-
Learn PowerShell the Easy Way Without AI
When I mentor others, the question I hear most is, “How do I actually start automating with PowerShell?” The advice my mentees usually get from others lately is “Just go
-
Is AI Making Me Dumber Or More Efficient?
The last few months have felt like living in a twilight zone. Everywhere I turn, it is the same message. More AI. Use AI. AI will take jobs. AI will
-
DBRE Consistency & Automation Checklist
Use this checklist to assess your environment, identify gaps, and make automation reliable. Start small and do one section at a time. How to Use This Checklist 1. Environment Consistency
-
Time, The Foundation for Effective Operational Capacity Planning
When it comes to managing the capacity of operational and infrastructure teams (like DBAs, DBREs, SREs, and PFEs), the traditional product development metric of using story points often doesn’t work
-
A Beginner’s Guide to Roadmaps for DBREs and DBAs
If you work in operations, whether you are a DBA, DBRE, SRE, or somewhere in between, you already know most work is urgent. Something always needs fixing, tuning, patching, scaling,
-
Understanding the Basic Architecture of Azure Managed Cassandra
I’ve been learning about Azure Managed Cassandra recently, and it’s very different from the usual relational SQL Server database. The documentation and tutorials can seem confusing at first, but once
-
My First Step in AI-Driven Ops
Automating SQL Server to Jira with Python (Phase 1) I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about observability and how I can use AI to automate fixing problems, not
-
Knowledge Hoarding and What Changed My Perspective
Last year, while speaking at PASS about imposter syndrome, another topic that kept coming up in conversations was knowledge hoarding. At the time, I didn’t fully understand it. I’ve always
-
Is That Index Really Fixing Your ORM Query Performance or Just Adding Costs?
Recently, I thought a database query in a plan was straightforward. It looked innocent until I noticed strange behavior. The deeper I dug, the more I realized many people might
-
From Reactive DBA to Proactive DBRE, Building Trust Through Reliability
Most DBAs start their careers in a firefighting mindset. I sure did. Systems go down, war rooms are daily, alerts blow up, and dashboards light up like Grandma’s Christmas tree.
