tossing the session attendance counts, its a long story exactly how it exactly happened but its already been remedied for 2010.  If this affected you, I am sincerely sorry.  PASS also uses this info to gauge many things so its a multisided loss.  We've got some great ideas cooking on more effective ways to give feedback to speakers from attendees, and as soon as we have something a bit more concrete I'll write about that too.

Software selection/creation

We are currently trying to decide on a direction to go with our Summit software, Its no secret that there have been issues in our current vendors software/DVD's, and we're exploring a few options (build vs buy etc) at the moment.  Once we have a decision Ill give an update.  Suffice it to say that a decision as important as this one is not easily made and we've had at least 20 hours of phone conferences (demo's included) and emails likely numbering past the hundreds about this.  We might be working through it a bit too much but, we have to get this right as the summit software is one of the largeer interfaces we have at PASS, between HQ-Speakers-attendees-volunteers-etc-etc.

Establishing the 2010 Program committee

We began working on updating the applications and handbooks that are required for the program committee, the application was tweaked a bit this year, and the handbook was freshened up a bit as well.  Volunteer applications are being accepted through Feb 22nd.  Im happy to say that so far we've had 35+ applications, while we wont need 35 people to review abstracts (the most popular job) Im 100% certain we can make use of all the volunteers, if we get a few people that are willing to make the next step and offer some help with leadership, Ive written a bit about this before

Speaker Bureau/Speaker terms

I set out a small group of volunteers with the task of redoing the speaker terms to allow for more «sharing of information» (opt out) between the Summit Speakers and the PASS Chapters.  Ive written about this before and Andy Warren has the lead on the actual implementation of this project, we were trying to enable him a bit and hopefully have succeeded.

Establish 2010 Summit Critical Dates

We have a pretty firm grasp of the steps it takes to put on a Summit but, every year we have to go over the steps and make adjustments.  We also need to adjust the dates for the current year in order to make the process work.  Now that the dates are mostly set, We have essentially kicked the rock down the hill.  Once that happens, the deadlines seem to pile up.

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