OK, we were in Iceland and then Florida for our Accidental DBA workshops and both went really well. People agree that there are quite a few involuntary/accidental DBAs out there and overall, we helped quite a few to see a lot of options for better performance, availability, recovery, and/or just manageability.

So, this is our "resources post". We waited until after the SQL Connections delivery to post these as we figured we might add a few more to the list (as is typical when you deliver content more than once - it's really never the same twice!).

• Checkout the whitepapers on SQLskills:
  http://www.sqlskills.com/whitepapers.asp
• Blog Post Tripp: 8 Steps to better Transaction Log throughput:
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly/2005/06/25/8StepsToBetterTransactionLogThroughput.aspx
• RD Grok Talks (general):
  http://www.groktalk.net/
• Stored Procedure Grok Talk (Tripp):
  http://www.groktalk.net/Videos/kimberly_l_tripp.wmv
• Stored Procedure Blog posts (Tripp):
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly/CategoryView,category,Optimizing%2BProcedural%2BCode.aspx
• MSDN Webcast Series (series wrap-up blog post with links):
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly/PermaLink.aspx?guid=4daca6d9-c52b-4f85-a47c-20f252883e20
• Microsoft Events Calendar:
  http://www.microsoft.com/events/webcasts/calendar/monthview.aspx?audience=it%20professional&series=0&product=0&presenter=0&tz=0&wt.svl=interactivecalendar
• KB Article 329526: File allocation extension in SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) and SQL Server 2005:
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329526
• KB Article 328551: Concurrency enhancements for the tempdb database:
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328551
• Whitepaper: Working with tempdb:
  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/workingwithtempdb.mspx
• KB Article 243586: Troubleshooting stored procedure recompilation:
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/243586
• Whitepaper: Batch Compilation, Recompilation, and Plan Caching Issues in SQL Server 2005:
  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/recomp.mspx
• For all of the different topics Paul discussed he placed links to corresponding blog posts, I've duplicated them here so you can get a refresher for these links:
• TechEd 2007 video: Secrets of Fast Detection and Recovery from Database Corruptions
• Inside the Storage Engine: Anatomy of a record:
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2007/09/30/InsideTheStorageEngineAnatomyOfARecord.aspx
• Inside the Storage Engine: Anatomy of a page:
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2007/10/03/InsideTheStorageEngineAnatomyOfAPage.aspx
• Inside the Storage Engine: Anatomy of an extent:
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2007/10/03/InsideTheStorageEngineAnatomyOfAnExtent.aspx
• Inside the Storage Engine: GAM, SGAM, PFS, and Other Allocation Maps:
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2008/03/14/InsideTheStorageEngineGAMSGAMPFSAndOtherAllocationMaps.aspx
• Inside the Storage Engine: IAM pages, IAM chains, and allocation units:
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2007/10/04/InsideTheStorageEngineIAMPagesIAMChainsAndAllocationUnits.aspx
• Corruption: Last resorts that people try first...
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2007/09/15/CorruptionLastResortsThatPeopleTryFirst.aspx
• How to tell if the IO subsystem is causing corruptions?
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2007/09/12/HowToTellIfTheIOSubsystemIsCausingCorruptions.aspx
• Blog Category - CheckDB from Every Angle:
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/CategoryView,category,CHECKDB%2BFrom%2BEvery%2BAngle.aspx
• Blog Category - Shrink (and why it's EVIL!):
  http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/CategoryView,category,Shrink.aspx

Also, I used a few "interactive" (or build) slides in my presentation - specifically on transaction log backups and the concepts of "clearing the log" which really only clears the inactive portion of the log. To help you visualize this, I've added these slides here: TrippRandal_ClearingTheLog-BuildSlides.zip (647.2 KB).

Finally, we've taken all of the scripts that we demo'ed and placed them on SQLskills on our Past Events page here: http://www.sqlskills.com/pastConferences.asp.

And, if you were there and you think we missed something, feel free to ping me (or Paul!) with an email and we'll make sure to update this resources post (and/or [at least] help you find it what you're looking for!!).

Next stop - Microsoft TechEd ITPro in June (we're back in Orlando again)!
kt

A couple of weeks ago, Paul and I recorded two interviews with TechNet Radio... both are ready for download and in multiple formats! 

Our specific interviews can be downloaded from the following links/formats:
  SQL 2008 Part 1 of 2: Security and Availability WMA | MP3 High | MP3 Low
  SQL 2008 Part 2 of 2: Management, Troubleshooting and Throttling  WMA | MP3 High | MP3 Low
  More TechNet Radio interviews (and *lots* of other shows), can be found on Channel 9.

Enjoy! 
kt

OK, well, the first day is over and we're starting to relax... just had a nice meal in our room and we're off to each do a blog post (or what might turn into a couple :) regarding the things we each discussed in our full day workshop today.

So, it was a great day and a great way to start the Connections event. We had roughly 170 people attend our Sunday workshop that started at 9am which is especially impressive in Vegas!! And, it was a great way to start because it felt like everyone was ready with questions and a few folks (especially those with jet-lag) said that they didn't think they'd make it through the day but then were surprised at how fast it went and that we managed to keep them awake :)...

