Technology

At OptimaData, we regularly receive requests to investigate disappointing database performance. Often the organization has already had the conversation with the software vendor. A common response from the vendor is: the database server has insufficient CPU or memory. But how much processing power and memory is actually sufficient? And what can still be done if the application still responds slowly, even if the database server has sufficient hardware capacity? In this blog, Dimitri Choustov explains where possible improvements can be found.

We once attended a demo where a cloud database was deployed. Five minutes and it was there. That makes your mouth drop. Doesn't it? Or does this paint a slightly too simplistic picture of what is involved in the - proper and secure - deployment of a cloud database? In this blog, Mark van der Haar shares a number of points to keep in mind during an Azure SQL deployment.

When companies and organizations have a technical issue, they often look for resources. There is not enough specific knowledge, experience or technical skills in-house to solve the problem themselves. Unfortunately, especially within larger organizations, hiring capacity is seen as a generic HR procurement process. This too often results in the wrong person for the wrong price. In other words, a pedestal without a monkey. In this blog, we try to expose this problem.

If you have over thirty years of experience as a DBA, you would think that you have made all the mistakes at least once. But it's very easy to misunderstand, knows Thomas Spoelstra, Senior Database Reliability Engineer and DBA at OptimaData. In this blog, he talks about how missing one word can lead to an awkward situation. And how it can still turn into a success for all parties.

When we think of sustainability, our IT systems is not the first thing that comes to mind. Yet digitalization also has an impact on the environment. In this blog, Cindy Beernink, database consultant at OptimaData, talks about what choices you can think about if you want to move more sustainably through database land.

Ola Hallengrens SQL Server Maintenance Solution is designed by Ola Hallengren, an MCITP database administrator and database developer, who has been working with SQL Server since 2001. The solution is specifically designed to perform maintenance tasks on any Microsoft SQL Server database and consists of backup, integrity check and maintenance of indexes and statistics. In this blog, we tell you what in our opinion are the seven benefits of this solution.

Whether in Microsoft SQL Server or any other database environment, giving too many and too high permissions can pose security risks. The more people have all rights, the greater the risk becomes and the greater the chance that you will lose grip and control of your IT environment. Mark van der Haar describes a number of real-life situations in this blog.

The cloud is popular, very popular. But the cloud does not exist: there are different cloud models – public, private and hybrid – and there are roughly three main types of cloud computing: SaaS, IaaS and PaaS. Part of PaaS is DBaaS. What is DBaaS, what are the pros and cons, and does DBaaS make a DBA obsolete? We give you the answers in this blog.

In recent years, ‘someone else's computer in a different place’ is no longer a sufficient explanation of what the cloud actually is. Cloud-native has become a way of working. That doesn't just mean working ín the cloud, but it's about making full use of the technology that the cloud can offer. Issues such as scalability, efficiency, agility and cost saving motivate organizations to develop and apply more and more cloud-native technology. Martijn Wallet gave an interview at the KubeCon & CloudNativeCon conference in Valencia about how we at OptimaData apply cloud-native technology when working with clients.

If a red light on your dashboard turns on, most people call the garage - or the roadside assistance - with lightning speed. But if an application suddenly slows down, few people are inclined to do anything about it. That’s a missed opportunity. In this blog Martijn Wallet explains the benefits of having your database regularly serviced.

The popularity and adoption of open source software and databases continues to grow. Even the government is catching on. Yet there are still concerns about the reliability of open source solutions. How reliable is a product that is developed in all openness? Can't malicious people just get hold of it? Or does transparency make things safer?

UpCloud is an European cloud provider based in Finland that focuses on companies that need reliable, fast cloud services. In addition to cloud servers, UpCloud also provides other services, such as object storage and managed databases for MySQL and PostgreSQL environments. Because UpCloud and OptimaData have joined forces, UpCloud can now also offer custom solutions to customers with complex database issues. Jasper Jonk, Business Development Manager, talks about the added value of our partnership in this blog.

When you're just starting out with your IT environment, everything is still very manageable. But once you're a few years down the road, you might find yourself with a tangle of databases. Centralizing can be the solution, Eric Gipon tells us how in this blog.

Ransomware attacks. They are becoming more common and have an increasing impact. In this blog, our colleague Thomas Brinkman discusses three best practices for reducing data loss with a good database strategy.

In part 1 of this blog - Help! MySQL is spinning out of control - we wrote about performance challenges you may face when your database grows and which pitfalls you should take into account if you want to be well prepared. In short: what you need to think about beforehand to be able to grow flexibly along with your database. In this blog we want to give you the 6 most important parts you can pay attention to and which parameters are of influence.

