Here is May, the month of Travel

So it appears that May is going to be one of the busier travel months for me this year (at least so far).  With three important week long events scheduled for this month it’s going to be a hell of a month.

First is SQL Rally where I’m in Dallas Texas from May 7th-12th (I’ve got a pre-con on the 8th and I want to be able to relax with friends Friday night before heading home no Saturday).

Next is SQL Excursions May 16th-20th. (Last chance to sign up to win a free ticket from Confio Software is basically now.)

After that is SQL Day 2012 is Poland where I’m giving a pre-con, the conference key note and a couple of regular sessions.

Don’t worry, that’s not everything.  I’ve also got on site work with clients and a data center migration to do between SQL Rally and SQL Excursions.

Basically the reason that I’m writing this is so that if you email me during May (or June as it’s not much better with two TechEd conferences back to back) don’t expect a prompt reply.  Do expect the longest craziest out of office response you’ve ever seen.

Denny

Just a few days left to rack up tax deductions

There’s only a few days left in 2011, which means that there is only a few days left to rack up tax deductions for the 2011 tax year.  Things like career development (like training classes) can usually be taken as tax deductions when you itemize your taxes.  Typically training events like SQL Excursions, SQL Skills Immersion Events, and SQL Cruise would count as tax deductions.  You don’t need to take the training in 2011, you only need to pay for the training in the 2011 calender year.  If you think that you may end up having to pay some taxes for this year, a great way to get some training and reduce your taxable income for the year 2011 all in one shot.

Of course you should check with your accountant to make sure that what you are paying for qualify as a tax deduction.

Denny

Join Thomas LaRock and I for a little Afternoon Ignite

Tom LaRock is starting up a video series for Confio called Afternoon Ignite.  He has asked me to be his first victim guest on the show.  We will be talking about pretty much what ever comes to mind which will probably involve performance tuning, VMs, PASS, SQL Excursions, and Bacon.

Feel free to join us via GoTo Meeting at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern and check out the excitement.

Denny

Now is a good time to start planning your 2012 conference schedule.

The 2011 conference season is starting to come to a close.  There are only a few large conferences left such as VM World, SQL PASS, and Dev Connections.  Many people are currently working with their bosses to get sent to these conferences.

However while going through these conversations here’s something else to keep in mind.  Odds are your company has just started going through the 2012 budget process.  Now is the time to get some requests in to attend some conferences next year.  When talking to your bosses about conferences for 2012 don’t just request one conference, request them all.  The way that the budget process works is that your boss starts with a big number, and slowly hacks that number down to get to a number that his/her boss can approve.  If you request a single conference with a budget of say $4000 for ticket, hotel and flight and it’s time to reduce that line item, there’s only one place to go, $0.  Boom, no more conferences for the year.  However if you has a team of 3 people, and you all want to go to one conference request a budget line item of $96,000 (3 people * 8 conferences * $4000 each).  When asked for a list of the conferences be prepared to provide a list.

• SQL PASS
• VM World
• EMC World
• Dev Connections (There’s a couple of those)
• Build (This is similar to what PDC used to be)
• Tech Ed
• Oracle Open World

There are also other events that you can attend which may require some budget, some a little less, some a little more depending on the event.

• SQL PASS Rally
• SQL Excursions
• SQL Cruise
• Tech Cruise
• Oracle Cruise
• SQLskills Immersion Events

I’m sure that there are plenty of other events which you could find and attend.  If you start with a nice high budget as you go through the process you’ll probably end up with enough budget for a couple of people to hit a conference or two throughout the year.

Good luck getting through the budget process, and hopefully I’ll see you at some of these conferences.

Denny

SQL Server Consolidation at #SQLExcursions

The fifth and final session that I’ll be presenting at SQL Excursions is on SQL Server Consolidation.  There are lots of ways to consolidate SQL Server databases, and some times the wrong method of consolidation is selected by people.  Knowing all of the options when working on a SQL Server Consolidation project is key to a successful consolidation project.  In this session we’ll look at how to evaluate which consolidation option is best for different kinds of databases so that you can maximize your SQL Server infrastructure and minimize consolidation costs without impacting post consolidation performance.

I hope that the sessions that Tom and I are presenting at SQL Excursions sound interesting and would help you and your employer succeed in your future projects.  Personally I feel that the costs to go to an event like this are minimal compared to the massive savings that a company could realize over time from the information which their DBA would be able to bring back to the office.

If you haven’t signed up yet, now is the time.

See you in Napa September 22nd-24th,

Denny

SQL Excursions and Index Internals #sqlexcursions

The fourth session that I’ll be giving at SQL Excursions will be on index internals.

In this session we’ll dig into the internal structures of indexes.  We will explore the differences between clustered and non-clustered indexes, what’s laid out within each page of the indexes and how the SQL Server uses the data within the indexes to find rows quickly.

Knowing how indexes actually work is key to understanding why indexes improve query performance.  Knowing that indexes will help performance is good (and hopefully you know this), but knowing how the index actually works is even more important so that you can make proper indexes so that you aren’t making extra indexes that aren’t needed as having to many indexes will actually slow down SQL Server not make it faster.

If you haven’t signed up yet, now is the time.

See you in Napa September 22nd-24th,

Denny

High Availability and SQL Excursions

My third SQL Excursions session I’d like to talk about is going to be about high availability.  There are lots of high availability options for SQL Server, especially when SQL Server “Denali” is one of the high availability options.  In this session we’ll be looking at all the available HA options so that you understand all the options, and when each of the various high availability options should be used.  Not all high availability options are created equal, and using the wrong high availability option could be just as bad if not worse than not having a high availability option.  When you don’t have a high availability option you know it, when you have the wrong one you have a very false sense of security.

If you haven’t signed up yet, now is the time.

See you in Napa September 22nd-24th,

Denny

Lets learn about Virtualization at SQL Excursions

The next session from SQL Excursions that I want to talk about is my session on virtualization.  During this session, we will be talking about some best practices about running SQL Server in a virtual machine so that you can get the best performance possible out of your virtual SQL Servers.  We will also look at when is a good time to not visualize your SQL Server.  With VM World happening just a few weeks before there should be some great new VMware (and probably Hyper-V as well) announcements happening just before SQL Excursions, so you can be sure that the information we’ll be presenting is very up to date, and we’ll probably to talking about some futures for one or both platforms as well.

Being able to get SQL Server up and running within a virtual machine is key in today’s IT world.

If you haven’t signed up yet, now is the time.

See you in Napa September 22nd-24th,

Denny

SQL Excursions Sessions

As SQL Excursions is getting closer, I wanted to talk a little about the sessions that I’ll be presenting at the event which I’ll be doing over this week.  The sessions that I’ll be presenting are:

• Storage
• Virtualization
• High Availability
• Indexing Internals
• Server Consolidation

All told I’ll be presenting for about 8 hours over the two days, with Tom LaRock (blog | @sqlrockstar) presenting over the other 8 hours.  Because this isn’t a traditional conference not all the sessions will be locked in at an hour long.  Some may be longer, some shorter depending on how the day moves along.  The goal with these sessions is to get the questions answered, not to get the session presented in the time allotted.

The first session on the list above is Storage, so I’ll start with that session for today’s blog post.  During this session on storage I’ll be talking about some of the more advanced storage options which are available for storage array tuning as well as data replication and how these can be used to improve your storage performance not just for your SQL Servers, but overall for your entire environment as well as to reduce your backup windows.

If you haven’t signed up yet, now is the time.

See you in Napa September 22nd-24th,

Denny