- Recording Date: April 30, 2025
- Topic: DBA on Vacation Services
- Host: Steve Stedman / Shannon Lindsay
- Listen on Spotify
Stedman SQL Podcast Season 2 Episode 15 DBA on Vacation
Steve Stedman and Shannon Lindsay discuss the Stedman Solutions’ DBA on Vacation service, which provides temporary expert SQL Server support when the full-time DBA is on leave. They highlight the risks of unmonitored servers, such as performance issues, missed backups, and potential downtime. The service includes proactive monitoring, issue resolution, on-call support, and customizable duration coverage. Stedman Solutions, with over 100 years of combined SQL Server experience, ensures seamless handoffs and detailed post-vacation reports. They offer a free 30-minute consultation and a special offer of a free database health monitor license for new clients.
Podcast Transcript
Steve Stedman 00:00
Welcome to the Stedman SQL podcast, where we make SQL server management easier. I’m Steve Stedman, founder of Stedman solutions, and this is season two, Episode 15.
Shannon Lindsay 00:28
And I’m Shannon Lindsay here to bring fun and ask the real questions. Today we’re going to talk about what happens when your DBA goes on vacation, and how Stedman solutions can save the day.
Steve Stedman 00:40
So, your DBA deserves a break, but your SQL server doesn’t. Yeah, nobody has vacation time associated with their SQL Server, so stick with us to learn about how our DBA on vacation service can help you when your DBA is out, so when your full time DBA is sipping margaritas on the beach, who’s watching your SQL Server, our DBA on vacation service steps in to help things run smoothly.
Shannon Lindsay 01:06
It’s like a babysitter for your database, reliable, professional, no messes.
Steve Stedman 01:12
So you can visit Stedmansolutions.com to learn more about our service. But let’s just dive into it. The problem is, when your DBA goes on vacation and you don’t have a backup, you end up in a position with no coverage. DBAs are typically hard working, managing your backups, your performance and emergencies, and they need time off to recharge. Now I know a few that maybe have been put in positions where they haven’t been able to take vacation, and that’s never a good thing. So the risk of not having coverage is your servers are unmonitored, and that can lead to performance issues, failed or missed backups or downtime when your DBA is out, you have those non DBA staff members, the people who try to cover and they may struggle with complex SQL server issues, and I’ve seen servers go down because a junior administrator missed a critical alert when a DBA was on vacation and they didn’t react to it in time. So some common scenarios here would be small IT teams or single DBA shops or companies that have no backup plan. And when I use backup plan in that terminology, I’m referring to personnel backup, not database backups. So if you’re in that scenario where that one DBA on your team is critical important to what you’re doing, and they go on vacation, well we can be there to help you out.
Shannon Lindsay 02:41
That doesn’t sound like a fun situation for anybody. So say, What happens if a database crashes? Well, the DBAs, you know, like you said, sitting on a beach drinking margaritas.
Steve Stedman 02:55
Well, that can be a bad thing, and it can be bad in a couple of ways. So without a plan, you’re really scrambling. You might have to call that database administrator on their vacation, or hoping that Google Chat, GPT or grok has the answer for you. Neither is ideal. Now I remember, gosh, eight or nine years ago, before we had the team that we have at Stedman solutions. Now, I was on vacation in Hawaii, I was on the beach, and I got a text message from a client that was having an emergency issue, and my wife and I were on the beach, and I had to go back to the room for two hours to work on fixing this issue. And after that, I learned that we need to have better coverage, and that’s when we started putting two or three people assigned to every client that we work with. So nobody’s ever put in that position that I was putting in that point.
Shannon Lindsay 03:51
It’s kind of like leaving your house without asking somebody to watch it for you and just hoping that nothing happens.
Steve Stedman 03:57
Yep, our service is like the house sitter for your SQL Server, we’ll make sure you’re covered. So our DBA on vacation service, this is something we’ve been doing for a few years now, and basically it provides temporary expert SQL Server support when your full time DBA is away with that. Things that we cover include monitoring, where we have proactive checks on performance, backups and alerts using tools like our database health monitor, issue resolution, if things come up where you need help, we can handle incidents like slow queries, deadlocks, corruption, things like that, on call support, where we are available to help with those emergencies and customizable duration coverage for a week, two weeks or even longer, depending on how long that DBA is out.
Now with that, we plan to have seamless handoffs, where prior to the vacation, we can meet with your DBA, get a briefing of what’s going on, or catch your DBA up after he or she returned from the. Vacation. So our team has over 100 years of combined SQL Server experience, and we’ve seen it all. So here’s how it works. Before your DBA leaves on vacation, we coordinate with your team to get access and understanding of your environment, things like critical application SQL Server versions and understanding known known issues. During the coverage period, we monitor and respond to issues and document the actions, and then after the vacation, we provide a detailed report to the DBA for continuity, and if needed, we’ll meet with them and give them kind of the rundown of what happened. And during this we use the tools we’ll leverage, database health monitor for real time insights into your database status.
Shannon Lindsay 05:44
Is this just for bigger companies or, you know, can small businesses use it too?
Steve Stedman 05:50
It’s really not tied to the size of the company as much as the size of your DBA staff. Now, I’ve seen some giant companies that only have one or two DBAs, but I’ve also seen big companies that have 30 DBAs. And if you’re in a position where you have one or maybe two DBAs, and one of them is on vacation and the other one is out for something, well, we can cover for that. If you have 30 DBAs on your staff, you don’t need us for this. You’ve got it covered. But if you’re in a position where you’re in a bind, if your DBA is not available, we can help when they’re on vacation.
