Being the Swiss Army Knife of DB Pros

1. Being the Swiss Army Knife of DB Pros How my story can help you and your career K. Brian Kelley Midlands PASS March 13, 2012

2. My background • BBS SysOp • Developer • Webmaster • System Administrator • Database Administrator • Security Analyst • Infrastructure / Security Architect • Project Manager

3. What My BIO Slide Says Now SQL Server MVP Infrastructure Architect Incident Response Team Lead CISA SQL Server DBA SQL Server / security blogger SQL Server author

4. What I never Was

5. The Moral of the Story • Don’t brood on failures • Don’t dismiss opportunities too quickly • Do deep dive into what you are doing • Do depend on yourself, not your organization • Do develop relationships with others

6. Two Subject Areas • “Soft” Skills • Technical Skills

7. Soft Skills to Have • Have a “system” • Have a knowledge of business • Have project management skills • Have empathy • Have conversational skills • Have “talent” to explain technology

8. People Skills Books • The Five Love Languages • by Gary Chapman • How to Win Friends and Influence People • by Dale Carnegie • Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture • by John Gottman • Never Eat Lunch Alone • by Keith Ferrazi

9. Productivity Books • Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity • by David Allen • Enjoy Every Sandwich • by Lee Lipsenthal • Ikigai • by Sebastian Marshall • Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations • by Alex and Brett Harris • Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else • by Geoff Colvin

10. DB Pro Technical Skills • OS Basics • Scripting • Network Basics • Hardware Basics • Performance • SQL! • Query Tuning • Data Modeling • Data Security • SSIS / SSRS

11. OS Basics • Understand the Permission Model • Understand what is in the Event Logs • Understand how Services work • Understand Authentication, both NTLM and Kerberos • Understand the Command Shell

12. Scripting • VBscript is still here (sadly) • Get on the PowerShell bandwagon • I still love Perl • Python is nice, too…

13. Network Basics • Understand TCP and UDP • SQL Server uses both • Understand HTTP and how SSL makes HTTPS • Understand ICMP – ping and tracert / traceroute • Understand how to read a packet trace

14. Locating a Named Instance Asking for the instance name of SQL2008R2

15. Locating a Named Instance Instance: SQL2008R2 Oh, you can connect via TCP on port 5555! Client can connect.

16. Hardware BASICS • Understand Hyperthreading and NUMA • Understand these RAID levels: • RAID0 • RAID 1 • RAID 5 • RAID 10 • RAID 0+1 • Understand local vs. attached storage • Understand how SANs work

17. Performance • Know the basic counters to look for • Memory • Physical Disk • Processor • Know the values where it’s a performance bottleneck • The difference between spikes and sustained levels • The value of a benchmark • The value of periodic benchmarks

18. "Jack of all trades, master of none,though often times better than master of one." My IT Life Story I stand by this philosophy.

19. Andy Leonard • http://sqlblog.com/blogs/andy_leonard/ • Andy Warren • http://www.sqlandy.com/ • Kevin Kline • http://www.kevinekline.com/ • Steve Jones • http://voiceofthedba.wordpress.com/ • Me • http://gkdba.wordpress.com/ DB Pro Folks to Follow Because they talk careers

20. Questions? Thank you for attending!