As for the questions, we answered a lot of them during the session but as it always happens, we each remembered additional references, sites, and/or details that we always want to post after the fact - this post is the result. I'll try to put headers on the sections but I think this will be a long one!

Here's a link to Paul's Q&A blog post from today's session:
http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2007/11/05/ConferenceQuestionsPotPourri1IndexesStatsCorruptionAndEnterpriseonlyFeatures.aspx

So, have fun and we both look forward to seeing you tomorrow in the pre-conference workshop on Disaster Recovery - from Planning to Practice to Post-Mortem. The rest of this post contains random but helpful stuff (and in NO particular order at all). And, there's at least one more post coming after this one as I still have more to add!

Resource Reference List

• KB#909369: SQL Server 2000 Bug where checkpoint is not appropriately clearing the inactive portion of the log
• KB#329526: File allocation extension in SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) and SQL Server 2005 (this allows 256KB block allocations)
• KB#328551: PRB: Concurrency enhancements for the tempdb database (this refers to trace flag -T1118 for SQL Server 2000 AND how to create tempdb on multiple files when on multiproc machines). A good and very complementary read is the "Working with tempdb" whitepaper. AND, the primary author of this whitepaper (Sunil) will be here at Connections this week, so there's another session to visit.
• KB#224071: How to move SQL Server databases to a new location by using Detach and Attach functions in SQL Server
• Performance Dashboard Reports (only in SQL Server Management Studio for SQL Server 2005 SP2)
• sysinternals Zoomit tool: this is what I was using to magnify various parts of the screen, etc.
• SQL Server Customer Advisory Team Blog and specifically the entry on DMVStats. Also, here's an excellent whitepaper called Troubleshooting Performance Problems in SQL Server 2005 as this has numerous DMV queries and helpful details on troubleshooting.
• SQLskills Whitepapers list

Progress Report: Online Index Operation
As for the details on this - you want to capture these events: EventClass, TextData, EventSubClass, ObjectID, ObjectName, and BigIntData1

And, for the EventSubClass there are multiple values that will be returned. What I think is the most interesting is that many of these events return only one of the values for either ObjectId or ObjectName...so, beware of filtering!

  1-Start (both ObjectID/ObjectName)
  2-Stage1 start (null for both ID/Name)
  6-Insert row count... (ObjectID only)
  3-Stage1 end (null for both ID/Name)
  7-Complete (both ObjectID/ObjectName)

EventSubClass 6 is definitely the most helpful. In the BigIntData1 column, they will show the current row number being processed (essentially) and so, you can guage roughly how far you have gone as well as how long you have to go. Here's a screen shot to help you get some insight into what you will see: OnlineProgressReport.pdf (690.78 KB).

Some operations (e.g. DBCC CHECKDB (and related), SHRINKFILE, ALTER INDEX...REORGANIZE) produce a value for the percent_complete column in sys.dm_exec_requests. Both of these are helpful for assessing where you're at...

Index Creation/Rebuild Order
Paul's written about this AND he's linking to some relevant posts in his blog post from today's session but here's a VERY quick highlight of a few things we chatted about:

Index CREATION order DOES matter (you should always create the clustered index first and then create the non-clustered (as non-clustered indexes depend on the clustering key)
Index REBUILD order does NOT matter as the physical location of the data isn't interesting to the non-clustered indexes as they reference the data by the row's clustering key

VLFs - Virtual Log Files... too many (and typically very small) OR even possibly too large of VLFs....
We had some great discussions around VLFs and I know I've posted a bit on this in the past but I'm not sure I've posted this much detail. So, here are a few relevant points.

First, the size and number of VLFs is determined by the size of the "fragment" added to the transaction log. The "fragment" is added at the time the log is created or anytime the log grows (either manually or automatically). The number of VLFs can be predicted from the following quick guide:

• If the fragment is less than 64MB, then up to 4 VLFs will be added (the reason I say "up to" 4 VLFs are added is because really small fragments - fragments under 1MB - will actually add even fewer VLFs and I can't remember (nor do I care :) what the exact cut-offs are for < 1MB.
• If the fragment is greater than or equal to 64MB and less than 1GB, then 8 VLFs will be added.
• If the fragment is greater than or equal to 1GB, then 16 VLFs will be added.

So, if you create a database with a 100MB log (just as a simple example), you will get 8 - 12.5MB logs... if you then increase the log to 150MB then you will add 4 more VLFs. This really isn't all that bad and in general, I recommend that you have less than 100 VLFs. Often I'll find folks that have thousands and this results in VLF fragmentation. I blogged about this originally here: http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly/2005/06/25/8StepsToBetterTransactionLogThroughput.aspx and the steps to help minimize it are there as well. Also, as an update to that post - use DBCC SHRINKFILE with the NOTRUNCATE as it appears to have special meaning on the transaction log... but, I still need to investigate this one a bit more.

