Thursday, October 08, 2009

It's all about that other stuff

A couple times a year, we take our hot DB system and switch it to the warm DB system. Sometimes this warm DB system is a newer system with better hardware and the like. Its often a step up from where we are currently. We've gotten pretty good at switching from one hot system to a warm system, flipping statuses of these as we go. There are a lot of moving parts, and a lot of people involved, and a lot of prep work and practicing that goes into these switches. Its not for the faint of heart, but like most of our tasks, its not rocket science either. Just takes time, planning, and execution. The more of each we can put against these items, the better the outcome.

We just had a successful switch that we've been prepping for for weeks. Lots of dry runs occur prior to the fateful task. Today, I've been applying these same principals to another project I'm working on. Trying to envision all the possible tasks needed, creating a project plan, seeing thru the cracks, a little fortune telling, and even some guessing all were on the menu today. A Word doc was started to get the day rolling, a Visio diagram was created, and some project plans were also created. Some days, its not about the SQL. Its about the database. Its about the business. Its about, wow, all that stuff we claimed we were interested in when we interviewed for the position, but secretly only wanted to write TSQL.

I just wanted to note that it did happen, and be able to reach back in time, sometime in the future, and remember today.

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