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Category: DevOps

Policing Database Deployments

Published 2017-12-05 by Kevin Feasel

Drew Furgiuele has a rather interesting library that he’s released to the general public:

The base return is the TSQLFragment object, which in turn has a Batches object, which in turn holds… well it can hold a lot of different things. When the text is parsed, it will determine what type of object to return based on the statement it determines it is. For example, if it’s an insert statement it will be a certain type of object with a given set of properties and methods, and if it’s, say, a create index statement you’ll get different properties, such as which table or view is getting the index along with the indexed columns and included columns. It really is interesting.

But interesting can a double-edged sword: since the statement object that gets returned can be different for each parsed piece of code, that means to set up any type of intelligence around the stuff we’re dealing with, we need to check for very specific objects.

Unfortunately, I never got past the first animated GIF, whose subtitle was wrong.  You, however, should read the whole thing.

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Automating Index Maintenance On Azure SQL DB

Published 2017-08-22 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal shows how to use Azure Automation to rebuild indexes on an Azure SQL Database database:

The answer is via Azure Automation.

At a high level this is what I did.

  • Create an Automation Account.

  • Create a credential.

  • Create a PowerShell Runbook which has the code for index rebuilds.

  • Create a schedule and link it to the above.

  • Configure parameters within the schedule (if any).

  • Configure logging level (if desired).

Click through for the detailed steps.

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DevOps And The DBA

Published 2017-08-11 by Kevin Feasel

Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman gives a bit of DevOps 101 to database administrators:

Monitoring changes a bit with DevOps. It’s less about a simple tier and moves to the entire infrastructure. A need to monitor application, host, database and availability between each is essential. As these different tiers rarely come from one vendor and many may even be proprietary, there are requirements to monitor using multiple tools, scripts and interfaces.

Two of the main products for monitoring, recognized in the DevOps community are New Relic and AppDynamics. Monitoring can be as simple as a suite of scripts that report the health and status of processes and orchestration, notifying if there is any failure. This choice normally has a scaling limit and at some point, a more robust solution is required or gaps are felt in the monitoring process or failure at certain tiers. More enterprise solutions, such as New Relic and AppDynamics and enhanced by logging suites like Splunk and Sumo Logic.

Read the whole thing.

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Azure SQL Database Deployment Account Errors

Published 2017-08-03 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones troubleshoots an issue with Azure SQL Database:

 I’ve had most builds work really well. I tried a number of things, but kept getting a few items in the build. There were login errors or network errors, both of which bothered me since I could manually log in with SSMS from the same machine as my build agent.

I suspected a few things here, one of which was the use of named pipes for the Shadow database and TCP for Azure SQL Database.

Eventually, I decided to fall back with msbuild, ignoring VSTS, and make sure all my parameters were correct.

Read on for the rest of the story.

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DevOps And The DBA

Published 2017-07-05 by Kevin Feasel

Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman explains that DevOps does not signal the end of the DBA:

As I travel to multiple events focused on numerous platforms the database is crucial to, I’m faced with peers frustrated with DevOps and considerable conversation dedicated to how it’s the end of the database administrator.  It may be my imagination, but I’ve been hearing this same story, with the blame assigned elsewhere-  either its Agile, DevOps, the Cloud or even a latest release of the actual database platform.  The story’s the same-  the end of the Database Administrator.

The most alarming and obvious pain point of this, is that in each of these scenarios, the result was the Database Administrator a focal point in the end more so than they were when it began.  When it comes to DevOps, the specific challenges of the goal needed the DBA more so than any of these storylines.  As development hurdled top speed to deliver what the business required, the DBA and operations as a whole, delivered the security, the stability and the methodologies to build automation at the level that the other groups simply never needed previously.

This is a useful rejoinder to fears of imminent job loss.

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