PASS Summit 2020 Precon Announcement
I am thrilled to announce that I have been accepted to deliver a preconference boot camp called 'Amplify Your Virtual SQL Server Performance' at this year's PASS Summit conference, to be held the week of November 9th-13th. My precon is to be held on Monday, November 9th.
Description: Virtualization has been the norm in data centers for years. However, implemented incorrectly, your SQL Server performance can take a massive dive. Are you sure that your SQL Servers are running at optimal performance? This full-day boot camp covers all aspects of performance engineering for virtualized SQL Servers on all virtualized platforms, including VMware and Hyper-V.
We will review critical topics such as virtualization layers, VM construction, NUMA, resource scheduling, query parallelization and physical server alignment, “right-sizing,” and storage performance-oriented presentation. New features such as SQL Server containers and hybrid cloud architectures will be demonstrated. Backups, high availability, and disaster recovery guidelines will also be reviewed. Most importantly, this seminar informs you on methods and terminology to improve your collaboration with your infrastructure team in order to streamline your critical SQL Server performance.
PASS has commited to ensuring that the conference will take place, even with the pandemic still rampant at the time of this writing. They are going to make a decision on if the event will be held in-person or online hopefully by early June. So, register today for this outstanding event! Even if you decide that my precon is not for you, the precon offerings at this year's conference are stellar! I can't wait to see you all there, either virtually or in-person!
Webinar - SQL Server Business Continuity - Know Your Options
I’m proud to announce a new webinar that I’ll be presenting at 1pm Eastern on Thursday, May 21st, in conjunction with MSSQLTips and SIOS called “SQL Server Business Continuity – Know Your Options“.
SQL Server database business continuity, including high availability and disaster recovery, is not an easy topic to engineer for. The business must work with the IT teams to define service-level agreements, statistically significant scenarios to plan for, and then decide on a budget.
What are the questions you should ask before starting to build servers? Are the questions different if you are running SQL Server in the cloud vs on-premises? What haven’t you thought of that will threaten to disrupt your strategy during a real disaster? This conversational webinar will discuss all of the scenarios and topics that you should consider for enterprise business continuity planning and strategy before, during, and after building your SQL Servers. Be better prepared for the possibility of disruption to help save your business with the strategies discussed!
I look forward to seeing you there! RSVP for this free webinar here.
Why you need SQL Server Acceleration Services during COVID-19
So what can really help you and your business succeed during these challenging times? Your SQL Server and infrastructure teams need to work better together and make the most of the data platform that your business depends on. Performance, availability, and system efficiency are paramount to your business operations, and making sure everyone is on the same page on these topics is critical to squeeze the most from your databases.
Microsoft SQL Server, similar to other relational databases, is a significant cost to your businesses including software licenses, maintenance, support, and the associated on-prem and/or cloud platform. These are the expenses that companies have been trying to reduce spend for many years. During this time where you and your company are trying to strategize how to deal with the indirect impact of Coronavirus to financial projections and lost employee productivity, Heraflux can produce results in a short amount of time at a very reasonable cost.
Our high-level approach and focus for a successful project are to deliver both a SQL Server platform review and training package in less than two weeks. Cost savings identified after our Capacity Management review are often more than the cost of the training. The training is accomplished throughout the interactive systems review. Since most businesses have stopped traveling, our remote training is delivered while working on your systems. A much better alternative to traditional classroom training even without the current world challenges.
If your company has SQL Server in the cloud, planning to move to the cloud, or running SQL Server on-prem and you don’t feel like you “right-sized” the correct resource requirements, I encourage you read more about what we can do with our SQL Server & Platform Skills Acceleration Bundle.
Let us know if these boot camp training services can help you and your organization! Contact us to learn more.
COVID-19 Thoughts
With the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, we want to take a moment to share with you the approach that we are taking to support our staff, contractors, customers, and partners during this unfolding event. Our hearts go out to those that have been personally, directly, and indirectly impacted.
Our first commitment is to the health and safety of our team. We have been largely a remote services company since we started, and maintain flexible working locations to help our team adapt to any social distancing or isolation that we feel will help reduce the community spread of this virus. We are not affected by office closures and have the tools and resources to accomplish our tasks in our home offices without interruption. While we normally have a fair amount of on-site visits with clients, for the near-term, we have cancelled all work related travel, in-person technical community events, and are now fully remote as we perform our services for our customers.
