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[Keith] Welcome to the Mind Of Root. I'm Keith Albright
[Steve] and I'm Steve Murawski. This is Episode 77 streaming live on Ustream.tv on November 26, 2008. Today's show is sponsored by Quest Software; Helping you rule your domain. And by Idera, the makers of PowerShellPlus?; making PowerShell easier to learn and master.
Chit-Chat - What's going on with you?
[Steve]
[Rich]
[Keith]
Housekeeping Items
[Rich]
[Steve]
[Keith]
- Apologies to Billy on my resume review timeliness
- Philly Tech Guys
- Eeebuntu from Whig on Twitter (Petri Lopia)
____________________________READ IDERA AD COPY____________________________
Want to make Windows PowerShell easier than ever to learn and master? Checkout Idera's PowerShellPlus? Professional Edition which is now available for download! The new version has vastly improved code completion and a slick interactive Learning Center. Go to http://www.idera.com/PodcastPeople to get your copy today!
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Steve's Topics
- Interview with Brent Ozar
-Brent Ozar is a SQL Server expert with Quest Software
-
Becoming a DBA:
-[Brent]Why you'd want to do it - man, I'm just wild about database administration as a career.
-[Brent]Learn T-SQL once (it's easy, since it hasn't changed in a decade) and you'll be good to go for another decade at least.
-[Brent]There's no A+ class for it - it's really hard to find good
DBAs?, and it's a great career path.
-[Brent]Development versus production
DBAs? - there's a difference between these job categories, and sysadmins need to understand that they can be AWESOME production
DBAs? without having to know the intricacies of programming.
-[Brent]Good blogs to subscribe to about database administration, and how to join your local PASS chapter
-[Brent]Using Developer Edition of SQL Server for nearly free to get started
-
What sysadmins need to know when working w/DBAs?:
-[Brent]The two types of
DBAs? (dev vs production) comes into play again here.
-[Brent]Development
DBAs? often have zero sysadmin experience, so they need help understanding the difference between memory speed and disk speed. The more they know about this, the less they'll come in crying about performance.
-[Brent]Sysadmins can help dev
DBAs? get better use of their memory by asking some targeted questions in a language that dev
DBAs? will understand.
-[Brent]
DBAs? have a lot more tools at their disposal than they might let on. When
DBAs? complain about performance, there are some specific features you can ask about, like Instant File Initialization, online index defrags, and locking pages in memory.
-
Tips for sysadmins who become "accidental DBAs?":
-[Brent]Understand transaction log backups. This is so incredibly important, and it's so easy with maintenance plans.
-[Brent]Set up alerts and operators. I've got simple T-SQL scripts to execute on SQL 2005/2008 boxes that will guarantee you get alerted when the box starts to catch fire.
-
Using PowerShell w/SQL Server:
-[Brent]Okay, this one's a personal hot button issue for me, and you may like talking about it just to hear an off-the-wall point of view. I toooootally get why sysadmins are wild about
PowerShell: as a Wintel admin, I didn't have a good way to do a lot of administration work fast across a lot of boxes. Sure, there's GPO, but that's not really powerful enough to do ad-hoc work fast.
PowerShell FTW.
-[Brent]But SQL Server
DBAs?, on the other hand - well, look at the product name itself: SQL stands for Structured Query Language. The very product itself is based around a language that's been stable for a very long time. There's a big library of scripts out there to do all kinds of administration tasks.
DBAs? have gotten really good at coding SQL, and they don't really have an incentive to go learn another scripting language.
PowerShell is attractive to Wintel admins who become accidental
DBAs?, but frankly, that's a minority of the market, and that's not catching fire quickly.
- Keith's Notes for interview with Brent Ozar
-Development DBA's. Why is the use of the 'sa' account even considered.
-Working with DBA's
-What is T-SQL? What are the things you wished a
SysAdmin? knew and understood that would help you work better with them?
-I know this can go for all of IT, but I really see DBA's as having the keys to the kingdom. What are some effective segregation of duty models for DBA's (e.g. dev vs. prod). Is there anything that can be done in a lone DBA scenario?
- Microsoft Security Software To Be Free [KEITH]
-Discontinuing sale of Windows Live
OneCare?. Customers will continue to recieve updates through the end of their subscription
-It will release Morro (due end of 2009) with fewer features than
OneCare? but will be free.
-On another note, MS announced their Malicious Software Removal Tool removed 1 million bogus security/anti-spyware packages from users PC's during 9 days in November.
- Vista Security Note [KEITH]
-I was working at a client site and mapping drives to a server at the remote corporate office. BTW
WatchGuard? VPN is up and running now. Turned out the phase 2 encryption algorithm setting was wrong on the corp side. Not sure how it got changed, but that was the fix.(Along with a new Comcast modem)
-Since it is a very simple remote setup and they are not joining the corp domain, I setup entries in the hosts file to resolve the server name to IP. All XP boxes went well, but a Vista box wouldn't let me alter the Hosts file.
-I checked and the user was a local admin and the file was not read-only. Turns out Vista sets only R and RX permissions on the file even for admins. Slick little trick to prevent malware from modifying entries.
____________________________READ QUEST AD COPY____________________________
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Listener Feedback
From listener....
Brian
Hey guys thanks for the feedback! I will let you know how it turns out. Great show!
Brad
FYI Rich, the IT Crowd just started airing season 3
Jason
I’ve got the script to run w/out errors, but all I get is an empty white box when the gui pops up.
Any suggestions? I’d like to see what this looks like..
-Jason
Jason
Well, I backed off to the parent OU of the one I was trying to run, and it works now, but it doesn’t show me all of the child OU’s. I’m not an AD guru, so maybe I’m expecting something else.
David Moravec
Hi Steve,
it’s awesome. I love this script Thanks for that.
Dave
Website Picks
Rich - http://
Steve - http://
Keith - http://www.thelinuxfund.org Not for me, since I don't like getting additional credit cards, but it is a great way to fund free and Open Source software projects.
Last Call
Anyone....Anyone....Buehler.....Buehler....
Closing
All right, well that is it for the show. For listener feedback; you can email us at Feedback [at] mindofroot.com or post a comment on the main site at mindofroot.com. If you use iTunes, you could write a review. If you just want to show us your listening, drop a pin on the Frappr map...there's a link on the show site.
Lastly, you can drop any show ideas or topic requests on the wiki. There is a link to the wiki on the main show site. If you would like to participate in the show; either through an interview, a segment contribution, or any other way, please let us know. We are also a member of the Techpodcast network. Check out some other great shows by going to Techpodcast.com.
