We've just gotten through the first half of 2011, and it's been a busy year for me. Between studying for the MCM exam and traveling to various events, it seems like I've packed a full year's worth of work into six months.

This past week I noticed two interesting posts that made me stop and think about evaluating the year so far from a DBA's perspective. First we had Brad McGehee's July question: What Do You Think are the Most Common DBA Pain Points? Each month Brad offers a question and a prize for opinions, and this one I found interesting. A DBA ought to be working constantly to minimize or mitigate any pain points in their job. After all, an Exceptional DBA is often insurance in the day to day workings of the databases, as they ought to be available and running. After a year on the job, I'd hope that DBAs had automated much of the daily work in managing systems and was working to proactively tune and improve things.

If I were actively managing systems, Brad's question would make me stop and think about the places where I can remove tedious tasks or which chronic issues I could address in the rest of the year. If you've got issues like this, drop a note on Brad's blog and perhaps win a prize.

The second post is related, and it's Jason Strate's July Monthly SQL Server Checklist. These are things that you ought to have automated, as well as have monitoring in place to let you know if they fail, but it's always a good idea to randomly double check. Can you restore your databases? Are you sure the encryption keys are available? Do you know the current patch level for your version from Microsoft and which systems might be behind, and why? Are you looking forward for future capacity needs?

This is a slow time of the year for many businesses, and it's a good time to evaluate the status of your systems and ensure they're protected, patched, and prepared for a disaster. Especially if you plan on getting in your own vacation time later in the year.

Steve Jones