If you deal with VMware, Hyper-V, SANs, and SQL Server, come check out my pre-conference session at SQLBits in York, England on Thursday, September 30th.  My all-day session is called, “Virtualization, SAN, and SQL Server: The Perfect Storm.”

This will be a fun, intimate session – it’s limited to 40 people max, and we’ve got a few spots left.  Here’s the abstract:

Virtualization, SAN, and SQL Server: The Perfect Storm

Each of these things alone is tough enough to manage, but when you start to combine them, the forecast calls for rogue waves of bad performance.  Metrics like CPU % and disk queue length just don’t mean anything anymore.  No matter what numbers you hand your virtualization sysadmins, Windows admins, or SAN admins, they all say the same thing: “It’s a SQL Server problem.”

Learn how to fight back as Brent Ozar, Microsoft Certified Master, exposes some surprising truths like:

• What metrics can prove it’s not a SQL Server problem
• Why you might not want to separate your data and log files onto different drives
• How to double-check to make sure the other guys are doing their job
• The crucial configuration choices that can doom your SQL Server performance from the start

By the end of this session, you’ll be able to walk back into your office, gather statistics and configurations, and give your sysadmins and SAN admins the information they need to fix performance problems on their end.

For £450, you get my all-day pre-con session on Thursday plus full days of training on Friday and Saturday too!  Check out the SQLBits agenda, which includes sessions like:

• Understanding SARGability – Rob Farley is one of the funniest guys you’ll ever meet, and his sessions get rave reviews.  Once you understand SARGability, you’re much more equipped to troubleshoot slow queries.
• SQLDiag and SQLNexus – these two completely free tools will change the way you do performance tuning.  Microsoft Certified Master Christian Bolton, the lead author of Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting, will explain how to use ’em.  His company, Coeo, is even giving away a free Fusion-IO drive during SQLBits!
• Introduction to Extended Events – this new tool in SQL Server 2008 doesn’t get much press because it’s a pain in the rear to get started with.  Jonathan Kehayias is the man to show you how because he wrote the free SSMS Extended Events Manager, a tool that’s been featured in SQL Server Magazine.

This event has speakers from around the world including Brad McGehee, Buck Woody, Kevin Kline, Thomas Kejser, and more.  This is the cheapest way to see the best people in one place in Europe, and it’s in a fun, relaxed atmosphere where you can have plenty of discussions with the speakers.  To see what the shorter sessions look like, check out one of my sessions from my last SQLBits:

http://www.vimeo.com/10728045

Register now and choose Full Conference, and you can pick my session as your pre-con.  Register fast – we’re running out of seats!