We are quite happy to remotely present technical content to various technical user groups worldwide, and feel free to contact us if you'd like to learn more!
We are closely monitoring the situation and following the guidance of the World Health Organization, and will adjust our practices as the situation continues to evolve.
We will continue to use our expertise to ensure that our customers and their needs are still moving forward and meet our expected customer experience through these challenging times. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us directly.
Sincerely,
David Klee and the rest of the Heraflux Team
Bob Pusateri Presenting at PASS Summit 2018
I’ve been honored to present a session at PASS Summit for the past few years, but this year I am especially humbled as I had not one but two abstracts accepted! The first is an introduction to Azure Cosmos DB. The other is covering some of my favorite SSMS and T-SQL tips and tricks that can help you save time!
Select Stars: A SQL DBA’s Introduction to Azure Cosmos DB
Level: 200
Where: Skagit 4 (TCC Lower Level)
When: Thursday November 8, 2018 1:30-2:45pm
Azure Cosmos DB has quickly become a buzzword in database circles over the past year, but what exactly is it, and why does it matter? This session will cover the basics of Azure Cosmos DB, how it works, and what it can do for your organization. You will learn how it differs from SQL Server and Azure SQL Database, what its strengths are, and how to leverage them. We will also discuss Azure Cosmos DB’s partitioning, distribution, and consistency methods to gain an understanding of how they contribute to its unprecedented scalability. Finally, we will demonstrate how to provision, connect to, and query Azure Cosmos DB. If you’re wondering what Azure Cosmos DB is and why you should care, attend this session and learn why Azure Cosmos DB is an out-of-this-world tool you’ll want in your data toolbox!
SSMS & T-SQL Tricks: Working Smarter, Not Harder
Level: 100
Where: Room 6A
When: Wednesday November 7, 2018 4:45-6:00pm
Do you spend a considerable amount of time in SQL Server Management Studio? Are you always in search of ways to write better code with less effort? Attend this session to see demonstrations of all the helpful gems SSMS has hiding in plain sight that will save you keystrokes, mouse clicks, and time while getting your work done. We will also cover useful T-SQL Scripts to make common tasks easier and faster, and solutions to frequently-encountered coding problems. Whether you’re a developer or a DBA, whether you do your work on-premises or in the cloud, attend this session to learn how easy it is to write better T-SQL code and save the day, all while working smarter, not harder!
I hope to see you there!
PASS Summit starts in a little over a month, and if you’re thinking this sounds pretty awesome, registration is still open! The program committee has put together an incredible schedule combining top presenters from all aspects of the Microsoft Data Platform. On top of that, opportunities for networking abound. While the sessions are awesome, the community is PASS Summit’s greatest asset. You really don’t want to miss this.
Even if you can’t attend, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@SQLBob). I’ll be sharing plenty of updates and photos from throughout the conference. Even if you can’t experience PASS Summit in person, by following myself, other community members, and the #PASSsummit2018 hashtag, you can get a great virtual experience.
This post was originally posted on Bob's personal blog over at bobpusateri.com.
Did VMware Just Reinvent Itself?
I was fortunate enough to speak at and attend this year's VMworld USA conference in Las Vegas last week. I caught a small announcement there that I found absolutely intriguing, and feel it could be a revolution in the world of VMware and on-premises virtualization.
Last week, they quietly announced that Amazon Relational Database Services (RDS) will soon be able to be used on your on-premises VMware environment. Very few other details were released, but the RDS web page has a signup form for preview program.
The power of the cloud is largely in the automation that it provides. Our experience has shown that most organizations have fantastic on-prem virtualization but lack the automation to provide a solid end-user self-provisioning platform. The automation in the cloud is one of the primary drivers for cloud adoption.
Did VMware Corp. just expand to become the on-premises extension of Amazon to allow corporations to gain the power of Amazon cloud automation but on their existing on-prem IT investment?
Is this the first service of many to be offered?
