webcast Archives

July 31, 2012

So What’s on the Dance Card?

It looks like the next few months are going to be busier than ever. I feel like I should be asking “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?”, but substituting either my name or Ben’s in. Besides our normal docket of customer work, below is a list of where you can find us over the next few months. We may add a few things to the plate, but the list is everything we know of right now. Keep your eye towards our Upcoming Events page for the latest info!

SQL Saturday 158

Both Ben and I will be speaking this weekend at SQL Saturday 158 in New York City. SQLHA is sponsoring the event as well. Ben’s talk (“Surviving Your Peak Database Load”) is at 1:45PM, and my session (“SQL Server Dos and Don’ts: Keys to DBA Nirvana”) is at 4:15. I’m super excited to be doing a non-HA talk which is rare for me.

SQL Server Foundations 2012

Ben and I will be doing a two day eLearning Seminar for Penton and SQL Server Pro on SQL Server basics on September 11 and 13. It will be six sessions over the two days (three per day). This is similar to the event I did for them last year and is in the process of being updated; we’re just not rehashing the same old stuff. Full information on what we’ll be talking about (including pricing and registration) can be found here.

24 Hours of PASS

Ben and I will be doing a session at 24HOP. PASS hasn’t announced any dates or times, but we’ll be there!

PASS SQLRally Nordic 2012

I’ll be heading back to Europe for the second time this year to speak at PASS SQLRally 2012 Nordic. I’ll be doing a pre-conference seminar (“AlwaysOn: Maximizing High Availability with SQL Server 2012”) and most likely a session at some point during the other two days.

PASS Summit

Ben and I will also be at Summit in November. He and I will be doing a pre-conference session on Tuesday, November 6th entitled “Real-World System Design for the DBA: Private Cloud and SQL as a Service”. Ben will be blogging soon with a longer description of what we’re going to cover since we’ve had a few questions (mainly due to the fact we were limited in the number of characters we could use). I’ll also be co-presenting “The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Deploying AlwaysOn Availability Groups” with Mike Steineke and David Smith during the Summit (time and day not scheduled yet).

Training in Australia

In conjunction with Wardy IT Solutions, I’m going Down Under to deliver two weeks of training after PASS Summit. The class is a 4-day mission critical one complete with labs in both Brisbane (November 19 – 22) and Canberra (November 26 – 29). There’s an Early Bird discount until August 30, 2012. Click here to register for Brisbane and here for Canberra. The full course outline and details can be found here in PDF format. I’m very excited about this opportunity – both weeks should be great. I’m starting to talk with some other folks about other deliveries in 2013 of the course with labs outside of Australia, so stay tuned. If you would like to see it in your area or want to host it, contact us.

December 13, 2011

You Take The Good, You Take The Bad

Hello everyone! I’m waiting for my flight home after my vacation in Japan. It was exactly the break I hoped it would be. I was also glad I got to catch up with a good friend who has been living in Japan for awhile. It’s the little moments in life that make it all worth living. I spent the entire time in Tokyo and got to cross a few things off the proverbial bucket list. It was funny getting off the plane here at O’Hare. The USA has a different vibe – that’s the only way I can describe it. The people talking loudly on cel phones, not caring who hears you … those kinds of things. When you go abroad you get a different perspective on things. I love living here, but I wish a bit more civility would sometimes creep in back on these shores.

Believe it or not, I really didn’t work on vacation. Well, that’s not 100% true – I did answer a handful of e-mails, but that was it. And I looked at my scores from my two PASS sessions. I will just say I was disappointed in myself and leave it at that. It was definitely an off year. The last time I had an off year I believe was when PASS was at the Gaylord in Fort Worth, TX. I could sit and make excuses – like literally having less than a week (more like a few days) to get the demos up since I was using a later build and that the Jewish holiday was right in the middle of that – but I’m not. Any problems fall squarely on my own two feet, and I already know what I’d change in retrospect. All this proves is that no matter how long you’ve been doing it, you can take a lump.The only real comment that surprised me was one basically wondering why I was showing how to set up Windows Server Core when someone else would do it. That’s why many DBAs have issues – they have SQL blinders on. But that’s besides the point.

The question then becomes: how do you deal with that? For me, I’m going to just get over it and move on. No need to dwell on it. Take your knocks, read the feedback, and improve. Next year will be better, and I’m actually excited about a lot of stuff coming up in 2012. More on that in a few days.

In the meantime, I’m going to readjust to the time zone here and get back to work. Hope to see everyone on the Quest webcast this upcoming Thursday.

August 3, 2011

MVP Renewal, Schedule and Training Updates

With everything that’s been going on, I realized I haven’t updated anyone on what’s been going on and let you know of some great opportunities to take some training I’ll be delivering.

MVP Renewal
First and foremost, I was renewed on July 1st as a Cluster MVP for the period of 7/1/11 to 6/30/12. I’m very honored. Trust me when I say that I never assume that it will happen, and it’s definitely NOT automatic.

