A couple of years ago, I wrote about why you don’t need a blockchain. Blockchain is one long transaction log that always gets written to and is never backed up. It’s a ledger, more or less, with some math. And while distributed ledgers can …
Some, maybe. But not most. Look, I have this theory. I also have data. And as with most stories in my life, it all starts with a trip to Las Vegas. In 2017, I attended my first AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. For a …
This post is not meant to be a typical “here’s how you work from home” post. This is not a post about routines, habits, equipment, or if you should shower before noon. No, this post is meant to offer my perspective about work, productivity, …
Like so many things at SolarWinds, this blog series arose out of a genuine desire to help our fellow IT practitioners by sharing our experiences and offering lessons we learned along the way. In this case, our goal wasn’t to help you monitor, manage, …
Ransomware attacks are on the rise—it feels like not a week goes by where you don’t hear about some company or municipality being the victim of a ransomware attack. While these attacks are prevalent, there are some things you can do to protect your …
As a database administrator (aka DBA, or Default Blame Acceptor) throughout my career, I’ve worked with a myriad of developers, system administrators, and business users who have all had the same question—why is my query (or application) slow? Many organizations lack a full-time DBA, …
While there are many silly depictions of machine learning and artificial intelligence throughout Hollywood, its reality delivers significant benefits. Administrators today oversee so many tasks, like system monitoring, performance optimizing, networking configuration, and more. Many of these tasks can be monotonous and tedious. Also, …
Quite some time ago, when we added the ability to monitor MySQL query performance statistics from MySQL’s PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA, we learned a number of valuable lessons, still worth sharing. There are definitely right and wrong ways to do it. If you are looking to the P_S tables …
There have been so many changes in data center technology in the past 10 years, it’s hard to keep up at times. We’ve gone from a traditional server/storage/networking stack with individual components, to a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) where it’s all in one box. The …
Databases have a lot of jargon, and cardinality is one of those words that experienced people tend to forget that they didn’t know once upon a time. But if you don’t know it—and it takes a while to really get comfortable with cardinality—it’s super confusing when …