This post has been rattling around in my head for months, and with SQL Server 2019 on the horizon, I figured I’d finally put my thoughts down, especially since I know we might hit some of the same issues when we upgrade. A quick background, when I became the DBA at Stack Overflow, we had various versions of SQL Server in place — the majority were at some level of SQL Server 2016, each with a different CU or SP installed.

Almost a year ago, in November 2017, I moved back into a more technical role at Stack Overflow and became a Database Administrator. During this time, I have wanted to relaunch my blog, as it’s been over three years since I really wrote anything (yes, I’m terrible). Well, that time has finally come. After spending a few weeks, looking at various options to replace Wordpress, I finally decided on using Hugo and Netlify.

Well it’s been an interesting couple months and there are quite a few changes going on in my life, but before I get into what’s coming up, I feel that I need to give a bit of an overview of my journey thus far. I never thought about becoming a developer. When I was growing up, I loved school (yeah, I’m weird), I loved math and science (even weirder), I was going to be a doctor, work on genetics, or something similar.

A few weeks ago, we were running into severe disk space and memory issues on our development servers at work. Our set-up is a bit odd, we have 3 servers - one for the transactions, one for the web interface, and the final one for reporting. Using transactional replication we have databases that can exist on all 3 servers. Yes, it’s can be a real nightmare to maintain, but anyone who works with replication already knows this.

A few weeks bit over a month ago, I took the plunge and attended my very first SQL Saturday, SQL Saturday #370 in Phoenix. I’ve never had a chance to go to any of the local user group events or another SQL Saturday due to scheduling issues, etc. but this year I reshuffled things so I could take part. I’m really glad that I did, I truly learned a lot of stuff and I also realized I know more than I probably give myself credit for.