SQL Server Foundations – 2 Day Online eLearning Event August 30 and September 1
I’ll be delivering a six session, two day training webinar in conjunction with Penton Media and SQL Server Magazine to cover some of the basics folks need when dealing with SQL Server. I am very excited to do this, as I often just deliver training that is only cluster and/or high availability related. It won’t be death by PowerPoint – I promise! This will be a fun couple of days.

The sessions break down as follows (full abstracts at the link below):
TUESDAY, AUGUST 30
Session 1: Core SQL Server Engine Concepts, 11 am ET
Session 2: SQL Server High Availability Part 1, 1 pm ET
Session 3: SQL Server High Availability Part 2, 3 pm ET
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1ST:
Session 1: Implementation Strategies, 11 am ET
Session 2: Successful SQL Server Administration Techniques, 1 pm ET
Session 3: Practical Backup and Restore, 3 pm ET

The cost is a really good deal – $218 for all six sessions. With everyone having tight training budgets, this is a really economical way to get training without having to deal with a travel budget!

I believe it is like the others I have done with them in the past where you can view them later as well. You can ask Penton to make sure.

For full details and to register, click here.

24 Hours of PASS
Hot off the presses! Just announced today is the latest incarnation of 24 Hours of PASS, the Summit Preview version. I will be doing the session “Multi-Site Failover Clustering With SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2, and Denali” at 19:00 (7PM) GMT/15:00 Eastern US (3PM)/12:00 Western US on September 7. Click here to register.

Pre-Conference Seminar at PASS Summit
I’m very psyched about this. I was flattered when PASS picked my abstract out of the many they received. – it’s a big deal! I will be doing DBA-499-P Deep Dive into AlwaysOn: Failover Clustering and Availability Groups (click on the link for a full abstract) on Tuesday, October 11. This will be a full day of Denali high availability training focusing on what’s new in failover clustering as well as talking about the new AlwaysOn availability groups feature. The day will have lots of demos and unlike the webinars, it will allow you to be more interactive instead of just a Q&A session at the end.

The lineup for the two days of pre-conference seminars at PASS is quite frankly awesome. Lots of good stuff, and I don’t envy the decisions people will have to make to choose what to go to. Of course, I recommend choosing mine for the second day and something else for the first. But I may be a bit biased …

The cost for the each pre-conference is $395 in addition to the cost of Summit itself. What are you waiting for? Go register!

PASS Summit Spotlight Session
Besides the pre-conference seminar, I’ll be doing a spotlight session (DBA-408-S) entitled “Implementing SQL Server Denali Using Windows Server Core” (click for the abstract). Windows Server Core is a variation of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 that allows you to have a GUI-less server. Denali is the first version of SQL Server to support this variant of the underlying OS. If things like command line and PowerShell get you excited, this is the session for you.

Whew! That’s a pretty action packed schedule for the next few months which doesn’t include any of the day-to-day work or private things that I deliver. I haven’t figured out what I will be doing after PASS Summit, so stay tuned. I am eying SQL Saturday 96 in Washington D.C. on November 5th, though.

Hope to see you at one or all of these!

April 12, 2011

Slide Decks From Recent Presentations

Hello everyone. I know I’ve been a bit silent, but I’ve been pretty heads down as of late. I’m writing this quick post while still in Europe. I’ll be home soon and will get back to regular blogging. If you attended one of my recent sessions, below are links where you can find the PowerPoint decks. As you can see I’ve been all over the world (literally!) . I want to thank everyone who attended the sessions, as I had fun and I hope you learned something from them.

Please note that sessions with the same name may have slightly different content as I may have tweaked it for your delivery.

SQL Saturday #65 in Vancouver – Is That A Failover Cluster On Your Laptop? (uploaded to the SQL Server #65 site)
Webcast for the Israeli SQL Server community – Top Tips and Tricks for SQL Server Failover Clustering (uploaded here on my site)
SQL Saturday #67 in Chicago – Windows Failover Clustering Basics for the DBA (uploaded to the SQL Server #67 site)
SQL Saturday #71 in Boston – So Many High Availbility Options, So Little Time (uploaded to the SQL Server #71 site)
SQLbits Friday session – So Many High Availbility Options, So Little Time (uploaded to the SQLbits site)
SQLbits Saturday session – Multi-Site Failover Clusters with SQL Server 2008 and Denali (uploaded to the SQLbits site)

If you attended my SQLbits preconference/training day, the organizers should be sending me a list in the next few days and I’ll provide via e-mail a link for you. If you haven’t heard from me within a week or so, e-mail me using the Contact form above.

February 9, 2011

Deck and Recording for the PASS DBA Virtual Chapter Webcast from Today

Thanks to everyone who took the time out of their day to attend my webcast “Windows Failover Clustering Basics for the DBA” for the PASS Database AdministrationVirtual Chapter. The recording should be posted up there soon under their archives. I had a great time and it was a lot of material to cover. Wish I had more time. I also apologize for the occasional audio glitch – not sure what happened. Towards the end we were getting some feedback as I was answering questions, so if for some reason it came out poor, feel free to contact me and ask your question again.

Here is the slide deck

I do have a multiple day failover clustering course which has labs, covers SQL, and I’m adding Denali content right now so if you’re interested, let me know!

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