Mature technology teams don’t just automate, they architect their automation through standards, structure, and feedback loops. The result is a repeatable system where everything from design to deployment is governed, auditable, and scalable. Build Your Standards Top-Down, Not Bottom-Up Before we get started, it’s important to address a critical concept. Too many organizations rush to publish “standards” for…More
Unlocking Success: Revamping Your DBA Resume for Maximum Impact
Navigating the landscape of a DBA job search can certainly pose its challenges. However, what often amplifies the difficulty is the absence of a standout resume. Over my career as both a DBA and a DBA manager, I’ve overseen the hiring of numerous DBAs, sifting through a multitude of resumes, each seemingly a duplicate of…More
SQL Server Backups on Secondary Replicas: Best Practice or Bad Idea?
Note: this post covers backup behaviors prior to SQL Server 2025… With Availability Groups, there’s long been a common theme in the database community: “Offload your backups to a secondary replica — it saves load on the primary.” It sounds great in theory. And I know people who’ve done it successfully… and others who thought they were…More
Imposter Syndrome: Taking Off the Mask
I started my blog to push the boundaries of what I believe to be true. I’ve been very successful throughout my career as a DBA. Regardless of the role, the work always seemed to “click”. Problems came up, and I handled them. New challenges appeared, and I figured them out too. Being the go-to DBA…More
When Your SQL Data File Stops Growing at 16TB — Here’s Why
To be honest, this isn’t something I ever thought I needed to know, until one day, I found a database where transactions were failing with the error: “PRIMARY filegroup is full.” Naturally, I did what any DBA would do and checked whether auto-growth was enabled. It was. So why wasn’t the file growing? The answer…More
What I’m looking forward to in SQL Server 2022
It’s been a a several weeks since Microsoft started releasing details on SQL Server 2022. Here are two of the new features I’m most interested in. Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization Parameter Sniffing has been plaguing SQL Server for years, and it sounds like Microsoft is finally putting some real effort into fixing the problem. Traditionally,…More
Why a Database Inventory Is the Foundation of Your DBA Success
You’ve just taken a new job — congratulations! Now you’re responsible for 50+ SQL Server instances, maybe more. So what’s your 30, 60, or 90-day plan look like? All great ideas. But none of those should come first. Step One: Know What You Actually Manage Many of us have been there… Then an application goes…More
Stop using the OR operator in UPDATES
Something I see regularly is developers trying to write stored procedures to service multiple update scenarios. They typically accomplish this by adding multiple input parameters to the stored procedure and then using an OR operator in the update statement to match the parameter that a value was provided for. In many scenarios this works okay…More
Brendan McCaffrey 