I will be speaking at SQL Sat 380 in NYC on the topic of Basic Performance Monitoring with Perfmon. I have delivered this session many times and is usually well attended. The session is geared for the person who has heard of Perfmon but not used it. This is very much a 100 level offering.
The last time that I was in NYC for a large SQL Server event was just about 10 years ago. It was the “Get Ready for SQL Server 2005 Roadshow” that was sponsored by Microsoft, PASS, and SQL Server Magazine. The cost was $99 for a whole day; about 450 people attended. There were 3 tracks – DBA, Dev, and BI.
Although I attended many of these Road Shows and eventually presented the DBA track at some locations, I learned a lot from the audience. I still do. The questions that are asked really provide an opportunity for learning. You can also see patterns start to emerge over time from questions. For example, one question that was asked often was “Can I mirror a database to another instance on the same box?”. The first couple of times that I heard the question, my instinct was “Yes, but why? You are defeating the purpose when you do this.”. When so many people ask this question, you have to dig deeper. In essence, what a lot of people were saying was this – “I trust my hardware a lot more than I trust your software in terms of uptime”. Servers were becoming more and more fault tolerant with spare power supplies, fans, hard drives, etc. This increased reliability. From one point of view, being able to mirror to another instance on the same box was just another level of redundancy.
When you attend a SQL Saturday or other event, please don’t hesitate to ask a question. It just might be the same question that others have and it helps everyone learn more.
Also, the speakers at SQL Saturday events are giving up their Saturday too. A great way to thank the speaker is to provide written feedback on the evaluation forms. This is almost like gold to the speakers.
If you are in the NYC area on May 30th, I encourage you to attend. The event is almost “Sold Out”. so be sure to register today! http://www.sqlsaturday.com/380/eventhome.aspx
See you there!
