Tonight, at the Bank of America Campus in Jacksonville, FL., JSSUG is doing a "So you’ve never spoken before" meeting. 5-6 sacrifices volunteers will be speaking for 5-15 minutes on a topic near and dear to their hearts. This is our User Group’s way of encouraging more people to step up and speak / teach. 6:00 p.m. Eastern, Bldg 500 Room 239. If you’re in the area, we hope to see you there.
Sean McCown, the MidnightDBA, had an interesting interview with several DBA type candidates. You can read about it here. It’s one of those "OMG, Are they serious?" moments when you realize the "expert" knows less than your pet mouse. My favorite moment is the LooksAlive verses IsAlive question. Of course, I had to look up the terms after reading that (I don’t claim to be a clustering expert). Here’s my take on it:
LooksAlive basically means the OS Police stops by your house, sees that the lights are on inside, the paper’s been picked up off the porch, and hears a dog barking in the back. Then the OS Police calls it in saying, "Well, I think the resource is still alive. All signs point to everything being okay." IsAlive, on the other hand, is the OS Police doing all of the above, then knocking on the door and ringing your phone. And if you don’t answer, the report goes back and says "I don’t think anyone’s there." After X number of minutes/seconds waiting for a response, your cluster decides you’re not actually alive and flips over to the other node.
So now I can officially answer that interview question and not look like a complete fool. @=)
Lastly, I’m speaking at SQL Saturday in Orlando, FL on October 16th. Details are at www.SqlSaturday.com and http://www.sqlsaturday.com/49/eventhome.aspx. My main presentation is on Backup & Recovery – the advanced version. You have to do more than just backup your database if you want to recover properly. My mini-session is on the Basics of Troubleshooting. Please come and see me. I’d love to meet you all.
