The Dawn of a New Year for Your SQL Server Environment
Here we are at the dawn of a new year. It’s a great time to pause and reflect on your personal and professional goals. How did you do in 2021? If you’re responsible for SQL Server environment, you probably included goals for the SQL Servers. Maybe you wanted to increase performance? Or, maybe you set a goal for greater reliability? What about security? Maybe it was setting a predictable patching process and schedule? All good things.
So how did you do?
And what about this year? What would you like to accomplish in 2022?
“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”
– Benjamin Franklin
The year in review
Benjamin Franklin was an advocate for continuous improvement. And one of the ways we can continuously improve is to pause and reflect on our prior goals. In agile terms, to have a sprint review, or a retrospective, over the past year.
Personal goals
We are all people first. As much as many of us love data, we are still people and have lives outside of our profession. It’s good to continually grow and stretch ourselves outside of work.
Did you have any personal goals for last year? Maybe you wanted to learn how to cook or speak a new language? Or maybe you wanted to pick up the guitar again after all these years? What about that kitchen remodel you were planning? Spend some time reflecting on those goals, and how you made progress toward them.
For me, I wanted to further my section hike along the Appalachian Trail. So last summer, I made a 5-day, 97-mile trek . With that hike, I have now completed 730 of the 2,190 trail miles. Or 1/3 of the AT. I still have many years of hiking left, but I’m making incremental progress each year toward a much larger goal.
Professional goals
What were your professional goals for the year? As data professionals, many of us wanted to keep up with the latest trends and technologies that can make our lives, and the lives of our users and stakeholders, a bit easier.
As challenging as 2021 was in so many ways, we saw several data conferences with virtual presences. The PASS Data Community Summit was held in November 2021. It was a great opportunity to learn from top-notch speakers about the latest developments in the data space. GroupBy in October 2021 was another great event for the data professional. And of course there were others.
The big news from 2021 was Microsoft’s announcement of SQL Server 2022 at Microsoft Ignite. Lots of reasons to be excited about this new version of SQL Server.
SQL Server environment goals
Of course, learning cool new things is great. But being able to put them into practice to make your SQL Server environment more robust is where the rubber meets the road.
Last January, I shared Five Goals for Your SQL Servers in the New Year. If you haven’t read that post, I’d encourange you to have a look. To summarize the five goals were:
- Assess your SQL Servers
- Update your SQL Servers
- Start performing health checks
- Implementing monitoring and alerting
- Review your Disaster Recovery plans
If you had similar goals, how did you do?
Is your SQL Server environment better today than it was 12 months ago?
Are your users experiencing less disruption? Are you getting fewer calls and alerts? What about your stakeholders and business owners, are they happy?
If not, what would it take to get there?
Goals for the next 12 months
Now, let’s look at some things you may want to accomplish this year.
Personal goals
I’m not much of one for New Year’s Resolutions. Those don’t usually age well.
However, I do find that starting with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey recommends, helps to make sure I’m aligning my effort with what’s important for me and my family.
This year, I’d again like to make a trek or two along the Appalachian Trail, to complete another 150 miles or so. I’d also like to continue simplifying my life by assessing what’s important and saying no to more things. Saying no to some good things so I can say yes to the important things.
I know these aren’t framed in terms of S.M.A.R.T. goals. Rather they are more like guiding principles for me.
What about you? Do you have some goals for this year you’d like to share? If not here, maybe on twitter? Or with others who will help keep you accountable?
Professional goals
If continuing education and deepening connections in the data space is still on your list, there are lots of good options available. The PASS Data Community Summit will be hybrid this year. The onsite location will be back in Seattle, but you can still attend from the comfort and safety of your own home office.
SQLBits is back in London in March 2022, DataGrillen will be in Germany, and the GroupBy conference will be virtual again in 2022. All great opportunities.
Check out Azure Data Community for more events and user groups around the world.
SQL Server environment goals
Where would you like your SQL Server environment to be in twelve months? In this case, be specific and measurable.
Perhaps you inherited some SQL Servers? Or some new instances were added to your team? Maybe you changed jobs and you’ve taken over responsibility for a data environment you’re not familiar with? In any case, the five goals mentioned earlier are a great start.
If you’re already confident in your SQL configuration and monitoring, maybe you can take it up a notch?
Would you like to have five 9’s of availability? That’s less than 6 minutes of downtime this year! Doable, but you have to plan, and budget, for it. Five 9’s is not easy.
Maybe three 9’s is good enough? That’s less than 45 minutes of downtime per month. That’s unscheduled and scheduled downtime. Can you do that and keep your monthly patching cycle? Again, it’s certainly an attainable goal with the right infrastructure and processes.
Designing, documenting, and regularly testing your approach to disaster recovery is another good option. Benchmarking your SQL Servers so you know what is normal, what is abnormal, and when you’re likely to need additional resources is another good option.
Or, what about creating a 36-month plan for your data environment? We just helped one of our clients with that exercise. They came away with a roadmap with a couple of dozen projects to help them design and create the data environment they’ll need three years from now. It’s a worthwhile exercise.
Whatever your goals are for the year, write them down, create a plan, and review progress regularly.
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