Tag Archive: passcamp

Upcoming SQL Server meetings & presentations

I’ve got a few upcoming presentations at user groups and meetings:

August 13 – West Michigan SQL User Group – SQL Server Consolidation: Your datacenter is overcrowded and overheated. Your manager is breathing down your neck to cut costs. The Wintel admins want to virtualize your servers. Consolidation might be the answer to a lot of different problems. Brent Ozar has gone through several consolidation projects some successful, some horrible and he’ll share his tips and tricks to make your project go successfully. I’ll cover different consolidation options, SAN storage considerations, how to write a successful consolidation plan, and what to do after the consolidation.  Looking forward to meeting up with Tim Ford.  (MSSQLTipsTwitter)

August 14 – Detroit SQL User Group – SQL Server Consolidation (same presentation as the 8/13 one.)

September 1 – PASS Camp 2008 Dusseldorf – SQL 2008 Improvements for Business Intelligence evening keynote. I’m also going to be running a Guitar Hero competition with Heather Eichman!

September 2 – LiteSpeed v5 London Launch – not quite sure where this is happening yet, or who’s invited, but as I find out more I’ll post the details here.  I’ll be talking about the new features in LiteSpeed v5.

September 4 – Quest SQL Server Club in Lausanne, Switzerland – Performance Baselining, Monitoring and Tuning. I love these subjects, because outside of disaster recovery, there’s no better way for a DBA to get fame and fortune in their organization then by doing performance improvements.  In my first couple of weeks at Southern Wine, I took a nightly job that had been running in 4-5 hours and cut it down to 4-5 minutes just by doing some indexing in less than an hour’s work.  That one performance tuning session made my reputation at the company, and people still talked about it a year later.  In these two sessions, I’ll share some of my experience doing performance diagnostics with Perfmon and staying on top of performance issues.

September 9 – New York City – The Changing Role of the DBA. We’re doing a day-long session at the Microsoft offices in NYC to talk about the new things database administrators have to learn just to do their jobs.  I’ll be focusing on consolidation, but it was a toss-up: I could have just as easily talked about virtualization or storage.  I could even make a laundry list of essential things I DON’T know, like SSIS and SSRS!  DBAs have a lot of stuff on their plate these days.  (When I get a signup link I’ll post it here.)

October 9 & 10 – Tulsa Tech Fest – Sessions listed below. I’m excited to be a part of this for my first time, because it’s got a great diverse list of sessions & speakers.  Programmers, DBAs and Wintel admins will all find interesting sessions to attend.  I’ll be doing a whopping five presentations:

  • SQL Server Consolidation: Perfect Planning Prevents Poor Performance – the same presentation I recently gave to the West Michigan and Detroit user groups.  I’ll cover different consolidation options, SAN storage considerations, how to write a successful consolidation plan, and what to do after the consolidation.
  • Hit The Ground Running with SQL 2008 – DBAs don’t have the time to dig into each new feature of SQL 2008.  I will help you get started fast by showing how to enable the features that will give you the biggest bang for the buck.  You’ll walk away with starter scripts for the Resource Governor, Policy-Based Management and more.
  • SQL Server Performance Monitoring & Budgeting with Perfmon – I’ll cover the same topics I discuss in my blog article about monitoring SQL Server with Performance Monitor and show how to do some basic budgeting & projections.
  • How to Write a SQL Server Performance Review – one of my specialties is taking an existing application, studying it transparently for a week using tools like Profiler and Perfmon, and then writing up an analysis of what needs to be done to fix scalability or performance problems.  Managers love this stuff because it helps IT budget more wisely, helps developers plan their time better, and helps justify DBA salaries.  In this session, I’ll show you how to write a performance review.
  • Virtualization 101: Hyper-V versus VMware ESX – virtualization is coming on strong in the enterprise, and I get a lot of questions from DBAs about what virtualization really means.  I’ll cover the differences between these two platforms, discuss some of their freakishly cool features, and point out what’s still smoke and mirrors.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go print out a whole bunch of airline, car, and hotel info!

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
TwitterFacebookLinkedInGoogle PlusYouTube

Speaking at PASS Camp 2008 in Germany

I love my job!

When a new version of SQL Server comes out, database administrators want to know what features will make an immediate difference in their lives.  They want a very fast recap of what they need to do first, what they need to plan for, and what to tell the rest of their staff.  They don’t have the time to build lots of SQL testbeds, play around with the features, discover problems and figure out the best way to implement new policies.

As a full time SQL Server expert for Quest, I do have that time – it’s my job.  It’s my job to dive into SQL Server, learn how to embrace the new features, and learn how to help DBAs do their jobs faster and better.

Plus, since I joined Quest a few months ago, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best SQL Server experts around. Our developers, support teams, QA teams and project managers have an absolutely jaw-dropping amount of expertise on SQL Server.

For example, I join a weekly conference call with our support teams to talk about really tough escalation cases.  I get genuinely excited at some of these cases, and when one of our customers pushes the limits of SQL Server, I’ve been known to say, “That’s really cool!”  Of course, our support teams then ask me if I’d like to take ownership of that ticket, and my answer is usually NO, but that’s only because I don’t have enough time in the day to do everything I want to do.

At PASS Camp 2008 in Dusseldorf, I’m doing a session about SQL Server 2008′s DBA-friendly features that have the biggest bang for the buck.  I’m going to concentrate on things that database administrators need to do right away after they install SQL Server – things that will make their lives easier and things that their managers will appreciate.  After a DBA installs SQL Server, we want the manager to say, “Ah, this new version is great!  How did we ever live without it?  Our DBAs rock!”

Making DBAs look good – I love my job.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
TwitterFacebookLinkedInGoogle PlusYouTube