Today, I had to troubleshoot a situation where, following a myriad of improbable events:
A MS SQL mirrored database was in “recovery pending” state on one server.
We had to bring it back online on the server.
I initially tried to force the database back online by issuing:
ALTER DATABASE <db_name> SET PARTNER OFF;
However, I’ve got as a reply the message”Database cannot be opened due to inaccessible files or insufficient memory or disk space. See the SQL Server error log for details”. Of course, permissions were fine and there was plenty of free space.
The solution was to:
Move the database and log files (.mdf, .ldf) to another location.
Drop the database.
Move the database and backup files back to their initial location.
This month, from August 11th to August 14th, I had the opportunity to attend Gartner Catalyst conference held in Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego. Catalyst is Gartner conference for technical professionals, this year’s theme was “Architecting the Digital Business: Scaling and Securing Mobility, Cloud and Data”. This year’s topics were: Securing public cloud, Making big data real, BYOD do’s and don’ts, Cloud deployment models and Protecting mobile data.
There was seven tracks to choose sessions from:
A. Architecting Mobility to Drive Business Innovation B. Information: The Lifeblood of the Digital Enterprise C. Architecting Cloud Services for a Scalable IT Foundation D. Protecting Your Business From Global Cyber Risks E. Maximizing Employee Productivity in a Mobile- and Cloud-Driven World F. Software-Defined Data Center: The Blueprint for the Agile Infrastructure G. Driving Innovation in the New Era of Software Development
Even if the tracks B (Data) and D (Security)are subjects that always fascinated me and around which my career has been focused at some point, I decided to attend mostly sessions of tracks C and E as they were more consistent with the researches and projects we have conducted in the last years and with the strategy we are taking to meet business orientation and needs.
I enjoyed most of the sessions I have attended: the content was interesting and satisfying. However, as interesting as sessions were, I was left in appetite: I had the feeling that I didn’t listen to anything really new or revolutionary, but it’s a personal opinion. After all, Gartner must satisfy the different tastes of hundreds – or was it thousands – of visitors. I personally preferred the most technical sessions or the one with tricks or observations and real facts. To name a few: the presentation from Angelina Troy “Clash of the New Storage Giants: Amazon, Azure, and Google Comparison”, Eric Maiwald “Network Security for Private and Hybrid Clouds”, Simon Richard “Hybrid Cloud Network Connections: The Missing Link”, were some of my favorites. Presenters were great and the content has gone beyond my expectations. They presented real numbers, detailed comparisons of different cloud offerings, explained different solutions for some common problems we will face with some cloud implementation.
Apart from the different sessions, Catalyst is also a place to attend some workshops on different topics,listen to end-user case studies, meet analyst one-on-one to discuss any subject you wanted much more. To be honest, one of the biggest challenge I had is that there was always so much things going on, I would have needed to duplicate myself 3 or 4 times. Lunch time and happy hour was a good moment for sharing and for discussions with peers about various challenges we face with technology in our enterprises and industries. It was a good opportunity to get some feedback and suggestions from people in the field like us.
Finally, my favorite part of Catalyst were definitely the Guest Keynote sessions with Bill Nye and Tom Wujec. They were entertaining, refreshing interesting and relevant to their audience.
“One test is worth a thousand experts opinions – Tex Johnston” after doing barrel-rolling a Boeing 707 prototype.
I really liked the quote from Tex Johnston, and I found that it applied very well to the world of Information Technology! I’m sure I will reuse it someday!
The presentation of Tom Wujec about “Visualizing Business strategies” was fascinating and thought–provoking, he gave insight of visualization techniques we could use in enterprise to stimulate creativity and attain better productivity while lowering costs.