Recently, we have been receiving regular consulting requests about MySQL or MariaDB environments. The industries where the problems arise vary and the type and size of the organization are very diverse. From large payment platforms, comparison sites, booking platforms, sporting events to crowd control and e-commerce or SaaS environments. However, the theme is the same in many cases: performance issues due to growth.

Performance tuning is a much-discussed topic. In many cases it is the first issue brought up by new customers. The question or complaint is usually about the speed of the database. It would be a logical step to take action. In order to achieve visible improvement ad hoc and on a short-term basis, expanding resources is often seen as the solution. And, with databases in the cloud and auto-scale, or “fully managed”, these resources are scaled up for you entirely automatically. The only thing that is not managed are the costs. Because that is, after all, the revenue model of today's popular DBaaS solutions. All the more reason to take a pro-active look at database performance.

In the previous blog Gerard Zuidweg explained why we at OptimaData find it very important to offer internships. In this way we can contribute to the level of knowledge of a new generation of professionals. But finding an internship is not easy these days. For that reason Minister for Education Ingrid van Engelshoven and chairman Jacco Vonhof of entrepreneurial organization MKB-Nederland are calling on schools and businesses to deploy creative solutions. As a recognized apprenticeship company for MBO trainees, we are happy to do our part. In August Jeroen Versteeg started as an MBO trainee at OptimaData. What are his experiences?

In this blog Martijn Wallet, our Manager Consultancy and Training, discusses what containerization is, what the pros and cons are and when it's better to stay away from it.

In this blog, Edco Wallet shares a summary of the Cloud Report 2020, in which the three best-known cloud providers are compared by CockroachLabs. Which one is the best?

The transition to the cloud is in full swing. Private, public, hybrid, IaaS, PaaS, DbaaS; the cloud has countless forms and applications. But which cloud provider and which machines match best with your environment, and especially with your database? CockroachLabs - the company behind CockroachDB - recently published their annual Cloud Report. They have conducted an extensive and thorough benchmark with the three most well-known cloud providers: AWS, Azure and GCP. The benchmark is about a database instance on a cloud server and not DbaaS. In this blog Edco Wallet shares a summary of the Cloud Report 2020.

We wrote earlier that there is nothing wrong with managing databases in a somewhat older environment. But there is also nothing wrong with more mature database administrators. Thomas Spoelstra - yes, the guy from the man cave - is one of those. He knows better than anyone how to set up a database as efficiently as possible, because 'before' there simply wasn't any more disk space or memory. Now that we are massively switching to the cloud, with all its space and possibilities for scaling up, those efficiency skills no longer seem that important. Until the costs get out of hand. Then you need someone who can assess and fine-tune the content of the data model to reduce your cloud costs. So someone like Thomas...

Voiceworks devises and develops innovative communication and collaboration solutions for the business market. A healthy database environment is crucial in this respect. Because database management just is not their core business, Voiceworks has decided to outsource this to OptimaData. Bas Roos, Infrastructure Engineer at Voiceworks, explains why.

There is nothing wrong with the management of databases in somewhat older environments. On the contrary, these are applications that keep a lot of companies afloat. But there are a number of things you need to pay attention to. Roland van Veen, OptimaData DBA and Database Reliability Engineer, explains in this blog what those things are.

In a previous post I deployed a PostgreSQL database in a container from a standard image. Now I’m going to look at deploying a PostgreSQL cluster. Well, kind of. PostgreSQL uses the term cluster to refer to “a collection of databases managed by a single PostgreSQL server instance”. I’m using it in the more general sense, to refer to High Availability.

In my previous blog post, I quickly ran through how to set up PostgreSQL inside a Docker container, up to the point where you could administer the database with psql or pgAdmin. What I didn’t do was explain how any of it worked. If you’re trying to anything even slightly different, or if you encounter errors running it as I outlined, then you’re going to need to know what all of those commands actually do.  In this blogpost I will explain some Docker basics.

Each year there a new version of PostgreSQL is released. That’s the moment in which many new features and improvements become available for all users. During the last PostgreSQL meetup in Amsterdam, Devrim Gündüz, major contributor and passionate PostgreSQL consultant, explained the upcoming release of PostgreSQL 12. In this blog we list the most important changes in PostgreSQL 12 for everyone who does not closely follows all the commits in Github or who did’nt have the opportunity to visit the PostgreSQL Usergroup NL meetup.

OEM is designed to allow you to administrate large numbers of databases, and it benefits greatly from a consistent and well-thought-out strategy that enables you to apply the same process automatically to groups of servers and databases. If you only have a few Standard Edition databases, then OEM is going to be overkill, and there are better third-party solutions available. But if you have hundreds of Enterprise Edition databases to monitor, backup and patch then it becomes cost effective.