Month: April 2025

Event link at our Meetup page.

• 5:30 Networking
• 6:00 Meeting

SQL Server Health Checks – A How-to Guide

The database servers underneath critical applications are quite complex, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to learn how to keep it running efficiently. This highly technical session will help you lead an investigation into the performance of the database server and application databases. The SQL Server database environment will be examined in depth, including reasons to upgrade and how to save on SQL Server licensing costs. A rigorous health check from all the layers of SQL Server, including instance configuration, parallelization settings, and non-default performance and scalability improvements, will be introduced. Database-specific details designed to detect how your organization uses the database and options to improve its performance will also be discussed in detail. Valuable scripts, tips, and architecture concepts will be addressed so that you can perform a thorough analysis on your SQL Server environment.

David Klee

David Klee is a Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert with a passion for the convergence of data, cloud, and infrastructure. David spends his days handling performance and HA/DR architecture of mission-critical SQL Servers as the Founder of Heraflux Technologies. His areas of expertise are virtualization and performance, datacenter architecture, and risk mitigation through high availability and disaster recovery. You can read his blog at davidklee.net, and reach him on Twitter at @kleegeek.

David speaks at a number of national and regional technology related events, including the PASS Summit, VMworld, IT/Dev Connections, SQL Saturday events, SQL Cruise, PASS virtual chapter webinars, and many SQL Server User Groups.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

• 5:30 Networking
• 6:00 Meeting

Security Compliance and Auditing for SQL Server and the Azure Data Platform (Part 2 of 2)

As security and privacy requirements increase, DBAs are being tasked with providing detailed information about the architecture and activity on their databases, both for governance and compliance. However, the regulations are many and complex, and they are often written generically so they can be applied to many different industries. How do you interpret the regulations? What do you actually need for proof? And how do you get that information out of SQL Server and Azure?

In this session, we’ll explore some of the most common cybersecurity frameworks for regulations and cyber insurance, and we’ll break them down to understand how to architect your data platform for compliance. We’ll also look at how to use the tools available from Microsoft to get the proof you need. By the end of the day, you’ll have a plan for compliance that you can start implementing.

Ed Leighton-Dick

Ed Leighton-Dick is a Microsoft MVP, SQL Server performance and architecture specialist, and Founder/Principal Consultant of Kingfisher Technologies. He is a frequent volunteer with PASS, including roles as regional mentor, chapter leader of I-380 PASS SQL Server User Group, and organizer of SQLSaturday Iowa City. He can often be found teaching sessions at local, regional, and national events, including user groups, SQLSaturday, and PASS Summit. 

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Event link at our Meetup page.

• 5:30 Networking
• 6:00 Meeting

Security Compliance and Auditing for SQL Server and the Azure Data Platform (Part 1 of 2)

As security and privacy requirements increase, DBAs are being tasked with providing detailed information about the architecture and activity on their databases, both for governance and compliance. However, the regulations are many and complex, and they are often written generically so they can be applied to many different industries. How do you interpret the regulations? What do you actually need for proof? And how do you get that information out of SQL Server and Azure?

In this session, we’ll explore some of the most common cybersecurity frameworks for regulations and cyber insurance, and we’ll break them down to understand how to architect your data platform for compliance. We’ll also look at how to use the tools available from Microsoft to get the proof you need. By the end of the day, you’ll have a plan for compliance that you can start implementing.

Ed Leighton-Dick

Ed Leighton-Dick is a Microsoft MVP, SQL Server performance and architecture specialist, and Founder/Principal Consultant of Kingfisher Technologies. He is a frequent volunteer with PASS, including roles as regional mentor, chapter leader of I-380 PASS SQL Server User Group, and organizer of SQLSaturday Iowa City. He can often be found teaching sessions at local, regional, and national events, including user groups, SQLSaturday, and PASS Summit. 

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