Finally, if you pre-create too large of a transaction log then you might have new/different problems... the most likely is that the log doesn't clear as often (because you haven't spilled into a new VLF OR you have a transaction that happens to span two VERY large VLFs) and the effect can be that performance is slowed by the less frequent clearing that has to happen on a very large log... As a way to minimize this, the best way to create larger logs (logs in the 10GB+ range), is to create them in multiple chunks (for example 4-8GB chunks so that you end up with VLFs that are 256MB-512MB instead of 4GB because you created a 48GB log to start).

Installation Instructions for the post-conference workshop AND the HOLs DVD
And, for those of you who want to play with the DVD we handed out today... here are the "generic" setup instructions:
Generic HOLs DVD SETUP Instructions.pdf (20.31 KB)

OK, that's it for today and we look forward to another infomation/question packed session tomorrow!

Cheers,
kt

OK, so for those of you who watch our (Paul's and my) blogs... you know it's time for SQLConnections. We're in Vegas (and it's Paul's first time here!) and the conference is the largest it's ever been with over 5000 people!!! We arrived a couple of days early so that Paul could experience a bit of Vegas... last night we went out to dinner with Gert and Karen (Gert's wife) and Michele and Andres (Michele's husband) and we went to Mix. I have to admit that I didn't like my main course all that much (I had only one bite of the Cod dish) but everyone else loved theirs (especially the steak/foie gras special)... the 24,000 sphere chandelier was VERY cool and the views of the Strip are outstanding. Tonight we're (MLB/Andres/us) off to see Elton John. Gert and Karen are off celebrating their anniversary... CONGRATS!!

And today, we're getting ready for the conference - having just picked up our shirts (which Paul - yes PAUL - is about to iron...lol) - we swung by to checkout how things are going in terms of setup. It's always amazing to me to see how much goes on behind the scenes of some of these big events (I blogged about some of the behind the scenes of TechEd here) and well, we caught the 30+ people who were setting up and "building bags" for the 5000+ attendees.......

And, so begins our first conference as a married couple... and all of our sessions (for the most part) are together. It's actually really fun to do sessions together as we're able to bounce things off of each other, take notes on things we want to change and/or questions that are asked AND it allows us to keep things moving without a lot of stops. And, to be honest, it's not quite as tiring... but, with 2 pre-conference workshops, 5 sessions at the conference, multiple meetings/dinners/side-events and then a hands-on post-conference workshop on Friday - we'll both be pretty tired!!! We get back home late Friday night and then we have about 30 hours in Redmond to relax (NOT!) before we head to TechEd ITForum in Barcelona next week. From Barcelona we head to Zurich for a TechNet DeepDive session on Database Maintenance...... November is quite a month for getting around!!

Hope to see you here (or in Spain... or in Zurich... or next year),
kt

OK, so Paul could be doing worse things while I'm away... but, what was he doing? I guess you'll have to read here and listen here.

Enjoy!
kt

With the November 5-9th SQL Connections conference in Las Vegas around the corner, Shirley Brothers, the Connections Conference Manager, would like to start planning the Spring show. And, for the Spring show forward, Paul and I will be the co-chairs of the SQL Connections conference. We would like to invite you to submit abstracts for the Spring 2008 SQL Connections conference, to be held in Orlando, April 20-24th, 2008.

The conference will take place shortly after the SQL Server 2008 launch (Feb 27, 2008), and will focus on best practices for SQL Server 2005, how to upgrade and migrate applications from SQL Server 200x to SQL Server 2008 and new features to leverage in SQL Server 2008. However, we will consider all topics - from design to performance to troubleshooting to architectures to programming. Also, we're likely to closely follow our past conference format with three primary themes/tracks: Infrastructure and Scalability, Programming, and Business Intelligence. You should aim for the intermediate to advanced audience for any SQL Server 2005 materials and for SQL Server 2008 - we'll consider any level - especially depending on the newness of the feature.

For submitting session abstracts, please use this URL:  http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts

Please keep the abstracts under 200 words each and in one paragraph. Please do not use bulleted items or line breaks, and please use a spell-checker. If you have an issue with the site, please follow up with an email as well to paul@sqlskills.com.

Please create a new speaker record (if you haven't submitted before) and submit at least 3 abstracts; however, it will help your chances of being selected if you submit 5 or 6 abstracts. We need to have all your abstracts by October 26th. 

Finally, please see some important notes about your sessions at Connections conferences. These comments are from our Connections Conference Manager - Shirley Brothers:

=========================================================================
I would like to thank each and every one of our Connections speakers for helping us make this event so successful. Last year in Vegas we had just over 4,700 attendees; we hope to do that or better this fall. By the end of September we had over 3,000 registrations for our Fall show.

A successful show happens when you have a combination of things come together: great speakers, good venue, great partners, fun events, and ongoing relationship building. I hope we can all continue to work together to make Connections the very best event outside of Tech Ed, for years to come. As a more successful show, our competitors are trying to compete by moving their shows closer to our dates and in some cases, to the same cities.

