SQLServerPedia

At the West Michigan SQL Server User Group last night, I asked a few questions out of curiosity to see what other DBAs thought about some current issues.

Are you having a hard time hiring DBAs? None of the audience was, actually, because they couldn’t get any money to hire new staff.  One DBA in attendance was actively looking for a position and hadn’t been able to find one in the last couple of months, something I’d never heard in Texas or Florida.

Are you installing SQL 2008 for testing in the next 60 days? About 30% of the audience was, and the rest said they didn’t have the time.

Are you using virtualization for any servers (not just SQL?) About 40% were.

Are you using virtualization for SQL Server? No one used it in production, and about 10% used it for development.

What’s the next skill you want to learn? A few attendees said SSIS, and one attendee said he wanted to get better at backup & recovery.  I followed up to ask if anyone was considering PowerShell, and no one was.  (I’m curious to see what kind of adoption PowerShell gets – will it be like CLR in the database?)

Have you read up on HP Polyserve? About 40% of the audience had done some research on HP’s consolidation solutions.  I hadn’t heard of HP Polyserve until a few months ago.  I’m not endorsing it, but everything I’ve read and heard has been pretty interesting.

Is anyone running SQL Server in Windows-only authentication mode? No one was – everyone uses mixed mode authentication.  One attendee said that even if the application said they only needed Windows authentication, he still used mixed mode because they might revise their needs later.  This poll result surprised me because I thought maybe I was the only one stuck in mixed-mode.  Glad to hear I’m not alone!