Resources for the New or Accidental DBA Thomas Strike @SQLTom Tom@tomstrike.com Blog - TomStrike.com

Who Am I? Tech with 20 years experience in various industries and jobs DBA for a little over 2 years now Former SharePoint Change Engineer at Microsoft Former Windows Server Admin at IBM Book and Coffee Lover Now a SQLSaturday Speaker

Agenda for the Day Share the resources that I used to get my current job and keep it Get newer people started networking with others in the community Help you with the “next step” in your careers no matter where you’re at now Get you to take control of your own career

Dev Essentials Free Developer edition of SQL Server Three months of Pluralsight for free One year of Azure credits Three months Opsgility on-demand training https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2016/03/31/microsoft-sql-server-developer-edition-is-now-free/

PASS - The Professional Association of SQL Server http://www.sqlpass.org/Home.aspx - Home page for PASS https://www.sqlpass.org/LearningCenter/SessionRecordings.aspx Session recordings Virtual chapters have monthly sessions on many different subjects Regional mentors available in many different subjects Great networking opportunities

PluralSight.com PluralSight.com has thousands of videos covering the entire range of computer technology for $29.00 a month, lower cost if you pay annually. SQLSkills owners and employees all regularly contribute SQL Server content that normally costs thousands of dollars to get in person. (Not that it’s not worthwhile to go to their in-person classes). Don Jones and Adam Bertram regularly contribute PowerShell videos. Scores of other skilled technologists, including many Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, have videos on the site.

SafariBooksOnline.com O-Reilly Books site Thousands of books and videos $39.00 a month, less if you pay annually

SQLServercentral.com Stairways Stairway to T-SQL DML - Greg Larsen (recommended by Kalen Delaney) Stairway to T-SQL: Beyond the Basics - Greg Larsen Stairway to SQL Server Agent - Richard Waymire Stairway to SQL PowerShell - Ben Miller Stairway to SQL Server Security - Don Kiely Stairway to SQL Server Virtualization – David Klee

Manning.com Learn SQL Server in a Month of Lunches Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches Infrastructure: Beyond just SQL Server knowledge depending on your specialty Learn Active Directory in a Month of Lunches – Richard Siddaway Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches – Don Jones Learn Windows IIS in a Month of Lunches – Jason C. Helmick

SQLSkills The Accidental DBA Series – 30 days of keeping the SQL Server lights on SQL Server Extended Event a Day Series SQL101 free training Paul Randall bi-weekly newsletter Whitepapers, Demo Scripts, Sample Databases, MCM reading list and videos Many free tools

The Midnight DBAs – Sean & Jen McCown DBA Roadmap – information on formatting your resume, interviewing, job hunting, and even how to study. As well as critiquing your resume before you send it out MidnightDBA.com - Free training in PowerShell, T-SQL, and Backup/Restore of databases MinionWare.net - Package of tools named MinionWare – If you consider Ola’s scripts to be the Gold standard, Minion is now the Platinum standard (in my not so humble opinion) DBAs@Midnight - Weekly web show that covers technical issues, community activities, and lots of NSFW fun (but you shouldn’t be in the office at midnight anyway) MidnightDBA.com/MidnightChef - Sean was a French chef and is adding a series of cooking videos to their YouTube channel

Brent Ozar Unlimited http://www.brentozar.com Awesome site for helping to introduce you to the SQL Server Community Excellent downloadable book on using Twitter All of the books recommended on this site are worth reading, but “The Whuffie Factor” by Tara Hunt is particularly useful Weekly Q & A where you can ask about problems you’re having, lots of fun too

School/Education Sites http://edx.org – Many MS specific courses (free or you can get a verified certificate for $29.00 to $99.00 which can be exported to your LinkedIn account) http://Udemy.org – Over 200 classes if you search for “SQL” and most are below $40.00, constant sales at $10.00 Khan Academy – Intro to SQL: Querying & Managing Data and many others http://www.cybrary.it – SQL Injection & many other courses http://www.sqlcourse.com/ - Great beginner courses https://mva.microsoft.com/ - Great free videos, beginner to advanced, on Microsoft technologies https://borntolearn.mslearn.net – Study groups & forums