It’s very disheartening for me to see our speakers presenting similar topics at competing shows that are scheduled so close to our own shows. So I want to make a small change in how we handle speakers. Essentially, I don’t want to schedule a speaker at a Connections show who is also presenting at one of our competitor’s shows, in the same state, within 30 days of a Connections show. Many of you have known me for years and you know that I would never discourage a speaker from doing something that is good for his/her career and company. I have never asked a speaker not to speak for a competitor and I am NOT saying that now. I am saying that if another show sits within 30 days of ours in the same state, that the speaker should choose to speak at one or the other conference, but not both. If for whatever reason a speaker does not choose Connections during that time period, there will NOT be hard feelings and they can speak for one of our shows at another time. 

I want Connections conferences to be different and unique in the minds of our attendees, our sponsors, and our speakers. I have given this a lot of thought and I think the best way to produce our Connections shows is not to have any of our speakers presenting at our show and at a competitor’s show a few weeks earlier or later in the same place.

Shirley
=========================================================================

OK, so after SQL Connections in Las Vegas, Paul and I head off to Barcelona for the second week of TechEd's two week event (week one for developers and week two for IT professionals). November's definitely a busy month. So, if you're in the US - we hope to see you at Connections and if you're in Europe, we hope to see you at Microsoft TechEd ITForum 2007.

Here's what we're doing:

Sessions

• (DAT205) The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Manageability Overview

The next release of SQL Server will contain exciting new manageability features targeted at reducing total cost of ownership. Come learn more about what's in store in areas like policy-driven administration and performance data collection and analysis. The session focuses on the database engine.

• (DAT301) SQL Server Indexing - Unravelling the Unknown

Knowing tips and tricks to indexing is extremely helpful and will help you to solve "known" query problems. But what's lurking in the unknown? Is SQL Server using your indexes? Or, do you have a bunch of indexes sitting around wasting space and negatively impacting performance? Finally, SQL Server 2005 has an answer! SQL Server 2005 DMVs (Dynamic Management Views) can provide you with valuable information about your current indexing strategies, what should be removed, and even what's missing. Do you know how to find this information, leverage it, and then programmatically respond to it? Come to this session to learn a few tips and tricks as well as how to figure out the unknown indexing problems!

• (DAT305) Secrets to Fast Detection and Recovery from Database Corruptions

How can you tell whether your data is corrupt? If you have corruption, how do you work out what’s wrong with the database? How do you ensure you have a valid backup? If you don’t have a valid backup, how and what do you repair? If you do have a backup, how do you work out whether you should restore or repair? And at what granularity? How do you go about determining what went wrong in the first place? It’s all about limiting downtime and data-loss when a corruption occurs - from knowing the tools to understanding the choices to planning a successful strategy. Some of the features discussed:

• Torn-page detection and page checksums
• IO read-retry
• Backup checksums
• Consistency checks (DBCC CHECKDB and related commands)
• Database repairs

Facing database corruption is almost inevitable in every DBAs career - make sure you're prepared when it happens to you.

Chalk-talks

• (DAT01-IS) SQL Server Upgrade Best Practices, Tips, and Tricks

Even though SQL Server 2005 has been out for a while, many companies are only just getting ready to upgrade. Come to this session to learn best practices, tips, and tricks distilled from two years of customer experiences. We'll also touch on some issues you'll face going to SQL Server 2008 when it's released next year. Come to this session to learn and share - bring your questions and experiences!

• (DAT02-IS) SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring: Setup to Implementation to Monitoring

Database Mirroring is one of the most exciting technologies in SQL Server 2005. With more and more people including it in their Disaster Recovery Strategies, it's important to know when to implement Database Mirroring as well as the implications of the architecture you choose. In this session there will be no slides just demos that will explore how Database Mirroring works in its various configurations and how that may effect your performance. Join us and see database mirroring in action and get your questions answered!

• (DAT07-IS) DBCC Internals

All DBAs should have heard of (and used) DBCC – especially for consistency checking. Get down deeper than 400-level with this session on how some of the most important DBCC commands work. Topics covered include CHECKDB, SHRINKFILE, INDEXDEFRAG, and more.

Instructor-led labs

• (DAT03-ILL) SQL Server Always On Technologies Instructor-Led Lab: Part 1 - Database Mirroring

See Database Mirroring in action! From implementation to monitoring to failover, database mirroring provides an ideal solution for many disaster recovery scenarios and this session will prepare you to handle them with minimal downtime or data loss.

• (DAT04-ILL) SQL Server Always On Technologies Instructor-Led Lab: Part 2 - Database Snapshots

Database Snapshots are useful in many situations: database maintenance, data recovery, and point-in-time data access. You can even create a snapshot on a mirror database to get better return-on-investment (ROI) on your high-avaialbility (HA) investments. In this session we will explain how database snapshots work as well as go through several exercises, including working with multiple database snapshots and creating database snapshots on a mirror database.

• (DAT05-ILL) SQL Server Always On Technologies Instructor-Led Lab: Part 3 - Online Operations

The bane of any DBA's life is to have to take data offline to perform maintenance or recover from a disaster. The various Online Operations in SQL Server 2005 alleviate much of this frustration. This session will show you how to move a table online for better isolation and control, partition a table online, access a database that's partially damaged, and perform online piecemeal restore.

