This coming weekend is the SQL Saturday #307 in Iowa City, Iowa. I am really looking forward to attending this event again. I have been to this event before, and I really enjoy the attendees warm enthusiasm!

I am very excited to be presenting two sessions this year!

SQL Server Virtualization 101 – Room 2520C at 1:00pm

Abstract: What is virtualization? What impact does it have on DBAs and their systems? What aspects of their job stays the same, and what changes? What is really going on inside that black box? The fundamentals of private cloud computing and how it impacts data professionals will be discussed in this interactive session. Tips on how to use the best of virtualization to improve their daily tasks and efficiencies will be demonstrated, and common questions and concerns will be addressed.

Session Level: Beginner

How to Argue with Your Infrastructure Admins – And Win! - Room 2520D at 4:00pm

Abstract: Do you feel like you spend hours going round-and-round with your system, storage, and virtualization administrators over SQL Server best practices? Are their application-agnostic requirements hurting your SQL Server’s performance, or worse, their reliability? David Klee (@kleegeek) will discuss valuable insight into how to start and work through the common conversations with them on the SQL Server infrastructure practices that matter to you the most, and how to succeed in getting what you need while keeping everyone happy.

Session Level: Intermediate

Also, if you are interested, there are just a few seats left for my Preconference training session on Friday, aptly entitled ‘Virtualization for SQL Server DBAs‘.

Session Information:

VMware vExpert and SQL Server performance expert David Klee leads this full-day introduction to enabling and managing a virtualized SQL Server environment. The focus of the course is to help those new to virtualization and/or infrastructure concepts to become familiar with the concept and purposes of virtualization and how it can benefit them as data professionals. Participants will gain exposure to all layers of virtualization underneath SQL Server, from storage to hypervisor to the SQL Server instance, and will learn how to construct the entire stack with the focus on SQL Server performance. 

Upon completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

• Understand key virtualization and cloud concepts
• Determine the optimal infrastructure configuration for best performance
• Construct a SQL Server virtual machine template with best practices for agility and performance
• Understand how and what stack metrics to benchmark and baseline to ensure proper objective performance measurement
• Identify and remediate common virtualized SQL Server performance killers
• Understand proper virtualized capacity management techniques for long term management 

Attendees with the following experiences will benefit the most from this course:

• Basic familiarity with the core components of a server
• SQL Server installation and configuration
• Exposure to SQL Server performance metric measurement and identification 

A working set of the screens and configuration settings referenced in the session, together with the reference slides and documentation, will be provided to attendees, for prospective reference in working with virtualized SQL Server in their own environments.

Upcoming Precons

Coming up are two more SQL Saturdays with my preconference sessions in Rochester, NY (precon) and Portland, ME (precon)! If you are in the area, I urge you to check out the SQL Saturdays in these towns, and if my preconference session is intriguing for you and your organization, register for the precons today! I look forward to seeing you at these events!

After these three events, I’m taking a short break from SQL Saturdays for a couple of months to work on some exciting projects that I will be unveiling here soon. Check back frequently for more information as these become publicly available!