I’m returning to the land of great cars, superb beer, and friendly database administrators.  In June, I’m visiting four cities in four days to do eight presentations.  Ready, set, go!

Monday 21.6 – Munich, Germany
Expert Campus on SQL Server

I’m presenting, “SQL Server Storage: Files, Filegroups, Partitioning, & More.”

It’s hard to find good information about SQL Server storage.  Should you put data and log files on different drives when they’re on a SAN?  How do you know when to add more data files?  Is there an advantage to using multiple filegroups?  Brent’s a former SAN administrator and wrote the storage chapter of Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting.  He’s got the answers you’re looking for, and he’ll help demystify what SQL Server’s doing inside the black box.

Attendees will learn:

• Why you shouldn’t add files to an existing filegroup
• How to get faster performance from TempDB
• How to check your file performance using DMVs

Other speakers at the event include George Urban and Michael Sass.  You can register for the Munich event here.

Tuesday 22.6 – Cologne, Germany
Wednesday 23.6 – Berlin, Germany
Meet the Experts with Brent Ozar

I’m presenting a few sessions at these:

Performance Tuning for Race Car Drivers

Times are tough even for the best drivers: Helio Castroneves is dancing for money and Danica Patrick is doing ads for what appears to be an adult services company.  Maybe it’s time to switch careers, and Brent has just the thing.  Use your hard-earned knowledge of high speeds, million-dollar hardware and surviving disastrous crashes to become a SQL Server performance tuner!

In this session, Brent will show you:

• Why Colin Chapman would check for indexes before adding new ones
• The importance of well-tested safety gear to performance tuning
• Why not monitoring your servers is like overdriving your headlights
• Just like races are lost in the pits, uptime records are lost during maintenance windows

The Top 10 Developer Mistakes That Won’t Scale

You’ve heard it before: “It worked fine on my machine, but the users say it’s too slow.” Don’t blame the developers: they’re using SQL Server features that look great on paper, but in reality, they won’t scale up to production loads. Learn to recognize these common mistakes before they go into production, and be armed with easy fixes for:

• User-defined functions that go through too much data
• Triggers that perform business logic
• Cursors that process data row by row

Virtualization and SAN Basics for DBAs

These two technologies can make a very big – and very bad – difference in how your SQL Server performs. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get the real, honest lowdown from a virtualization administrator, a SAN administrator, and a DBA? Wouldn’t it be even better if one person had done all three, and could give you the pros and cons of each point of view? That person is Brent Ozar, a Microsoft Certified Master who’s been there and done that.

• Three things you should NEVER do when virtualizing SQL Server
• Three things you should ALWAYS do when using SQL on a SAN
• Three metrics you should always capture on virtual & SAN-connected SQL Servers

You can register for the free Cologne and Berlin events here.

Thursday 24.6 – Vienna, Austria
Solid Quality Summit

I’m heading to the home of PEZ to present “Virtualization and SAN Basics for DBAs.”

These two technologies can make a very big – and very bad – difference in how your SQL Server performs. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get the real, honest lowdown from a virtualization administrator, a SAN administrator, and a DBA? Wouldn’t it be even better if one person had done all three, and could give you the pros and cons of each point of view? That person is Brent Ozar, a Microsoft Certified Master who’s been there and done that.

• Three things you should NEVER do when virtualizing SQL Server
• Three things you should ALWAYS do when using SQL on a SAN
• Three metrics you should always capture on virtual & SAN-connected SQL Servers

You can register for the Solid Quality Summit Vienna here and hear sessions by Itzik Ben-Gan, Rushabh Mehta, Thomas Grohser, and more.

My fingers are crossed that this will be my first good European trip for Quest.  I’m batting 0 for 3 so far – my 2008 trip was rough, my 2009 trip was a mess, and my spring 2010 trip got canceled when the volcano erupted.  My personal vacations to Europe are always great, but my work trips, not so much.  Wish me luck!