Microsoft Azure Stack was an absolute game changer when it launched. I love every bit of it, and we use it in a number of shops to contribute to DevOps initiatives to help IT move as fast as the business. The only downside to Azure Stack is that it must be deployed for production purposes on certified hardware, and that list is small and rather pricey. Consistent hardware is a bonus when keeping the experience constant and predictable, but most organizations are not able to leverage their current IT platform investments to deploy Azure Stack because it is not completely certified for Azure Stack. The expense of a new investment in equipment is most likely hurting adoption.
I've been thinking about this for years now. I actually thought that this would happen in a daydream over two years ago. What if the Amazon automation deployment doesn't require special hardware to run when on-prem? What if it will run on a certified and supported VMware deployment, of which there are millions of such deployments worldwide? How does this change the private cloud game?
Only time will tell. We're eagerly watching this one. I can't wait to see if anything new will be announced at Microsoft Ignite in a few weeks!
Heraflux and CRN at VMworld 2018
Heraflux is proud to have contributed to a few news releases from CRN at this year's VMworld conference in Las Vegas. David Klee was there presenting on SQL Server on VMware related topics, was interviewed by CRN for his thoughts on the current state of VMware, and contributed to the conversation around networking.
Networking has been historically fragmented,” he said. “So, if you can turn it around…lock it down better, make it more streamlined and more automated, especially around NSX, then we can be closer to a more secure environment.
Read more on this release here.
Next, the interview talked more about networking here.
Finally, David spoke about the announcements that came from this year's conference.
This was an exciting conference, and we are thrilled to work with CRN on these announcements!
VMworld 2018 USA Direct Playback Links
VMware has prepared and released the video recordings from this year's VMworld 2018 USA conference that was held in Las Vegas last week in an incredibly short time. William Lam (@lamw) has prepared the links into one consumable format at GitHub so you can watch them as you find the time. Check them out!
Podcast - Database Protection in the Cloud Era
We're proud to announce that we were part of a podcast recording with Rubrik recently where we discuss database protection in the public cloud era.
Today, companies are on a journey to modernize their infrastructures and meet the changing demands of businesses. The cloud is becoming a strategic part of this initiative due to its potential to unlock cost savings and increase agility. However, the cloud also brings a new set of migration and data protection challenges.
In this episode, Michael Fal (Rubrik), David Klee (Heraflux Technologies), and John Morehouse (Denny Cherry & Associates) explore the database landscape in the cloud era and share protection best practices.
The podcast is hosted over at SoundCloud. Check it out!
SQL Server Sessions at VMworld 2018 USA
We hope to see you all at this year's VMworld 2018 USA conference where we are fortunate enough to have been selected to present four SQL Server-themed sessions!
The first is an all-day boot camp (VAP3768WU) with Oleg Ulyanov from VMware Corp. and David Klee from Heraflux where we take participants through a comprehensive journey of understanding how to manage, performance tuning, and business continuity planning for high performance SQL Servers on the VMware virtualization platform. It's the Sunday before VMworld officially ramps up, and if you have infrastructure engineers attending this conference, please tell them to register for this boot camp.
Next, Thomas LaRock from SolarWinds (@sqlrockstar) and David will be presenting a session called "Performance Deep Dive for Demanding Virtual Database Servers" (VAP1425BU). We'll be discussing advanced performance-related topics such as CPU scheduling and vNUMA, "right-sizing" for both performance and licensing, virtual disks and performance discrepancies, and general operational efficiency.
Next, Michael Corey from LicenseFortress (@michael_corey) and David will be presenting a session called "Database Virtualization (Monster VMs) with VMware vSphere: Doing IT Right" (VAP1296BU), which is an updated version of the continued track of performance-related tips and tricks. Come see us laugh our way through over a hundred slides packed full of things you can take back to your environments!
Finally, David has a solo session called "Database vDisks and You" (VMTN5520B), where he'll talk about all of the various layers of queueing between the SQL Server database and the enterprise SAN, and how to measure and monitor these layers, plus discuss ways to performance tune each layer.
As always, it's going to be a great show! Contact us if you want to meet up in person while at the show, and let's geek out and talk shop! Register for this conference here, and make sure to enroll in the SQL Server on VMware boot camp!