In Los Angeles? Come See Me Speak!
I’ll be presenting at the Los Angeles SQL Server Professionals Group on January 21st. For complete details, check their website.
Come See Me at World of Windows Server in Singapore Dec 8 – 10.
Well, it’s official – the website just went up. Can’t hide it anymore … I’m delivering a 3-day masterclass on consolidation and virtualization at World of Windows Server in Singapore as well as delivering two sessions (although the current website shows two different, it is going to be a two parter on clustering). I’m very exicted and honored to have been asked to do this.
If you don’t live in Singapore or can’t get there (hey, what’s a few thousand US dollars to take a little excursion to Singapore at the last minute – just ask ask your boss!), I do plan on delivering the masterclass and possibly expanding it to four or five days. Or not. I’ve spent a lot of time over this past month in content development (official v1 of my Windows Server 2008/SQL Server failover clustering class and this upcoming delivery in Singapore), and am going to assess it after I’m done to see if any tweaks are needed. I can promise you that whether you come to Singapore or see it in a town near you, it’l be a lot of fun, technical content, and information.
Contact me if you want to know more!
PASS Wrapup and Other Musings
PASS was a whirlwind week between the three main conference days and the two MS Insider days on either end. I don’t ever remember being so busy at PASS, yet for the first time in … well … I don’t know how long I actually attended a handful of sessions. I highly recommend the HA customer panel led by two good friends on SQLCAT Prem Mehra and Sanjay Mishra. Besides hearing about real world implementations, I was SO glad the panel talked about people and process. You don’t get 12 seconds of downtime with technology alone! It wouldn’t be PASS if I didn’t say that it was good seeing everyone – friends new and old, including putting faces with people I had been talking to for quite awhile either over e-mail or on the phone. Oh, and Buck – stop trying to make friends with fire hydrants!
Despite all of the excitement I also managed to deliver my own, not without its own set of challenges. By the time I hit PASS, I realized that my session had been made 500 level. 500 level? I may be good, but 500 I think implies I must know a lot about SQL Server and failover clustering lol Now wanting to disappoint, my presentation and demos had major surgery before Thursday, and I hope I passed the audition (to paraphrase a famous rock band …). I’ll see when I get my scores in a few weeks. I only wish I had a two parter or more time, as it would have even been better. It was also fun sitting in for the afternoon on the failover clustering pre-con.
I did see that people posted Tweets about me on Twitter http://twitter.com/search?q=Hirt%20sqlpass. I’m not on Twitter and don’t plan on it (I am on Facebook, though). Someone pointed it out to me. Seeing it was a strange experience.
In other news, I saw that Ken Simmons took the time to read and blog with a brief review of my new consolidation whitepaper. It’s always nice to see people actually thinking what you do is worthwhile; sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees when you’re writing and editing.
On Amazon, my Pro SQL Server 2005 High Availability book just got its first review after two years in publication. I was pretty shocked to see it, considering how long it’s been out. I know what people have said to me about it, but funny to see a formal review after my new book was published.
Speaking of my new book, I thank those of you who have already bought Pro SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering in eBook or a physical format (i.e. a book of the paper kind) since its publication in July. The word on the street is it’s doing fairly well, and people seem to like it. I saw at PASS it sold out, which I took to mean it was popular.
Oh, and I know I need to finish the scripts. I will soon – and one of them is a PowerShell-based script which automatically creates the scripts to install your Windows and SQL Server failover clusters pulling the info from my configuration spreadsheet. I know the scripts are way late, but I’ve been a tad busy and I want to give you guys good value. My apologies.
I’ve got a few future book ideas up my sleeve – a few of which may come to fruition over the next year or so – but I can say with relative certainty that I’ll probably be doing a full HA book (not just failover clustering) for the next full version of SQL Server after SQL Server 2008 R2. Chances are it will be bigger than the 2005 HA book which is about 800 pages. Yes, you read that right. Bigger. Better start lifting weights now!
Well, in the mean time, I’m off to finish preparing for a failover clustering training class I’m delivering next week, and finalize my consolidation/virtualization class I’ll be delivering in Singapore in December, along with two normal presentations (one on failover clustering, another on consolidation/virtualization).
Thankfully I’ll have a little bit of downtime in Japan (before Singapore) and Hong Kong (after Singapore). I get to spend my upcoming 38th birthday on a plane flying to Tokyo. I look forward to catching the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra and hopefully Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, and Lenny White at the Blue Note while in town. I found my USA-made 1976 maple neck fretless Fender Precision there in 2008 for a great price, and it’s become a favorite to play. Tokyo not only a great place to visit just as a tourist (this will be my third time there), but an awesome music town. If you’re a lover of buying music in a physical format, one of the last places on Earth that still has a lot of great CD and record stores. Hopefully I’ll also get to hang a bit with my friend Jason who I was in a band with back in college. My new jazz album is partially done, and I’ll be doing a lot of composing and arranging while on that trip. Heaven knows I’ll have a LOT of time on airplanes!
Thanks to the Chicago SQL Server User Group
Just got back to my hotel room, but I wanted to take a second to publicly thank the Chicago SQL Server User Group for inviting me to speak to them this evening. It was a lot of fun, and a really good crowd. It’s amazing how much stuff you can cram in an hour if you put your mind to it. I look forward to another opportunity to speak to them in the future.
Off to get some room service to get something in my stomach, a few hours of sleep, and back out to the airport around 4:30 or 5AM to fly back to Boston.
The TechEd 2009 Update From Los Angeles #1
It’s the end of Day Two at TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles. I’m sitting here in my hotel room eating some dinner and catching up for the first time in a few days on some work and e-mails that I haven’t had the time to do since arriving at TechEd.
So far, it’s been a good two days. I’ve already taped two TechEd Online sessions (a panel, and a tech talk – both on clustering). The panel discussion, Planning a Windows Deployment for SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering, was just posted today and it came out well. It features Steven Ekren who is on the Windows Development team for clustering, Max Verun from the SQL Server development team, and myself. You can view the panel at: http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=6f3925e1-4b83-4f13-bb5f-4d69741916cb. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, and I hope you find it useful.
Speaker Idol is a lot of fun to judge; today was my first time sitting in this year’s competition (I did last year and was supposed to judge yesterday, but something came up). I’ll be judging the final two heats (tomorrow and Thursday) as well as the finals on Thursday night. Being a judge is also difficult. Everyone really is good, and the difference between the winner, runner up, and anyone else is usually pretty small. One or two things are usually the difference. Come the finals, it’ll be fun to see if the finalists incorporated any of our feedback, or just do what got them there. There is no right or wrong on that one. If you’re at TechEd, come by the Yellow TLC Theater at noon to see the final two rounds.
I’m also spending a lot of time in the DAT booth – more than I’m scheduled. Honestly, I really do enjoy interacting with everyone and answering questions. For those of you who have come by already, thanks! I hope you got as much out of it as I do talking with you. I’ll be there all week (although Friday AM I’ll be in the uprgade section, not the mission critical/HA one). Feel free to drop by. I will say this – it doesn’t matter how comfortable your shoes are. If you’re on your feet all day, you do feel it when you sit down and finally relax for a few minutes.
That’s the quick update. I hope to see more of you these next few days.