About Brent Ozar
Hi, I’m Brent Ozar. I help teams make Microsoft SQL Server fast and reliable — and I try to make learning it a lot less boring than it was when I got started in the late 1990s. All I had to learn from was boring, dry books and the documentation. Ugh. Shiver.
I’ve spent years obsessing over why databases slow down. I teach it the way I wish someone had taught me: blunt, funny, and with analogies about cars, travel, and food. If you’ve ever watched Alton Brown explain why your steak came out dry, that’s roughly the energy I’m going for — just with execution plans instead of ribeyes.
I run Brent Ozar Unlimited®, where I’ve published 3,000+ blog posts, a weekly YouTube video, and a whole lot of free tools. No fluff, no vendor cheerleading — just what actually works on real servers under real pressure.
What I do
Consulting. When a SQL Server is slow, unreliable, or just scaring everybody, my SQL Critical Care® gets to the root cause fast and hands your team a clear, prioritized plan — no finger-pointing, no guesswork.
Training. I teach live and recorded classes on SQL Server performance — a Fundamentals-to-Mastering path through index tuning, query tuning, server tuning, parameter sniffing, wait stats, and TempDB.
Free help. I maintain the open-source First Responder Kit — sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex, and friends — the free health-check scripts that thousands of DBAs reach for when something’s on fire.
What I’m good at
- SQL Server & Azure SQL DB performance tuning
- Reading and fixing execution plans
- Index tuning and query tuning
- Wait stats and server-level diagnostics
- Parameter sniffing, TempDB, and statistics
- High availability and disaster recovery
- Hardware, storage, and virtualization for SQL Server
- Explaining all of it so it actually sticks
Along the way I earned the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) in SQL Server and spent years as a Microsoft Data Platform MVP — but the credential I care about most is whether your server is faster when I leave than it was when I showed up.
Want to work together?
Get your server triaged with a SQL Critical Care®, level up in a class, or just grab the free stuff: the First Responder Kit and three new blog posts a week in your inbox.