At the time of this post, I am not in chilly Denver, but in sunny Puerto Rico! My husband and I are on a 15th wedding anniversary trip to Puerto Rico! But before I left, I wrote up this summary of last Friday’s episode. Enjoy!
476 voters this week! This week was a themed show – the contestants had to do something related to storage. It was easy to see the common themes running through their presentations this week, even if you did not know that. I highly recommend downloading the replay and listening to find out what you’re missing related to storage. I listen to each show at least twice to make sure I’m not missing anything for my readers.
Here’s what the voting looked like:
Second, third, and fourth places were really close.
I think Scott again went in order from least votes to most votes.
The Presentations
Ian Bjorhovde – I KYSS YOU! (Keep Your Storage Simple)
Ian had great graphics this week – I loved both the technical diagrams and the more humorous images. I happen to IM with Ian most days, and Ian is a perfectionist. I think of myself as a bit on the perfectionist side, but I have learned to let go more. Ian made a very small mistake in the middle of his presentation. He thought he was going into one slide when another one popped up. It was hardly noticeable when watching, but I think he was beating himself up over it a bit. I thought it was a clean presentation and a good topic for the time limit – giving nice technical syntactical details and also explaining with diagrams. You can be a DBA a long time and not look into what Ian’s talking about in this presentation.
Ian was not safe this week based on votes, but he was saved by the judges and moves on to the last presentation show next week. The question is, will he get out his network and secure a place in the final vote? If he doesn’t, will the judges save him yet again?
Ian’s Contact Info
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ian-bjorhovde/0/99/246
Twitter: @idbjorh
Ian’s Blog Articles here on db2commerce.com
Ian’s Podcast: http://www.pkgcache.com/
Ken Shaffer – Storage Wars: Behind the Iron Curtain or Dance of the 7 Veils
Ken had some good graphics and some good points to make – the underlying theme of his presentation was very similar to Ian’s. His graphics were more humorous than instructive. I liked how Ian laid things out in graphics a bit more. Ken also referred to the storage best practices document, which is excellent.
Some of Ken’s slides were a bit text heavy, but he did have a lot of information there. He talked through a number of layers, and it would have been nice to see those layers in a diagram. I think he had a bit too much info for 4 minutes, and skipped through some of it pretty fast. Overall, there was a lot of great information in the presentation, and it was clear and well done.
Ken was not safe this week based on votes, but the judges managed to talk Scott into letting them save him too. I think that was a great decision – I just hope he can get enough votes to get into the final vote next week!
Ken’s Contact Info
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenshaffer
Twitter: @aerodata
Raja – Blu Defies Gravity
Raja had a really slick and well put together presentation. I was excited with his graphics, and he really smartly narrowed down to a slice of BLU that fit well with the theme and in the few minutes. His animation was really incredible and so appropriate to describing the topic. He made the advantage of column-organized tables very clear. I would have liked to have seen it a bit more clearly stated that BLU is not for e-commerce/OLTP, but I think he ran out of time a bit on a slide he would have emphasized that more on. He also included specific syntax.
So why then, did the judges not save Raja? Well, I don’t have the inside track on that, but I think the reason might be that so many of us have seen so many presentations on BLU and how awesome IBM wants us to believe it is that, at least for me, it felt like a rehashing of a sales pitch out of IBM. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if I have to choose between that and Ian giving us specific commands to analyze storage on things I’m using right this moment, I too would choose Ian. With different competitors, Raja might have made it through to the next round.
Raja is out of the competition and we won’t be seeing more of him at this point. It sucks to be out in a round where you rocked it, but it’s another reminder of two facts about the competition this year: 1. There are a lot of really good presenters in the competition, and 2. This competition is sometimes more about getting your network to vote than it is about the presentations themselves.
Raja’s Contact Info
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lrajasekhar
Twitter: @raja_iaf
Mariana – Blu Acceleration Talking About Saving Storage
Mariana read some of the slides to us, which is a pet peeve of mine. But two out of three of her graphics were pretty good. I was not impressed with her first graphic or how she presented it. I liked how she clearly had played with the features she was talking about. I love presentations that show “science experiments” as Scott calls them. I think she could have done a bit better job of describing her experimentation. I would have liked to have seen the statements used to define each of her tables, and I also would have liked to see her with a third table, row organized WITH compression to show that difference. She finished nearly 30 seconds early, so had a bit more time.
Mariana is safe based on last week’s voting, and continues to the next round.
Prasad – Multi-Temperature Storage Management
I was a bit worried as early in the presentation, he was reading to us from a text heavy slide. But later on, he had some interesting graphics. He provided syntax, which is always nice. I very much liked the slide where he showed how to make a non-automatic storage tablespace use automatic storage and the rebalance that goes along with this. I wonder if a tablespace can be altered to not be automatic storage once it already is? I would have liked to see more on monitoring (such as output of the monitoring methods he showed), but he didn’t really have time.
My main criticism for Prasad would be similar to what I said about Raja. This is stuff we’ve been fed from IBM, and on this topic, it was two years ago. However, I think Prasad did avoid repeating the marketing spiels by showing changing a tablespace to use automatic storage.
Prasad was safe this week based on votes, and continues to the next round.
Prasad’s Contact Info:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/prasad-pande/24/292/a23
Twitter: @pandeprasad1
Blog: http://prasadspande.wordpress.com/
Saurabh – The db2relocatedb tool
I think Saurabh did a good job of covering the db2relocatedb tool. What’s not to love about someone referencing my blog? He did a good job noting the drawbacks of the db2relocatedb tool. Maybe it’s because the databases I work with are all e-commerce and therefore on the smaller side, but every time I’ve played with the db2relocatedb tool, I have come to the conclusion that a redirected restore is easier. I almost feel that db2relocatedb is a tool for Oracle DBAs that are used to mucking about with datafiles and stuff at that level. But I did see a scenario where it could be useful if all I wanted to do was to change the database name. And maybe it’s faster than redirected restore for larger databases.
Saurabh’s graphics were basic, but helpful. He spoke clearly, and there were a few things in there that I didn’t know despite having blogged on the topic, so good job overall.
Saurabh was safe this week based on votes and continues to the next round.
Saurabh’s Contact Information:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/saurabh-agrawal/23/845/a8a
Twitter: @saurabhska
Blog: http://saurabhska.wordpress.com/
Michael – (AST) Automatic Storage Tips and Tricks
Michael is a regular guest blogger here at db2commerce.com. The thing that really struck me with his presentation today was that he was covering the same material that many others had covered, but it was just so clear with the right touch of humor. After so much rehashing of topics that we’ve all heard before, I’m still puzzling over how his presentation seemed so much better. I truly don’t think that it’s because I’m biased since Michael is my friend. But I can’t put my finger on the difference. He told us about Automatic storage, but he started out not talking about the often repeated use cases, but telling us how much simpler it is. There are a couple of criticisms that I do have for Michael. I think a couple of his slides that were biased toward the 9.7 way of having only one storage group rather than the 10.1 way of potentially having multiple storage groups. I also think that a graphic showing us the layers of abstraction between the table and the filesystem, and showing the additional layer that storage groups add in would have been nice. Michael is still at the top of my list.
Michael got judge Klaas Brant to say “shiznit”, and I think that made my day.
Michael’s votes probably put him in first place this week, and he moves on to the next round.
Michael’s Contact Info
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkrafick
Twitter: @MKrafick
Mike’s Blog Articles here on db2commerce.com
Summary
Next week is the final chance for the competitors to present. My guess is that the top 3 may be safe based on votes, and one or two may be saved by the judges to be eligible for the final vote. Listen to the replay and vote!
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