It’s been a hectic couple of weeks here. You may remember I started a new job a couple of months ago and I was one of two DBAs. About three weeks ago, the other DBA left and I’ve been climbing a steep learning curve trying to get caught up on all the intricacies of this particular environment. Actually, it hasn’t been too bad. Before the other DBA left, he did a fairly decent job of getting me up to speed. And luckily, this company does have some basic documentation and processes in place. The hardest part so far has been figuring out which server and database people are referring to when they tell me they need something done.
Although the workload is a little bit heavier with half the DBA team gone, it does provide me with a great opportunity. Now that I am on my own, I get to do things my way. I can put my stamp on the systems and set up everything to run the way I want it to. I do not have to worry about continuing to do something because “that’s they way we’ve always done it.” All in all, things aren’t too bad, but I have come across more databases with indexes that are 99% fragmented than I’d like. Ditto with jobs that shrink databases every week.
I’m starting a systematic process of going through each server and each database and verifying database settings, maintenance plans, notification settings, etc. I’ve already verified all the backups, so at least that is something. It’s a slow process, but one that gives me peace of mind.
Sounds like fun times. I’m more or less in the same boat. Most of the current databases I work with are named by engineers so I get requests to update the DAE22353 database and add the ILT_E32333DDDe22_Test_Engine user to the ILT_E32333DDDe22 Database.
Since my company didn’t have a DBA for about 4 months, I got slammed with work right off the bat. Luckily, now that I am getting a handle on all the projects going on, I can finally set up the servers the way they are supposed to be set up.
Trying to work through that first day checklist 4 months into the job.