Hi, Brent here! I’m really excited to welcome you to Mastering Server Tuning.

Read this whole page: there’s a lot of stuff in here for you.

Watch How to Think Like the Engine and Fundamentals of Index Tuning.

Before we get started, I need to make sure that we’ve covered the basics:

• Required: How to Think Like the Engine – free 90-minute class that covers the foundations of clustered and nonclustered indexes, statistics, memory grants, and sargability.
• Required: Fundamentals of Index Tuning – 4-hour class that covers how to index for WHERE, ORDER BY, and JOINs, and covers how to pick the field order for indexes.
• Optional, but highly recommended: take Mastering Index Tuning and Mastering Query Tuning. This class will assume you already know these topics. In this class, you’re going to be fixing servers – which involves fixing indexes and queries first.

Armed with the material in those classes, you’ll be well-equipped to keep up in this Mastering class.

Now, get your computer ready for the webcast.

To ask questions and talk to the other attendees, go to https://www.brentozar.com/slack/ to get an instant invite, then join the #BrentOzarUnlimited channel. This way attendees can help each other with their questions during the live labs.

Audio will come through your computer speakers, so you’ll want clear speakers or a set of headphones. (You don’t have to worry about a microphone or webcam – other attendees won’t see or hear you.)

To follow along with the demos and do the homework assignments, here’s how to set up your training class VM. This actually takes a few hours, so set aside some time to do this long before class day.