PASS Archives - Glenn Berry

PASS Summit 2013 Summary

Glenn Berry — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 17:35:59 +0000

The PASS Summit 2013 was held in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is a big change from the usual location in Seattle. This new location may have been more successful in attracting what seemed to be an unusually high number of first-time attendees, which I think is a good thing. I heard fewer complaints during the week about travel time and time away from work from people who were from the east coast and from the southeast part of the United States. On the other hand, I heard a decent number of complaints about travel time and time away from work from people from other parts of the United States. Honestly, unless the PASS Summit is held in your home town, you are going to have to travel, so there is really no way to satisfy everyone regarding a location. Personally, I like Seattle, and I know my way around the downtown Seattle area pretty well, and it is easier for me to fly to Seattle, so I am perfectly happy if the Summit is in Seattle most years. Since I live near Denver, it is not really that hard for me to travel nearly anywhere in the United States.

I had a pre-con session called Scaling SQL Server 2012 on Monday, which went quite well (even though Paul Randal fired me on Twitter). Teaching/speaking all day by yourself is a lot more tiring than you might think, especially when you have a room full of smart SQL Server people in your session.

On Wednesday, I got to present Professor DMV in one of the two large ballrooms (which was also streamed on PASStv and recorded). That was a lot of fun to present to a large session, and I got a lot of questions during and after the presentation. There was also a lot of live commentary on Twitter while I was speaking. I think that most speakers appreciate when you give live Twitter commentary and feedback while they are speaking (even if they read it later). I certainly appreciate it!

On Friday, I got to present Storage Fundamentals for the DBA in one of the smaller (300 seat) rooms. I was pretty surprised to see people lined up, waiting to get into this session. That has never happened to me at the PASS Summit. I am more used to seeing people lined up waiting to get into to see people like Paul Randal or Kimberly Tripp. Later on Friday, I watched a very good session on virtualization performance from David Klee.

I think the people behind the PASS Summit 2013 did a great job of planning, organizing and running the event. This includes the PASS board members, the PASS employees, all of the PASS volunteers, and all of the other people who worked so hard to make the event a smoothly running success. I have a lot of respect for the people that do all of the work to make the PASS Summit possible each year.

It was great to see so many people that I mostly talk to online, and to meet a lot of new people in person. I had a lot of people come up to me throughout the week and thank me for the work I do on my DMV Diagnostic Information Queries, which was very gratifying. All of the demo scripts from all of the SQLskills speakers (Paul, Kimberly, Erin, Jon, and myself) are posted here.

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Upcoming Speaking Events

Glenn Berry — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 14:20:35 +0000

On July 25, I will be presenting for the PASS Performance Virtual Chapter at 12PM Mountain Time. I will be giving my Hardware 201 presentation. Here is the abstract:

Hardware 201: Selecting and Sizing Database Hardware for OLTP Performance

The foundation of database performance is the underlying server hardware and storage subsystem. Even the best designed and optimized database application can be crippled by an inadequate hardware and storage infrastructure. Recent advances in new processors and chipsets, along with improvements in magnetic and SSD storage have dramatically changed the evaluation and selection process compared to the past. Many database professionals struggle to keep up with new technology and often simply let someone else make their hardware selection and sizing decisions. Unfortunately, the DBA usually gets the blame for any performance issues that crop up later. Don’t let this happen to you! This session covers current and upcoming hardware from both Intel and AMD and gives you the tools and resources to make better hardware selection decisions to support SQL Server OLTP workloads.

You can register for the event here.

Next, early in the morning on August 1, I will be presenting for the latest 24 Hours of PASS event. I have the last session of the entire event, starting at 5AM Mountain Time. Despite that, hopefully I will have some people from Europe and Asia who will be able to attend. Here is the abstract:

Scaling SQL Server 2012

SQL Server implementations can rapidly evolve and become more complex, forcing DBAs and developers to think about how they can scale their solution quickly and effectively. Scaling up is relatively easy but can be expensive, while scaling out requires significant engineering time and effort. As your database server nears its load capacity, what can you do? This 24 Hours of PASS session, a preview of the full-day PASS Summit pre-conference session, will give you concrete, practical advice about how to scale SQL Server. We’ll explore how to find and alleviate bottlenecks and cover how you can decide whether you should scale up or scale out your data tier. We’ll also cover how to use middle-tier caching and other application techniques to increase your overall scalability.