Shannon Lindsay 06:29
What kinds of problems have you fixed during those vacations?
Steve Stedman 06:34
Everything from failed backups to sluggish servers due to missing indexes, things like that, that we can catch and fix before the DBA got back. Sometimes it’s DBA and vacation. We’ve also covered for extended, extended sick leave if someone’s out for something as well. So here’s an example. Client story, their DBA was out for about two weeks. We caught a disk space issue early, and we optimized the log backups and ended up saving them from a potential outage, the DBA came back to happy boss.
Shannon Lindsay 07:07
It’s perfect, like a superhero.
Steve Stedman 07:10
Yeah, I don’t know. I wish everybody thought of us like superheroes, but maybe that would just blow up my ego. So some of the key benefits here is that your SQL Server will be in expert hands, so your DBA can relax on their vacation, and the people who aren’t on vacation, the manager or the team, they’ll be able to know that you’ve got good coverage. We help prevent downtime and keep critical apps running, and you only pay for the coverage period with this, there’s no long term commitment. We’re not trying to come in and wipe out your DBA. We’re trying to come in and cover for them and help out when they need us. And we don’t just fix the problems, but we also help optimize, and then we help train you, your team and your DBA as to what we did. So basically, we’re trusted expertise. Stedman solutions, reputation speaks for that on our SQL Server excellence.
Shannon Lindsay 08:01
It sounds like a pretty simple decision. Why wouldn’t somebody want to use that kind of service?
Steve Stedman 08:08
Well, some people think that they can just wing it. I mean, one missed alert could cost 1000s of dollars in downtime. Our service is kind of like an insurance for your database. I don’t like to use the term insurance, but kind of like that, where if something goes wrong, we’ll be there to help you take care of it. Now, the big differentiator here is that unlike generic, IT support, we’re SQL Server specialist. Everybody on our team has extensive SQL Server experience, and we use tools like database health monitor, built specifically for SQL Server to catch your issues fast.
Shannon Lindsay 08:42
So you’re not just putting out the problems you’re preventing them, right?
Steve Stedman 08:46
We’re able to help monitor and hopefully catch those problems before they become an issue. So at this point, the way to get started with this would be to visit Stedman solutions.com and click on our DBA on vacation service, or click on our contact us page and schedule a free 30 minute consultation to discuss your needs. We’ll tailor a plan for your DBAs vacation dates, and we’d like to book at least a month in advance to ensure a smooth setup. Now we have a special offer here. So when you contact us, if you mention the Stedman SQL podcast, when you book, we’ll throw in database, health monitor license for free for your team to use during the vacation and post vacation for up to three months.
Shannon Lindsay 09:35
That’s an awesome deal. Who doesn’t love a free tool?
Steve Stedman 09:39
I can remember a vacation. Gosh, it’s probably 20 years ago now. This was before smartphones, when we had text messaging that would come in and you had to actually, like, delete each one of them to get them out of the phone. And it wasn’t as good as a smartphone back then, but I’d gone on vacation. I’d gone to cross the mountains, and I was. Camping on the lake for a week, and I was totally out of cell phone range, and when I got back in, my phone had probably 400 text messages on it, and it’s not like text messaging today. You had to manually go through and delete each one of those 400 messages one by one. And my wife was driving and I was in and sitting there on her way home, and I probably spent an hour and a half just deleting text messages. Well, that was after I called to figure out what the real issues were and figured out what the problems were. But the point here was we didn’t have good coverage at that point, and I want to make sure that you’re never put in that position where I was coming back from vacation and getting slammed. So don’t let your database administrators vacation become a database nightmare. Let Stedman solutions keep your SQL Server humming.
Shannon Lindsay 10:50
And let your DBA enjoy their pina colada without a single panicked call.
Steve Stedman 10:55
Yep, absolutely. So your DBA deserves a vacation and your business deserves uninterrupted SQL server performance, and our DBA and vacation services can help with that and make sure that we’re delivering both and you’ve got good coverage.
Shannon Lindsay 11:12
It’s like hiring a professional keep an eye on your stuff while you’re gone.
Steve Stedman 11:16
Absolutely. And I know, I know what it’s like to be in that position where you’re on vacation and you’re being pulled in to deal with an issue, and fortunately, we’ve built the team to cover that so that we don’t have to deal with that so often. But we’re there to cover for your DBA when they need the help, so head to Stedman solutions.com to book your DBA on vacation service or download database health monitor for free to take a look at it today.
Shannon Lindsay 11:42
And don’t forget to subscribe to the Stedman SQL podcast on Spotify, YouTube. And the short links for those are Stedman.us/podcastYouTube and Stedman.us/podcastSpotify.
Steve Stedman 12:01
Well, thanks everyone for tuning in. I’m Steve Stedman
Shannon Lindsay 12:05
and I’m Shannon Lindsay. Keep your SQL Servers happy and we’ll see you next time where we talk about SQL Server wait types.
Steve Stedman 12:20
Thanks for watching our video. I’m Steve, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Please click the thumbs up if you liked it. And if you want more information, more videos like this, click the subscribe button and hit the bell icon so that you can get notified of future videos that we create.