Recommended Books Beginning SQL Server 2012 Administration – Grant Fritchey Microsoft SQL Server 2016: A Beginner’s Guide – Dusan Petkovic Troubleshooting SQL Server: A Guide for the Accidental DBA – Jonathan Kehayias and Ted Kruger Many free books from Red-Gate.com, including Jonathan & Ted’s book above The Whuffie Factor – Tara Hunt DBA Survivor – Thomas LaRock

Skills Needed To Take the Next Steps …Start now The skills necessary to succeed in navigating the waters of DBAdom

PowerShell Excellent for automating processes “Learn PowerShell or the phrase ‘Would you like fries with that?’” – Don Jones Ed Wilson The Scripting Guy https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/ http://powershell.com/cs/ http://stackoverflow.com/

Project Management www.pmi.org Excellent resource for the formal project management process. Recommend getting A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) — Fifth Edition and Successful Project Management (Gido and Clements) https://www.comptia.org/ http://www.projectmanagement.com

Effective Communication Skills Considerations Level of person talking to (CEO, PM, manager, administrator, fellow DBA, or user) Technical knowledge of that person Relevance The basic idea is what information is relevant to that person Higher level generally means address outcomes, cost, timing, etc. Is the 50,000 foot view. Forbes article on Why Communication Is Today's Most Important Skill http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2015/02/06/why-communication-is-todays-most-important-skill/#9bb714736388

Auditing Auditing is essential for healthy environment. Continuous regular auditing exposes issues that can be exploited by hackers or cause performance issues downline. PowerShell is excellent for this. SQL Security Audit example http://powershell.com/cs/media/p/15060.aspx Idera offers several tools https://www.idera.com/productssolutions/sqlserver SQLSentry offers several tools https://www.sqlsentry.com/

Risk Analysis Understand the different types and processes for RA Only true way to measure value of assets (hardware, software, data) There is software and procedures for performing RA Government Tool and Procedures - Security Risk Assessment https://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/security-risk-assessment https://www.techopedia.com/definition/16522/risk-analysis Recommend taking a class on Risk Assessment

Compliance Issues HIPAA http://whatishipaa.org/hipaa-compliance.php or http://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/index.html ITAR on the U.S. State Dept. Website https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/itar.html EAR on the U.S. Dept. of Commerce Website https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/itar.html Sarbanes Oxley on the Securities and Exchange Commission Website http://www.sec.gov/about/laws.shtml ISO 27001Information Security Management http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/management-standards/iso27001.htm

Compliance Issues ISO 27017 Cloud Security http://www.iso27001security.com/html/27017.html ISO27018 Cloud Privacy http://iso27001security.com/html/27018.html You may need to be aware of “Safe Harbor Laws”

Cloud Computing It’s here and it’s not going anywhere. “The cloud services companies of all sizes…The cloud is for everyone. The cloud is a democracy.” Marc Benioff - CEO - Salesforce.com “Our industry is going through quite a wave of innovation and it's being powered by a phenomenon which is referred to as the cloud.” Steve Balmer – CEO Microsoft Azure http://azure.Microsoft.com Amazon Web Services (AWS) http://aws.amazon.com

SQL High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HADR) Understand concepts of setting them up and troubleshooting them SQL Skills https://www.sqlskills.com/sql-server-training/iehadr/ Alan Hirt http://sqlha.com/mission-critical-sql-server-2/ Extremely important for the Senior DBA to know Understand different scenarios and technologies of HADR.

Networking Internally – server admins, storage admins, and managers of other teams. The importance of getting to know the other professionals you work with cannot be understated. Externally – The SQL Community (Local PASS, SQL Summit, SQL Saturdays, blogs, web sites, etc.) These events lead to contacts/resources that can assist with issues. Networking creates a resource pool for you to draw from when you need it.

Feedback Please provide feedback, good or bad. It’s the only way that I can improve for the next group. 