You can register for 24HOP sessions here.

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Speaking at SQLSaturday #197 in Omaha on April 5-6

Glenn Berry — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:32:05 +0000

I will be speaking on both Friday and Saturday (April 5-6) at SQLSaturday #197 in Omaha, Nebraska. I will be delivering a full day pre-con on Friday, and then doing Hardware 201 on Saturday. Here is the abstract for my pre-con:

Scaling SQL Server 2012

How can you scale SQL Server 2012? Scaling up is relatively easy (but can be expensive), while scaling out requires significant engineering time and effort. If you suggest hardware upgrades you may be accused of simply “throwing hardware at the problem”, and if you try to scale out, you may be thwarted by a lack of development resources or 3rd party software restrictions. As your database server nears its load capacity, what can you do? This session gives you concrete, practical advice on how to deal with this situation. Starting with your present workload, configuration and hardware, we will explore how to find and alleviate bottlenecks, whether they are workload related, configuration related, or hardware related. Next, we will cover how you can decide whether you should scale up or scale out your data tier. Once that decision is made, you will learn how to scale up properly, with nearly zero down-time. If you decide to scale out, you will learn about practical, production-ready techniques such as vertical partitioning, horizontal partitioning, and data dependent routing. We will also cover how to use middle-tier caching and other application techniques to increase your overall scalability.

You can get a copy of the flyer for both pre-cons here: SQL Saturday #197 Pre-Cons

Here is the session I will present on Saturday:

Hardware 201: Selecting Database Hardware

The foundation of database performance is the underlying server hardware and storage subsystem. Even the best designed and optimized database application can be crippled by an inadequate hardware and storage infrastructure. Recent advances in new processors and chipsets, along with improvements in magnetic and SSD storage have dramatically changed the evaluation and selection process compared to the past. Many database professionals struggle to keep up with new technology and often simply let someone else make their hardware selection and sizing decisions. Don’t let this happen to you! This session covers current and upcoming hardware from both Intel and AMD.

My friend and SQLskills colleague, Joe Sack will also be speaking at SQLSaturday #197. I hope to see a lot of people at this event!

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Speaking at SQLSaturday #188 in Lisbon, Portugal

Glenn Berry — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 17:51:07 +0000

I have the opportunity to present a full-day preconference session on Friday, March 15, 2013, and then present two regular sessions on Saturday, March 16, 2013 at SQLSaturday #188 in Lisbon, Portugal. This is the first time I have spoken at a SQLSaturday outside of the United States, and I am really looking forward to it! This never would have happened without the enthusiasm of fellow SQL MVP Niko Neugebauer, who is a good friend and an all-around good guy!

SQLskills is a sponsor of SQLSaturday #188, and we will be giving away a certificate for a $500.00 discount on a future SQLskills Immersion Event class at the SQLSaturday event.

Here is the preconference session on Friday:

Scaling SQL Server 2012

Here are the two regular sessions on Saturday:

Hardware 201: Selecting Database Hardware

The foundation of database performance is the underlying server hardware and storage subsystem. Even the best designed and optimized database application can be crippled by an inadequate hardware and storage infrastructure. Recent advances in new processors and chipsets, along with improvements in magnetic and SSD storage have dramatically changed the evaluation and selection process compared to the past. Many database professionals struggle to keep up with new technology and often simply let someone else make their hardware selection and sizing decisions. Don’t let this happen to you! This session covers current and upcoming hardware from both Intel and AMD.

Dr. DMV: How to Use Dynamic Management Views

SQL Server 2005 introduced Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) that allow you to see exactly what is happening inside your SQL Server instances and databases with much more detail than ever before. SQL Server 2008 R2 adds even more capability in this area. You can discover your top wait types, most CPU intensive stored procedures, find missing indexes, and identify unused indexes, to name just a few examples. This session (which is applicable to SQL Server 2005 through 2012), presents and explains over fifty DMV queries that you can quickly and easily use to detect and diagnose performance issues in your environment.

This SQLSaturday should be a lot of fun, and I hope that I see a lot of people there!

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