Lunchtime Demos

• (DAT01-PD) Database Recovery Techniques

In this fast-paced demo session nasty things will be done repeatedly to database. Then the methods and approaches to recovery will be shown. Not for the faint-hearted!

So, just like SQL Connections the week before, serious amounts of info with tips and tricks for you to take home and implement!

It's going to be a great week. We hope to see you there!!

Kimberly (and Paul)

OK, it's about that time again - the Fall conference season - is here! Building on our co-presented Database Maintenance workshop at SQL Connections in Orlando, Paul and I are doing a *ton* of stuff at SQL Connections this Fall. The conference is back at the Mandalay Bay hotel and officially runs from November 5^th to 8^th, with pre-con workshops on the 5^th. But, after Spring, we decided to significantly add recovery content to our maintenance content that we decided to have our maintenance content as a pre- pre-conference workshop on the 4th and then on the 5th, we have all new content on Disaster Recovery and Lessons Learned. AND, after the week of sessions, we decided to add a HANDS-ON (bring your own laptop) post-con workshop on the 9^th! Our day off is Tuesday the 6^th as it's Microsoft day... with a session line-up looks great with lots of juicy details about SQL Server 2008 - as well as some best-practices sessions for those of you who are happy with SQL Server 200x for now.

Here's what we're doing:

Workshops

• November 4^th - Pre-pre-con: SPR301: SQL Server Database Maintenance: From Planning to Practice to Post-Mortem

No matter how much effort you spend on the design of your database, if you don't maintain it in production then it will suffer from performance and manageability problems. The key to continued performance and smooth operations is a well thought-out and automated database maintenance plan. This full-day workshop has three sections: planning, practice, and post-mortem. Planning for database maintenance actually starts with database design, so one of the things covered will be how to avoid design choices that limit database maintenance or contribute to maintenance problems. We'll discuss a laundry-list of maintenance problems and then explore how to tell if you need to mitigate them, strategies and best-practices for doing so, and how to avoid having your mitigation choices cause unforeseen and undesirable side-effects. Topics covered will include database files (shrink, grow, virtual log files, log size/management), consistency checks and corruption detection, fragmentation, statistics, backup/restore (options, granularity, strategies) and recovery models. The workshop will vary between 200-400 level covering ALL the key concepts of maintenance features. Finally, we'll spotlight some real-world examples where people made good and bad choices and discuss how you can repeat or avoid them, respectively. If you're wondering how to bring your database back under control, and keep it there, then this full-day workshop will help you tame maintenance problems whether you're a full-time system administrator or a reluctant DBA.

• November 5^th - Pre-con: SPR303: SQL Server Disaster Recovery: From Planning to Practice to Post-Mortem

Every DBA's nightmare is having down time and data loss and not knowing how to recover. However, designing and implementing a successful disaster recovery strategy is easier said than done. It's about asking all the right questions and figuring out all the best answers for your situation. This full-day workshop has three sections: planning, practice and post-mortem. Planning is a critical part of disaster recovery, but the most-often disregarded. Topics we'll cover here include: How do you choose technologies to fit requirements and effectively use key features of SQL Server 2005? How do technology choice affect workload performance? Putting a well-thought out plan into practice requires even more planning and in this section we'll discuss technology implementation, building step-by-step recovery/operation guides for when disasters happen, and, most importantly, testing your plan by simulating real problems. In the final section, we'll spotlight some real-world examples where people made costly mistakes and show you how they could have been avoided with a little planning and practice. If you've ever had nightmares about disaster recovery (or actually had a disaster!) and been at a loss for what to do, then this full-day workshop will give you the direction and technical details you need for success!

• November 9^th - Post-con: SPS302: SQL Server - Put Your Knowledge Into Action (Bring Your Own Laptop)

After a week of learning and watching demos - spend your last conference day putting your knowledge into action and diving deeper into the implementation details. Bring your own laptop to install our VPC environment setup with hands-on lab exercises to walk you through some of our most important features in Database Maintenance and Disaster Recovery. All labs will be ILLs (instructor-led labs) with supporting hands-on lab content *and* you will walk away with your own copy of the DVD to continue the exercises back at your office. You can attend without a laptop but your experience will be significantly better with one! This is meant as an advanced workshop and you're expected to bring a reasonable laptop configuration in order to participate: * Virtual Server or Virtual PC - already installed * At least 1GB of physical memory w/512MB dedicated to the VPC environment (2GB is preferred w/1GB dedicated to VPC) * 12 GB of physical disk space (20+ GB is preferred) * DVD Drive

Sessions

• SDB351: Follow the Rabbit - Interactive Q&A on Availability

In this session, Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal will have only 5-10 slides. The focus of this session is on mixing availability technologies to create the best overall architecture to minimize downtime and data loss. In general, we're going to focus on best practices and then open up to your questions so that you can drive the discussion! This session might not seem as structured as other sessions, but you'll be surprised at how informative and fun it is! Grab your lunch and come back - we'll probably still be hanging out!

