Category: Meetings

Event link at our Meetup page.

• 5:30 pm Networking
• 6:00 pm Meeting

A DBA’s Guide to the Proper Handling of Corruption

Corruption can strike at any time. As DBAs how we alert, investigate, and respond can have a profound impact on our company. In this session we will learn how to detect and respond to various types of corruption.

First we will be focus on ways to detect corruption early. This will include understanding tools available to us like DBCC CheckDB as well as the importance of testing your backups. We’ll look at some sample scripts to automate corruption checks and common alerts we should have set up on our instances.

Then we will move onto how to respond. We’ll discuss the importance of incident management and the Disaster Recovery mindset and look at how we can analyze the situation safely as well as point out various pitfalls that trip people up. We’ll also discuss when and how we may be able to fix corruption vs restoring the database. Additionally we will look at a few common examples of corruption and how to fix them.

Brandon Leach

A Microsoft Data Platform MVP, Brandon is a senior member of the Database team for financial company x functioning as a SQL Server Infrastructure Architect/SME. Having worked in data estates of several petabytes across thousands of servers, he puts a high focus on performance tuning and automation at scale. He is a frequent speaker at events like conferences and user groups.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

• 5:30 pm Networking
• 6:00 pm Meeting

Automatically Restore Availability Group Databases Using DBATools

Introduced in SQL Server 2012, Availability Groups (AG) provide high availability and disaster recovery.  One of the challenges when working with AGs is a database needs to be removed from the AG in order to be restored.  For a production system this is usually not a problem, but if you have a test AG environment it can become complicated.  Join me for this session to learn how to leverage the dbatools PowerShell module to remove databases from an AG, restore them from the most recent prod backup, and add them back to the AG.

Frank Gill

Frank Gill has worked with SQL Server for 16 years and has been involved in the SQL community for almost as long. Over the past 9 years, he has worked as a consultant and has focused on deploying and migrating SQL Server workloads to Azure. When not working with SQL Server, Frank loves baseball, live music, art museums, and hanging out with his wife and two cats.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

• 5:30 pm Networking
• 6:00 pm Meeting

Azure SQL Storage Performance Tuning

Have you ever noticed that cloud storage usually doesn’t keep up with your database workloads? Just like on-premises platforms, storage performance can hold back your query performance, but the storage itself is not always the culprit. In this demo-driven session, we will discuss how to understand the current storage demand from your databases, tuning options based on the Azure SQL data platform of choice, and demonstrate tuning techniques for each. Come learn and take away options for improving your cloud-based SQL data estate.

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 pm Networking
• 6:00 pm Meeting

Ask Me Anything Session

Pat Phelan will lead our discussion tonight.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

• 5:30 pm Networking
• 6:00 pm Meeting

Anything But: Troubleshooting When it’s Not SQL Server

Here we go again: the SQL Server is slow but where is the problem? Is there a large blocking chain or a high number of deadlock events? Maybe it is a slow query using a large number of resources? Does the query have a non-optimal execution plan? Many times as a DBA, we ask these same questions and answer NO to all of them because the performance issue is outside of SQL Server. In this session, we will focus on troubleshooting all of the typical issues that are not SQL Server-related but impact SQL Server. We will explore troubleshooting virtualization, storage, memory, CPU, OS, and networking issues.

Ben DeBow

Ben DeBow is the Founder and CEO of Fortified and has more than 25 years of experience designing, scaling, and implementing on large data implementations around the world. At Fortified, Ben is responsible for the Product Strategy and being an industry thought leader around data platforms. He is an author and speaker at many industry conferences in his spare time, he volunteers with many environment organizations and is a part time BBQ judge.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

• 5:30 pm Networking
• 6:00 pm Meeting

SQL Server Authentication and Authorization In-Depth

Authentication and authorization – better known as logins, users, roles, and permissions – are foundational concepts in SQL Server security. While simple in nature, their flexibility can make them complex to implement, leading many DBAs and developers to take shortcuts that compromise their databases’ security. We’ll dive deep into this topic in this session so you can get to know these basic building blocks better and learn how to avoid some common mistakes. We’ll also take a look at the latest innovations in SQL 2022 that finally close some long-time gaps in the security model.

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 pm Networking
• 6:00 pm Meeting

10 Cloudy Questions to Ask Before Migrating Your SQL Server

Cloud adoption of database-related services continues to accelerate, but the choices for which service to select – IaaS, DBaaS, and PaaS – all impact the features available to your applications. Selecting a service is a critical first step in the migration process, and selecting poorly can lead to cost overruns and significant time spent going down the wrong path. The questions you do not ask or consider prior to a migration can make or break your cloud experience. The most important ten questions to answer, such as your availability requirements, database-level dependencies, migration strategies, and other critical concerns, will all be discussed so that you are ready to move to the cloud with confidence in your platform of choice.

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 pm Networking
• 6:00 pm Meeting

Review of PASS Summit 2022

We will have a recap of the PASS Summit and then enjoy a bit of social time to celebrate the holidays.

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 pm Networking
• 6:00 pm Meeting

A Query Tuner’s Practical Guide to Statistics

Have you ever heard that a huge difference in estimated vs actual number of rows can cause poor query performance? Ever wondered where SQL Server comes up with that “estimated number of rows” value in the first place?

The answer lies in SQL Server Statistics, which can be a very daunting if not dry subject matter. Come to this session for a practical guide to statistics for the T-SQL query writer and tuner. We will demystify statistics, the histogram, and how this impacts execution plan quality.

When you leave, you’ll have a strong understanding of the role statistics play in your execution plans, and how to dig deeper and tune those troublesome queries.

Andy Yun

Andy Yun is a Field Solutions Architect at Pure Storage, who has been with SQL Server for over 20 years as both a Database Developer and Administrator. He focuses on performance tuning, with expertise in T-SQL, storage engine internals, and monitoring. Andy strongly believes in passing knowledge onto others, regularly speaking at conferences and user groups, and mentoring industry colleagues. Andy is a former Microsoft MVP, co-founder of the Chicago SQL Association, and former co-leader of the Chicago Suburban User Group and Chicago SQL Saturday Organizing Committee.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

• 5:30 pm Networking
• 6:00 pm Meeting

DBATools: Migrating Database Servers

Times past SQL Server Instances were migrated using various scripts and checklists. While Checklists are always a good idea DBATools has made it easier using a few commands.

H. Ross Reed

H. Ross Reed is a Lead Database Administrator for the Options Clearing Corp. He has been a database administrator for over 20 years. He’s Co-Organizer of the Chicago Data Professionals User Group, and a frequent presenter.

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