How Not to be a Cranky DBA: The Blog Series

I love having a presentation I can keep in my back pocket just in case I need to speak at an event. It’s served me well in both New York and Philly when other speakers cancelled and I offered to jump in.

It was at SQL Saturday in New York that I realized I didn’t have a dedicated blog post that I could refer back to. And that’s when I realized that this could be more than a single post.

What I plan on doing over the next few days is break this presentation into a series of blog posts so you can understand what makes me a cranky DBA and how you can prevent yourself from falling into some of the same situations.

• Cautionary Tale: Beware of the Blogs
• What Makes Mike a Cranky DBA and Why?
• Dont’ Enable Autoshrink. Ever.
• Triggers Don’t Send Mail
• Developers Don’t Touch Production
• Ask Questions Like an Auditor
• Consistency is Key
• Master the SQL Agent
• Use Instant File Initialization
• Plan for when things go Bump in the Night
• Set Min and Max RAM
• Document. Document. Document.
• Your Server is NOT a Workstation
• Set your File Growth Increments
• Test Restores. Frequently.
• Reserved Words are just that, Reserved.
• Limit Access to the SA and Service Account Passwords
• Database Servers are that and that alone