• SDB350: SQL Server Table Strategies - Designing for Performance and Availability

Often tables are designed based solely on the data that needs to be tracked (here's a column name, here's a data type - done!). Unfortunately, design does not usually take into account how the data is going to be used OR how SQL Server uses the data. Knowing the internals of table structures as well as the optmizations that come with good design will make your database truly scalable. Come to this session to learn some internals as well as various design strategies such as vertical and horizonal partitioning. Additionally, are there any other features that require changes in your design and thinking? For example, online index operations impact design because of the limitations that exist with partitioning and LOB columns. If you want to scale, you need to be here!

• SDB347: SQL Server Indexing for Performance - Finding the Right Balance

In terms of performance tuning, there are few silver bullets. If I had to choose ONE area that improves performance the most (when designed appropriately!), it's indexing. However, indexing strategies depend on the data and even more so, the usage of the data. Come to this session to see what indexing strategies help the base table the most as well as how to optimize your worst performing queries.

• SDB348: SQL Server Indexing Strategies - Are You Sure?

Knowing tips and tricks to indexing is extremely helpful and will help you to solve "known" problems. But what's lurking in the unknown? Is SQL Server using your indexes? Or, do you have a bunch of useless indexes? Finally, SQL Server 2005 has an answer! SQL Server 2005 DMVs (Dynamic Management Views) can provide you with valuable information about your current indexing strategies, what should be removed, and even what's missing. Do you know how to find this information, leverage it, and then programmatically respond to it? Come to this session to figure it out!

• SDB349: Follow the Rabbit - Interactive Q&A on the Storage Engine and the Relational Engine

In this session, Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal will have only 5-10 slides. Each slide cover topics for discussion as well as the reason(s) for why something might be behaving badly and/or things to try to solve your problems. In general we're going to focus on best practices and then open up to your questions so that you can drive the discussion! Paul will focus on the SE (Storage Engine) and internals and Kimberly will focus on the RE (Relational Engine) and query tuning/performance. This session might not seem as structured as other sessions, but you'll be surprised at how informative and fun it is!

At this event, you'll be able to get what most conferences offer (and that's breadth - in terms of session choices, etc.) but with the large number of workshops and the detailed planning that went into sequencing the conference sessions, you'll also get depth that no other conference offers. Serious amounts of tips and tricks for you to geek-out on with us and take home to immediately apply.

It's going to be a great week. We hope to see you there!!

Kimberly (and Paul)

OK, if you've been reading at all... you know that Paul's leaving Microsoft (ok, he's left... yippie!) and joining SQLskills (ok, he's joined). And, well, that's the reason for this blog entry. He's going to work on some updates to his prior posts (in the very near term) on the SQL Server Storage Engine blog as well as many new ones. And, he's threatening me to blog more as well.

So, be sure to subscribe to Paul S. Randal "In Recovery" (very well named :): http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/Paul/ and here's his rss: http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss.

We have a TON of exciting things planned, including some upcoming events that we're delivering together:

• SQLConnections in Vegas - November 4-9
• Microsoft TechEd for ITProfessionals (formerly ITForum) in Barcelona, Spain - November 12-16
• SQL Server Database Maintenance Best Practices (and more!) for Microsoft Zurich - November 19

And, that's it for now...........but stay tuned - there's a lot more coming from us as SQLskills expands!

THANKS for reading,
kt

Well, I'm not sure where May went but I do know that part of it went to my 2 weeks in Hyderabad, India at Microsoft IDC (the India Development Center) and what was left was spent getting ready for upcoming events such as TechEd (and some personal events too :). And, the first big hurdle of TechEd is over...yesterday, Bob and I delivered a full day preconference seminar on Leveraging SQL Server Always On Technologies to Achieve High Availability and Scalability and the day could have been a week long (ok, do any of you ever know of a one day event where we couldn't expand into more time! :). But, the precon event went really well and was great fun. We had a lot of questions and ended the day close to on time but then we stayed late (Bob and I - obviously, and Paul Randal, too) for questions. In fact, Paul blogged about something he learned: the black box trace. Check out his blog entry and tips for using the trace.

Today was all about exciting future releases and the one at the top of my list: Katmai - now officially announced as SQL Server 2008. There are certainly many more details coming soon on Katmai but for now, here are a few interesting items to read/watch:

Website: SQL Server Katmai website
Press release: Microsoft SQL Server “Katmai” Builds on Proven Success of SQL Server 2005, Empowering Customers to Manage the Data Explosion
Whitepaper: SQL Server 2008 Product Overview
Download CTP3: SQL Server 2008 CTP3

And, there are quite a few other resources available! So, start checking out the upcoming version so that you are ready when it's released! I'll have a lot more to say...shortly (relatively speaking :).

More to come from TechEd!

