Brendan McCaffrey

Disaster Recovery Is Not a Replacement for Backup & Recovery

The Key Differences (and Why They Matter)
The Hidden Cost of Being the Smartest Person in the Room

Why Being “The Expert” Can Kill Your Growth, Influence, and Career In tech, especially in the database world, we celebrate expertise. We respect the person who knows every wait type, every DMV, every undocumented trace flag. But there’s a danger hidden in becoming too comfortable being “the smartest person in the room”. I’ve seen it…
Why Bad Data Type Choices Kill Performance

Choosing a data type seems simple… If you want to store text, you have a few choices: VARCHAR, NVARCHAR, CHAR, NCHAR. If you’re storing dates, you pick DATE, DATETIME or DATETIME2 depending on precision. These seem obvious, yet I still see people storing dates in CHAR(8), routinely. So what actually happens when you get your data types wrong? 1. Implicit Conversions (aka CONVERT_IMPLICIT) This…
My Data & Leadership Monthly Roundup — November 2025

Opening Thoughts I had a great time attending the PASS Data Community Summit for the first time last month. It was incredible meeting so many of you face-to-face. I’m looking forward to attending more meetups and conferences in 2026. My New Posts From Last Month Why Email Is Outdated: Embrace Modern Workplace Tools Stop Wasting…
Backups on Secondary Replicas in SQL Server 2025: What’s New, What’s Better, and What Still Worries Me

Backups on Secondary Replicas in SQL Server 2025: What’s New, What’s Better, and What Still Worries Me Back in 2022, I wrote a post called SQL Server Backups on Secondary Replicas: Best Practice or Bad Idea? At the time, the limitations were clear: backups on secondaries were restricted, operationally risky, and often misunderstood. Three years…
Stop Wasting Money on SQL Server Cores — Reduce Licensing Costs the Smart Way

I made a blog post recently called Hard Work Isn’t Enough. Add Value or Get Stuck. If you haven’t read that yet, I suggest you go check that out first. Minimizing CPU core counts is a perfect example of how to add value, and is arguably one of the easiest ways to do so. I…
Email Should No Longer Be the Default

Email should be the exception, not the default. For decades, email has been the backbone of corporate communication. It was simple, reliable, and revolutionary in its time. But the way we work has changed dramatically. Today’s workplace has countless tools at its disposal: instant messaging, ticketing systems, project management platforms, shared documents, knowledge bases, and…
Hard Work Isn’t Enough. Add Value or Get Stuck.

The Most Important Thing You Can Do in Your Job: Add Value Companies hire people for many reasons, but it’s no secret that the end goal is always to create more value than they cost. If you think about it like an investment, the logic becomes obvious. No one buys a $100 stock hoping to…
If You’re Not Automating Yourself Out of a Job, Someone Else Will

How embracing automation can secure your tech career, not threaten it. Many DBAs and Platform Engineers still hesitate when the topic of automation comes up. Some find it daunting. Others quietly fear it, as if automating their work might make them replaceable. But the truth is simple: if you’re not automating yourself out of a…
Leadership Isn’t About Doing More — It’s About Creating More Leaders

When I first stepped into leadership, it wasn’t because I wanted authority or a title. It was because I realized something simple but powerful: I was good at what I did – but I was only one person. If I could coach, mentor, and elevate others to think and operate the same way, my impact…