No one knows what you really do, not even your boss. They only know what you do not do, or to be more precise, they only remember your failures and easily forget all your success.

When issues arise, and issues will always arise, people will start to blame the pieces of their environment they know the least about.

All of that holds true for DR preparation. You need to practice and keep your skills sharp. When was the last time you tried to recover the master database? Or, better yet, have you ever tried to recover the master database? Believe me, when the pressure is on during a disaster event, the last thing you want to be doing is fumbling around with manuals and pounding your fist against your monitor because you do not know how to get your instance started.

If your company is wise, then it will be conducting regular DR tests.

Q: What will we do if that server melts? A: We have the disks in a RAID 5 array; the chances of two disks failing is minimal. Q: What will we do if two disks fail? A: There is little chance of that happening. Q: Um . . . OK . . . so, what will we do if that does happen? A: Don’t worry about it; it won’t happen.

You simply must plan for a disaster. No scenario is out of the question. Whenever I see a new design, I usually point to a particular section and ask, “What if that server disappears? What then?” Asking those types of questions are the only way to effectively plan for a disaster.

I would rather eat shards of broken glass than implement merge replication, but that’s just me. Some people make a great living eating broken glass at carnivals. You should choose your own path in life.

Believe me, administrators enjoy having a weekend off every now and then, same as everyone else.

Work smarter, not harder. Find ways to be proactive in solving issues.

Mr. Right, however, is the guy that not only puts out the fires as they happen, but also has the knowledge and experience to put controls into place to make certain that the problems are less likely to happen again. So, they not only know enough to fix the current issue, but they know enough to solve the root cause of the problem. The solutions they put in place do not complicate the environment; they help to lessen their workload.