When building products that interact with multiple database platforms, the complexity can be both a challenge and an opportunity. For Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), observing design decisions made without sufficient knowledge of underlying database architecture can be particularly frustrating. These moments highlight the critical need for architectural foresight and platform-specific expertise to avoid pitfalls that compromise scalability, performance, and maintainability. I’ve been managing multiple platforms for a couple decades and in recent years, building products that support the most popular enterprise and open-source databases today. I’m keenly aware of lacking documentation, either due to limited resources or hopes of directing…
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So you want to run mssql-cli on Ubuntu Linux, but you received a number of errors and even if you got through some errors, you’re still stuck? I’m here to try to help you get through them and hopefully I’ve captured them all. Trust me, the Oracle DBAs have been here- our databases and tools failed for a very long time until Linux administrators came to know what we needed and started to build us the images with the correct libraries and versions we needed, so we feel your pain! The easiest scenario for many to deploy SQL Server 2019…
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I’m getting ready for SQL Saturday Oregon this weekend, (taking the train up from Eugene to Portland…) but its about time I talked about the exhilarating and exhausting event we call PASS Summit. This year I was lucky enough to be chosen as a speaker and a blogger. Bloggers at the conference get the opportunity to sit in special zones during keynotes and we write about the event. We also get special access to Microsoft PMs, (although I may be the only one who works for Microsoft attending vs. running them… :)) I look forward to all of the blogger…
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We’ve learned a lot about commands, utilities and how to create a script, but we need to discuss the importance of scripting for longevity. What is Scripting for Longevity? We have a tendency to focus on scripting to automate something WE might not want to perform manually, but avoid what we think might void our value. We may try to ensure there is necessity for our role or our knowledge as we create scripts. This can be built into the execution process, scheduling, arguments, pre-run or post-run steps. This doesn’t make us an asset, but a liability and against what…
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In the previous blog posts, we learned how to set up the first part of a standard shell script- how to interactively set variables, including how to pass them as part of the script execution. In this next step, we’ll use those to build out Azure resources. If you’re working on-premises, you can use this type of scripting with SQL Server 2019 Linux but will need to use CLI commands and SQLCMD. I will cover this in later posts, but honestly, the cloud makes deployment quicker for any business to get what they need deployed and with the amount of…
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Almost every Linux or Unix person has seen the help forum post from a novice looking for an answer to a frustrating problem and the arrogant fool that responds with “Just type in rm -rf / and it will fix the problem.” For anyone who is part of the “do no harm” technical community, this can make us wish for a way to revoke the arrogant fool’s privileges to the internet— permanently. Recycling Commands This leads me to a great post from Carlos Robles this last week on using aliases with docker commands. As with many command line utilities, certain…
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Hello from Atlanta, where I’m preparing for tomorrow’s SQL Saturday and arrived for the great news announcing this year’s PASS Summit 2019 Learning Pathways. These sessions are two or more sessions to provide a more complete learning opportunity for the attendee. I’ll be part of two of these pathways: Technical Leadership: Becoming a Technical Leader with Denise McInerney Linux for SQL Server Professionals: Empowering the SQL Professional with Linux Scripting I’m looking forward both to the first, a leadership talk, as we rarely see a focus on how to forge a path in a technical career without often sacrificing our…
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In Part I, we started with some scripting basics, as in, how to write a script. This included the concepts of breaking a script into sections, (introduction, body and conclusion) For Part II, we’ll start with the BASH script “introduction”. The introduction in a BASH script should begin the same in all scripts. Set the shell to be used for the script Set the response to failure on any steps, (exit or ignore) Add in a step for testing, but comment out or remove when in production For our scripts, we’ll keep to the BASH format that is used by…
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Azure Directory is available with Linux SQL Server 2019 in Preview and as I was setting it up in my Azure environment on a Linux Red Hat 7.3 VM, I was, as many are, happy that they list the commands for the Azure CLI to set up authentication with Azure Directory, but was concerned, that with so many new to Linux, that they didn’t describe in the steps WHY we were running certain commands or setting best practices around Linux database server design. The setup expects that you already have a Linux VM and SQL 2019 already up and running.…
