Migrating to SQL Server 2012
How do you design and implement a safe and successful migration from an older
version of SQL Server to SQL Server 2012, with no data loss and virtually no
downtime? What if you have a limited hardware budget for the upgrade effort, and
you are worried about the new core-based licensing in SQL Server 2012? How can
you choose your hardware wisely in light of the new licensing model?
This session will cover several different methods for migrating your
data to SQL Server 2012 while meeting these objectives and minimizing your
hardware and licensing costs. You will also learn how to help make the case that
an upgrade makes good sense from a business perspective.

The following week, I will be at SQLSaturday #169 on September 22, in Denver, CO. I will be presenting an updated version of DMV Emergency Room!, about how to use a special set of DMV queries to help identify and troubleshoot performance issues in an emergency. The abstract is below:

DMV Emergency Room!

If you have ever been responsible for a mission critical database, you have probably been faced with a high stress, emergency situation where a database issue is causing unacceptable application performance, resulting in angry users and hovering managers and executives. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, thank your lucky stars, but start getting prepared for your time in the hot seat. This session will show you how to use DMV queries to quickly detect and diagnose the problem, starting at the server and instance level, and then progressing down to the database and object level. Based on the initial assessment of the problem, different types of DMV queries will help you narrow down and identify the problem. This session will show you how to assemble and use an emergency DMV toolkit that you can use to save the day the next time a sick database shows up on your watch in the Database ER!

On October 13, 2012, I will be at SQLSaturday #145 in Nashville, TN. I will be presenting Hardware 301: A deeper Dive into Database Hardware. The abstract is below:

Hardware 301: Diving Deeper into Database Hardware

Making the right hardware selection decisions is extremely important for database scalability. Having properly sized and configured hardware can both increase application performance and reduce capital expenses dramatically. Unfortunately, there are so many different choices and options available when it comes to selecting hardware and storage subsystems, it is very easy to make bad choices based on outmoded conventional wisdom. This session will give you a framework for how to pick the right hardware and storage subsystem for your workload type. You will learn how to evaluate and compare key hardware components, such as processors, chipsets, and memory.

Finally, I will be speaking at the PASS Summit 2012 during the week of Nov 6-9, 2012, in Seattle, WA.  The abstract for this session is shown below:

Migrating to SQL Server 2012

How do you design and implement a safe and successful migration from an older version of SQL Server to SQL Server 2012, with no data loss and virtually no downtime? What if you have a limited hardware budget for the upgrade effort, and you are worried about the new core-based licensing in SQL Server 2012? How can you choose your hardware wisely in light of the new licensing model?  This session will cover several different methods for migrating your data to SQL Server 2012 while meeting these objectives and minimizing your hardware and licensing costs. You will also learn how to help make the case that an upgrade makes good sense from a business perspective.

All three of these events should be a lot of fun, and I am looking forward to seeing a lot of people at the venues!

Now, I have to make my shameless plug for my proposed sessions! Below, I have listed my four session abstracts. If you are interested in seeing any of these sessions, I would really appreciate it if you would take the time to mark them as preferred sessions.

DMV Emergency Room! [300]
Session Category: Regular Session (75 minutes)
Session Track: Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment
Speaker(s): Glenn Berry
If you have ever been responsible for a mission critical database, you have probably been faced with a high stress, emergency situation where a database issue is causing unacceptable application performance, resulting in angry users and hovering managers and executives. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, thank your lucky stars, but start getting prepared for your time in the hot seat. This session will show you how to use DMV queries to quickly detect and diagnose the problem, starting at the server and instance level, and then progressing down to the database and object level. Based on the initial assessment of the problem, different types of DMV queries will help you narrow down and identify the problem. This session will show you how to assemble and use an emergency DMV toolkit that you can use to save the day the next time a sick database shows up on your watch in the Database ER!

Hardware 301: Diving Deeper into Database Hardware [300]
Session Category: Spotlight Session (90 minutes, Invitation only)
Session Track: Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment
Speaker(s): Glenn Berry
Making the right hardware selection decisions is extremely important for database scalability. Having properly sized and configured hardware can both increase application performance and reduce capital expenses dramatically. Unfortunately, there are so many different choices and options available when it comes to selecting hardware and storage subsystems, it is very easy to make bad choices based on outmoded conventional wisdom. This session will give you a framework for how to pick the right hardware and storage subsystem for your workload type. You will learn how to evaluate and compare key hardware components, such as processors, chipsets, and memory. You will also learn how to evaluate and compare different types of storage subsystems for different database workload types. This session will give you the knowledge you need to make sure you get the best performance and scalability possible from your hardware budget!

Scaling SQL Server [300]
Session Category: 1/2 Day Sessions (3.5 hours)
Session Track: Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment
Speaker(s): Glenn Berry
How can you scale SQL Server? 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.

Using Data Compression and Backup Compression to Improve Performance [200]
Session Category: Regular Session (75 minutes)
Session Track: Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment
Speaker(s): Glenn Berry
Native Data Compression and Native Backup Compression are two very useful features that were added with SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. Both of these features were improved in SQL Server 2008 R2, yet many database professionals are not familiar with how to use them effectively to reduce I/O requirements and improve overall performance. Modern multi-core processors make various forms of compression a much easier choice in many situations. Knowing how to determine which indexes are good candidates for data compression is extremely important if you want to get the best results. This session will give you real-world, practical examples and guidelines for how to take advantage of both data compression and backup compression.

Here is the title and abstract:

Dr. DMV: How to Use Dynamic Management Views to Monitor and Diagnose Performance Issues With High Volume OLTP Workloads

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 both 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2), presents and explains over thirty DMV queries that you can quickly and easily use to detect and diagnose performance issues in your environment.

The attendee link for LiveMeeting is here.

7595 W. Technology Way, Suite 400
Denver, CO 80237

As I have said many times before, it is a good idea to try to attend your local user’s group on a regular basis. It is a great way to get to know people in the local SQL Server community, and you are likely to learn something from the presentations. Plus, there is free food, and you are very likely to win some nice swag at the end of the meeting. I am glad that the meeting place has gone back to Microsoft, since they have a lot more room than Ameritech does. It was very gracious of Ameritech to host the meetings as long as they did, so I want to thank them for doing that.

Dr. DMV: How to Use Dynamic Management Views to Monitor and Diagnose Performance Issues With High Volume OLTP Workloads

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 both 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2), presents and explains over thirty DMV queries that you can quickly and easily use to detect and diagnose performance issues in your environment.

This will have the December 2010 version of my SQL Server 2008 Diagnostic Information Queries, which have quite a few changes and improvements compared to previous versions. The meeting will be on Windows LiveMeeting, and it will be recorded. I hope to see you there!