Cheers,
kt

OK...SP2, the SP2 refresh and then the parallel/subsequent GDRs has seemingly (and rightly so) confused some of us... However, thanks to the PSS Engineers blog (and specifically Bob Ward - Senior Escalation Engineer, Microsoft PSS), this blog entry clears up a lot of that confusion. The end result is that you should be at 9.00.3054 or 9.00.3159. 3054 is the correct one if you haven't had any special hotfix/GDRs directly from Microsoft PSS and 3159 is for those of you that have. For me, I think the best part was the reiteration of the fact that "Microsoft Update will notify you of this" and the comments made that "Microsoft Update is smart enough to recognize you need this specific version of the GDR2 fix...". The most interesting part of all of this is the reminder that SQL Server IS included in Microsoft Update. What's the most interesting is that most people are still using Windows Update and Microsoft Update is DIFFERENT. You need to (essentially) replace Windows Update with Microsoft Update (although it's not that simple - of course...). Basically, you need to install Microsoft Update and then remove Windows Update. So.... if you haven't done this - you should. At least on your main desktop/laptop machine (at first) and then on other machines from there. I can't remember when this originally came into place but a few folks asked me about the difference, etc. and how SQL Server fits in and well... it's all about Microsoft Update now not Windows Update (however/fyi, Microsoft Update looks and feels exactly like Windows Update but it includes Windows, Office, SQL and Exchange). If you want to find out more, check out the Microsoft Update FAQ here.

And, along the lines of maintenance... Paul Randal (of the SQL Server Storage Engine blog) would like to know if you have time to fill in a survey on YOUR VLDB maintenance practices. This is pretty important for them to know. He explains what they'll use it for and why it's useful to them. Be sure to check out his blog entry here.

Finally........... lots of final session writing/planning going on for TechEd. Bob Beauchemin and I are delivering a pre-conference workshop titled: Leveraging SQL Server Always-On Technologies to Achieve High Availability and Scalability. It's on the Sunday prior to TechEd and it's a new session for us. Here's the abstract:

PRCN06 Leveraging SQL Server Always-On Technologies to Achieve High Availability and Scalability 
System down time and lack of scalability for mission critical applications can result in loss of revenue and business creditability. Planned downtime is typically caused by hardware upgrade, application or OS upgrade, applying a service pack, or performing routine maintenance task. Examples of unplanned downtime are hardware or software failure, natural disasters, and human error. In fact, human error has been identified as the number one cause of downtime. SQL Server 2005 Always-On Technologies provides a full range of options for achieving and maintaining appropriate levels of availability. Because the product offers so many choices, it is difficult to choose features that provide the best availability solution for a given application. In this session, we provide an in-depth description of these technologies and delve into scenarios and best practices in deployment of the availability technologies. The high availability technologies covered include Database Mirroring, Database Snapshots, Peer-to-Peer Replication, Clustering, Online Indexing, Online Restore, Piecemeal Backup & Restore, Partial Database Availability, Table and Index Partitioning, Snapshot Isolation, DDL Triggers, and others. The second part of this session focuses on scalability and building systems that scale-out to multiple servers. Building a scale-out application with SQL Server 2005 may entail using techniques and features that are unfamiliar, or are new. This session provides in-depth information about the internal implementation of scale-out features such as Service Broker, Query Notifications, Distributed Partitioned Views, Scalable Shared Databases, and Peer-to-Peer Replication. The session also includes troubleshooting techniques using Profiler and the new dynamic management views.

As for content, we'll have our lecture content available to all attendees, we're going to giveaway AlwaysOn DVDs (more info coming up) AND Bob, Paul and I are going to hang out after the workshop to answer even more questions... So, if you're looking to burn budget for FY'07 AND you want to attend an information packed (and fun ;) pre-con workshop AND a great conference for breadth/futures (a bunch of Katmai sessions at the event too), then you should sign up for TechEd before it sells out......again. Also, there are a bunch of sessions at the conference that might interest you - Paul and I are doing a Chalk/Talk Q&A on VLDB Maintenance, I'm doing a demo fest on AlwaysOn, Paul's doing a session on Corruption Detection and Recovery, Bob's doing a session Windows PowerShell and SMO Together (oh, and he's listed as Robert Beachemin...not sure why???) ...and that's just to name a few!

Oh, and the AlwaysOn DVDs are cool because:

1. they have a setup.exe that runs to create vhd/vmc files that allow you to access a predefined VPC image.
2. Virtual PC is free and Virtual Server is free... you can use EITHER for the Virtual Environment.
3. the VPC is a Windows 2003 Server setup with SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 (multiple instances) and allows you to access an environment that's excellent for learning and testing and...self-paced labs
4. the DVD includes 9 lab manuals for roughly 16 hours of self-paced lab time AND they're really good labs with multiple parts, excellent links and even useful undoc'ed commands too (if I might say so myself as I wrote most of them :)
   1. Database Snapshots - 4 Exercises, 75-90 minutes
      • Exercise 1: Repartition the SalesDB Database
      • Exercise 2: Create and Examine a Database Snapshot
      • Exercise 3: Working with Multiple Snapshots
      • Exercise 4: Creating a Database Snapshot on a Mirror Database
   2. Data Recovery & Preventative Techniques - 4, exercises, 75-90 minutes
      • Exercise 1: Examining Foreign Key Relationships between Tables
      • Exercise 2: Point-In-Time Recovery
      • Exercise 3: Using the tablediff.exe Command-Line Utility to Compare ALL Data Modifications
      • Exercise 4: Using DDL Triggers to Prevent Tables Being Dropped
   3. Instant Initialization - 2 exercises, 30-45 minutes
      • Exercise 1: Enabling Instant Initialization
      • Exercise 2: Security Vulnerabilities Created by Instant Initialization
   4. Peer to Peer Replication - 5 exercises, 75-90 minutes
      • Exercise 1: Implementing a Replication-Ready Schema
      • Exercise 2: Configuring and Implementing Peer-to-Peer Replication Configuration Using the Replication Wizards in SQL Server Management Studio
      • Exercise 3: Using the Dual Database Monitor
      • Exercise 4: Adding a new Peer Server
      • Exercise 5: Monitoring Peer-to-Peer Data Flow after a Fault
   5. Table and Index Partitioning - 4 exercises, 75-90 minutes
      • Exercise 1: Range Partition Function
      • Exercise 2: Partition Scheme
      • Exercise 3: Partitioned Table
      • Exercise 4: The Sliding Window Scenario
   6. Snapshot Isolation - 5 exercises, 75-90 minutes
      • Exercise 1: Pessimistic Locking
      • Exercise 2: Activating Snapshot Isolation & Read Committed with Snapshot Isolation 
      • Exercise 3: Using Snapshot Isolation (SI)
      • Exercise 4: Using Read Committed with Snapshot Isolation (RCSI)
      • Exercise 5: Monitoring Snapshot Isolation & Read Committed with Snapshot Isolation 
   7. Online Operations - 2 Parts, 75-90 minutes
      • Part 1: Online Index Operations
        • Exercise 1: ONLINE Index Move (for better isolation)
        • Exercise 2: Partition an Active Table ONLINE
      • Part 2: Partial Database Availability and Online Piecemeal Restore
   8. Database Mirroring - 2 large sesions with TONS of exercises, 4+ hours
      • Part I: Database Mirroring in Action
        • Exercise 1: Configuring and Implementing the High Availability Database Mirroring Configuration – using Transact-SQL through a SQLCMD master script
        • Exercise 2: Using the Dual Database Monitor and Transparent Client Redirect
        • Exercise 3: Initiating Failover in the High Availability Configuration
      • Part 2: Understanding and Implementing Database Mirroring
        • Exercise 1: Configuring and Implementing Database Mirroring using the SQL Server Management Studio
        • Exercise 2: Configuring the Database Mirroring Monitor, Mirroring Threshold Alerts and WMI Event Alerts
        • Exercise 3: Converting to the High Protection Configuration and Comparing Performance between Synchronous and Asynchronous forms of Database Mirroring 
        • Exercise 4: Configuring and Implementing the High Availability Database Mirroring Configuration – using Transact-SQL through a SQLCMD master script 
        • Exercise 5: Initiating Failover 
          1. Part I: Manual and Automatic Failover in the Synchronous forms of Database Mirroring Configuration 
          2. Part II: Preventing “split brain” in the High Availability configuration 
        • Exercise 6: Converting to the High Performance Configuration and Forcing Failover with Potential Data Loss 
   9. Service Oriented Database Architecture - 5 exercises, 3+ hours
      • Exercise 1: Setting up simple Service Broker messaging
      • Exercise 2: Setting up Inter-instance Services
      • Exercise 3: Setting up dialog security and encryption
      • Exercise 4: Setting up application-specific functions
      • Exercise 5: Using Query Notifications

And........ if that doesn't motivate you - we might also giveaway a Manageability DVD that's packed with Tools demos/labs and some SP2 specific stuff such as customized reports (which we'll talk about in the last part of our pre-conference workshop). OK, so I hope to see you at TechEd.......... the pre-conference alone is worth it!

THANKS,
kt

While at SQL Server Connections in Orlando, Stephen Wynkoop of SSWUG stole some morning time for an interview (morning time is not my best but we did get a lovely "I got my mug on SSWUG tv" mug so that made it OK :) :). We (Paul and I) had a great time chatting about Diaster Recovery, Backup/Restore, general best practices and well - games (specifically - the VERY addictive game of Blokus). Here's the interview link: http://www.sswug.org/columnists/editorial.asp?id=1135.

Enjoy!
kt

PS - If any of you pick up (and become completely addicted to) Blokus, let us know! It's great for 2 to 4 players and extremely fun when a 5 year old "wild card" sits in and throws moves that you just can't understand (but later come to really frustrate you :) :).

This is a bit of a rare post for me as most of my posts are technical. I guess it's a bit of a change in attitude, as a few things (from my personal life) have come to light recently. (and, I thank Richard and Carl for this :) :).

Anyway, I'm sitting in Tokyo/Narita airport waiting to board my final flight home to Seattle. This is after a trip which has brought me over every longitude possible - in only 8 days. It sounds "glamorous" as many people always tell me "how lucky I am that I get to see the world" and while many trips allow me to see some amazing things AND I absolutely LOVE what I do... this trip really wasn't all that much fun. The long story short is that my Father became very ill where he was vacationing. It really didn't sound all that good when we heard (which was Wednesday - in London - where