I found out last week that I will be presenting three sessions at the PASS Summit 2013 in Charlotte, NC. The first one will be a full-day pre-conference session on Scaling SQL Server 2012. This will be an updated and reorganized version of the preconference session that I have given this year in Lisbon Portugal, Omaha, and in Orange County.
The second presentation will be a regular, 75-minute session about the basics of storage for the DBA. The third presentation (which was added since another speaker had to cancel) will be another regular 75-minute session about how to use DMV queries to diagnose performance issues. If history is any guide, I will probably have more people attending my DMV session than the hardware session.
I think all three of these sessions will be a lot of fun! Here are the abstracts for all three sessions:
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. 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 third-party software restrictions. As your database server nears its load capacity, what can you do? This comprehensive full-day session will give you concrete, practical advice about how to scale SQL Server. Starting with your current workload, configuration, and hardware, we’ll explore how to find and alleviate bottlenecks, whether they are workload related, configuration related, or hardware related. Next, we’ll cover how you can decide whether you should scale up or scale out your data tier. For scale-up solutions, you’ll learn how to scale up properly with nearly zero down time. And for scale-out implementations, you’ll learn about practical, production-ready techniques such as vertical partitioning, horizontal partitioning, and data-dependent routing. We’ll also cover how to use middle-tier caching and other application techniques to increase your overall scalability.
Storage Subsystem Basics for the DBA
Do you feel lost when talking to your storage administrator? Are your storage subsystems like a mysterious black box where your databases live but you can’t go visit? This session will get you up to speed with the fundamentals of storage subsystems for SQL Server. You’ll learn about the different types of storage available and how to decide which to use for different workload types. You’ll also learn useful tips and techniques for configuring your storage for the best performance and reliability. We’ll then cover methods to effectively measure and monitor your storage performance so that you’ll have valuable information and evidence available the next time you have to discuss I/O performance with your storage administrator.
Professor DMV: How to Use DMVs to Diagnose Performance Issues
Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) and functions let you easily see exactly what is happening inside your SQL Server instances and databases with a high level of detail. You can discover your top wait types and most CPU-intensive stored procedures, find missing indexes, and identify unused indexes – to name just a few examples. This session will present, explain, and demonstrate many DMV queries that you can quickly and easily use to detect and diagnose configuration and performance issues in your SQL Server instances and databases.
There will be a large presence at PASS Summit 2013 from SQLskills, with sessions from Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp, Jonathan Kehayias, Glenn Berry, and Erin Stellato. The PASS Summit is always a good time, since it is an event where you can make a lot of valuable connections and friendships and learn a great deal of technical content during the week.
Glenn Berry's SQL Server Performance 