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There are busy times for everyone and if you speak at conferences, the busy times are March,May and November. I am recovering from the early spring rush, and now it’s time to prepare for the late spring one. I’ve been fortunate enough to be accepted to speak at the following regional SQL Saturdays and look forward to speaking and meeting new folks, along with catching up with conference friends: SQL Saturday Raleigh, April 27th Optimizing Power BI, Taming of the Shrew, (Analytics) SQL Saturday Jacksonville, May 5th GDPR, The Buck Stops Here, (data governance) Be a Part of the Solution…
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I’ve started to write a series of articles on Simple Talk from Redgate on Linux for the SQL Server DBA. Thanks to Kathi Kellenberger, who came to my pre-con in Indianapolis SQL Saturday and then asked if it was something that I’d be up to doing. The biggest challenge when doing one hour sessions on Linux at SQL Saturdays is that you find out, one hour is just no where, near enough. The eight hour pre-con we get to dig in deeper, actually work through a number of labs and I feel like students leave with a better grasp on…
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I just finished teaching an 8 hour pre-con at SQL Saturday Indianapolis on Essential Linux for the DBA. The focus of the class was on what the Microsoft DBA would need to know as more SQL Server environments begin to run on Linux. The obstacles and demands of them will be a bit different than the Oracle crowd, as they may not have the Linux Admin or Unix expertise onsite for support and have to fend for themselves more than I did starting out on Linux. Some folks asked me why I chose to use Docker with the SQL Server…
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I’m on track to fly home tomorrow, March 11th after nine days and three events. I’m pretty exhausted and just ready to go home and catch up on some sleep…:) I started out last weekend in Victoria BC and was thrilled to be on this emerald island of the Pacific Northwest. British Columbia is gorgeous as it is, but Victoria is a special place that quickly became one of my favorite places in the world. The Victoria event was an inaugural one and well attended. SQL Saturday Victoria was an event that Delphix sponsored and my peer, Serge, did an…
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As I dig deeper into Linux for the SQL Server DBAs and for Oracle HotSos, I’m digging into DIG. Yeah, I went there with that first sentence…. What is DIG? DIG stands for Domain Information Groper, (no, not that kind of groper…) and it’s an important part of deeper Linux learning for all database technologists. You can’t connect to data if you don’t know how to get from point A to point B and DIG is the utility to help you gather information surrounding DNS. DIG allows the user to gather deep information using both command line arguments and batch…
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So if you read my last post on my challenges with Docker containers running on Windows 10 after the 1709 patch, I thought I was close to solving it once I was granted the admin password to disable and uninstall Sophos Endpoint. Once I uninstalled Sophos, I noted I ended up with a different line number error. The question was, has the problem shifted from Sophos to a new issue or is it more complex than just the one application? We’d already seen that it was complicated, including the Hyper-V with the 1709 patch that was part of the problem.…
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Yes, there’s a Part III! You’re going to have to start scripting and now that you know a few VI/VIM commands, lets talk beginning scripting with shell. In our example below, we’re going to start a new project called “test”. For this, the requirements are: create a new folder off of the /u01/scripts directory create a new file called test.sh inside the testdir directory ensure it uses bash as our chosen shell # cd /u01/scripts # mkdir testdir # cd testdir # touch test.sh # ls test.sh # pwd /u01/scripts/testdir As you can see, I’ve now fulfilled the first two…
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So more than one person contacted me about my last post and stated that they didn’t see a problem with SQL Server on Linux running as the root user. Me: Although enhancements have changed Windows installations for applications to run with a unique user, I created a mssql OS user even back on SQL Server 2000 on Windows as I had a tendency to use similar security practices for all database platforms as a multi-platform DBA. With that being said- yes, it introduced complexity, but it was for a reason: users should be restricted to the least amount of privileges…
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Linux has become a clear area of required learning for SQL Server DBAs in as of SQL Server 2016. What? You didn’t read that right, you say? Yes, while a Linux edition was introduced in SQL Server 2016, it was pushed to the forefront with the release of 2017, along with Python in a push towards stronger DevOps initiatives, (one OS to rule them all!) and Python to assist with even stronger analytics trends. As most database platforms already run on Linux, the SQL Server community has a bit of catch up to do, so as many advanced DBA linux…