More fun with Git: git restore
The setup My day job involves babysitting a lot of Git repositories hosted on GitHub. The vast majority of the commits, merges, and squashes I run on a daily basis involve short-lived branches, and I…
On the nature of constant change
Recently my spouse and I travelled to South Africa (yes, I know there’s a pandemic on) to deal with a gloomy family matter that required in-person interaction. Being an adult means dealing with things that…
Why you need a Dead Man’s Switch
Right off the top here, I must note that the term “dead man’s switch” is archaic, so for the rest of this post I’ll refer to it as “operator presence control,” or OPC. The concept…
How I tackle disaster recovery
One of my special interests as an autistic person is understanding mechanical components of a computer, both analog and digital. In the olden days, we had devices known as hard drives which used one or…
T-SQL Tuesday Retrospective #009: Beach Time
(If you’d like to read my other T-SQL Tuesday Retrospective posts, click here.) In August 2010, Jason Brimhall (blog | Twitter) invited us to discuss preparing for vacations: “Write about what you have done to…
Picking up the pieces after the DBA has left: taking ownership of a SQL Server instance
WARNING: This post contains information that can get you fired if you use it without express written permission. In some jurisdictions it might get you jail time as well. Let’s assume you are a consultant,…
On the continuity of business
With entire countries shutting their borders, and people being forced to stay home and isolate themselves for as long as possible while health departments ramp up to handle this pandemic, the question of business continuity…
Disaster recovery, tools edition
I just completed a chapter for another book where I spoke about the Recovery Point Objective (how much data you are prepared to lose) and Recovery Time Objective (how long you have to bring your…
The importance of backups
I have been selected to present a second session for the PASS Summit in November this year. I wrote a few weeks ago about the Linux Learning Path and being a part of that, so…
Using a home-grown Azure Blob Storage solution for SQL Server backups
I’m here for the small organizations, the shops that can’t afford expensive solutions to maintain their environments. I’m here for them because that’s me: the one-person consultancy. I’ve built stuff that’s useful to me, and…
Public Service Announcement: check your backup notifications
The Azure cloud platform lost a data centre for a number of hours recently due to inclement weather. This affected many customers — including Microsoft’s own services — for almost an entire day. Given that…
What is a good Disaster Recovery Plan?
During a Q&A session I hosted at our local Calgary SQL Server User Group last month, one of the attendees mentioned an interview question he’d had and wanted to hear my thoughts. How would you…