Event link at our Meetup page.

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

OpenAI in Azure Synapse

You have probably heard of AI and ChatGPT with Microsoft’s BIG investments in OpenAI, see how you can use some amazing new AI technology in your own Azure Synapse environment with a live demo! Discussions on other uses for AI in other Azure solutions as well, including Azure Cognitive Search.

Steve Wake

Steve Wake is currently the Principal BI Developer at Brown and Caldwell and has experience in consulting, advertising, media, manufacturing, retail, charities, telecommunications and financial services organizations using the full on-premises Microsoft BI stack. Recent experience with the Azure services: Microsoft Fabric, OpenAI, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Analysis Services, Azure Logic Apps, Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, Snowflake and Power BI. Steve is also very involved in the SQL community, speaking at events around the world.

AI is the big buzz right now, so I figure others probably want to know how they might be able to leverage it in their applications.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

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

Completing a Performance Assessment and Creating a Monitoring Tool using SSMS, SSRS and just a hint of PowerShell

In this session you will learn how to perform a complete performance assessment on a SQL Server using SSMS and SSRS. We will complete this using a suite of over 140 SSRS reports that includes easy navigation to all report. We will also go over how to create an effective monitoring solution using SSRS, SSM and Powershell. This solution also includes reports that have charts that will make it easy to share with non-technical individuals if needed. Using these reports you will be able to easily identify performance bottlenecks, potential security issues as well as aspects of your server that may not be in line with best practices.
This includes the dashboard you see below as well as a suite of over 180 SSRS reports that can be opened in SSMS.

Below are the many of the reports that are included. We have found these extremely useful in helping us identify performance issues quickly!!!

Dave Bland

Manager of Database Administrators, Stericycle
Over 20 years of SQL Server experience that includes being a DBA, BI development and Application development using VB.NET. Dave currently is the Manager of the DBA team at Stericycle. Dave is a Friend of Red-Gate for 2019. He is a frequent presenter at SQL Saturday events and user groups around the country. Has been teaching SQL Server since version 2000 and is the SQL Server instructor at Harper College in Palatine, IL. Current certifications include: Microsoft Certified Trainer; MCTS: SQL Server 2008, Implementation and Maintenance; MCTS: SQL Server 2008, BI Development and Maintenance; MCSA: SQL Server 2008; MCSA: SQL Server 2016; MCSE: SQL Server 2016 – BI; MCDBA: SQL Server 2000; MCSD; MCSE: Data Management and Analytics.

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Event link at our Meetup page.

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

The Fabric Of Our Lives

Announced at Microsoft Build 2023, Microsoft Fabric is the new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering for data analytics solutions. Based on the data lakehouse paradigm and incorporating the latest updates to Data Factory, Synapse, and Power BI, Fabric is positioned as the one-stop shop for both professional and citizen data analytics workloads.

Please join us as we explore this exciting next step in the evolution of the Microsoft Data Platform for analytics.

Chris Hyde

Chris Hyde (he/him) is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He works as an independent SQL Server BI and DBA consultant and is the leader of the Albuquerque local Azure Data Technologies group. He loves loud music and cricket, but not usually at the same time.

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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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