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SQLSaturday_Benchmarking_Baselines_and_Monitoring_Storage_.pptx (677 KB)

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SQLSaturday_Benchmarking_Baselines_and_Monitoring_Storage_.pptx (677 KB)

Benchmarking, Baselines and Monitoring Storage There are several steps in the life cycle of your storage systems. We have several tools to help us understand our storage systems from initial deployment through its useful life. We will cover: SQLIO, a specific SQL Server benchmarking tool. Iometer, a general IO benchmarking tool and simulator. SQLIOSim a specific SQL Server base lining tool and simulator. TPC style testing focused on TPC-C, TPC-E and TPC-H. Monitoring your system using WMI and virtual file stats. Finally, what it all really means, how to read these results and compare them with each other. With these tools you can plan, deploy and manage your storage for years to come!

The meeting starts at 5:30PM CST with food and a QA session.
Main presentation is at 6:00PM CST.

Location Information
Quarry Oaks II
10900 Stonelake Blvd., Suite 225
Austin, TX 78759
Phone: (512) 795-5300
Fax: (512) 343-8498

VISITOR PARKING: Upon arriving at Quarry Oaks II, you may park on the surface lot in the front of the building or in parking garage at the back of the building.

Benchmarking, Baselines and Monitoring Storage There are several steps in the life cycle of your storage systems. We have several tools to help us understand our storage systems from initial deployment through its useful life. We will cover: SQLIO, a specific SQL Server benchmarking tool. Iometer, a general IO benchmarking tool and simulator. SQLIOSim a specific SQL Server base lining tool and simulator. TPC style testing focused on TPC-C, TPC-E and TPC-H. Monitoring your system using WMI and virtual file stats. Finally, what it all really means, how to read these results and compare them with each other. With these tools you can plan, deploy and manage your storage for years to come!

The meeting starts at 6:00 PM CST with food and open discussion.
Main presentation starts at 6:30 PM

Remember, parking is street parking, so anywhere you can find around the building.

Location:
Experis Austin offices
Address:
Experis IT
301 Congress Avenue, Suite 375
Austin, TX 78701

Our own Mike Byrd will be presenting at this month's meeting!

Titled SQL Server Hodge Podge

A different approach to a presentation, going over some issues I've encountered in last couple weeks including string lengths, datetime, statistics, query tuning, row compression.

The Secretary of POSSE, Richard Heim, is accepting nominations for elections to the POSSE Board of Directors. The positions to be filled are President, two year term, two Directors, two year terms, and two Directors, one year terms.  Each candidate must be nominate by another member.  A candidate may not nominate himself or herself.   Please email your nominations to Richard at richard.hiem@sqlposse.com.  Nominations must be submitted by December 13, 2011.  The annual meeting will be held on January 17, 2012.

Parking is street parking, so anywhere you can find around the building

CACTUSS CENTRAL:

The meeting starts at 6:00 PM CST with food and open discussion. Main presentation starts at 6:30 PM

Location Information
Experis Austin offices
Address:
Experis IT
301 Congress Avenue, Suite 375
Austin, TX 78701

Our Own Mike Byrd will be presenting this evening.

Titled SQL Server Hodge Podge

A different approach to a presentation, going over some issues I've encountered in last couple weeks including string lengths, datetime, statistics, query tuning, row compression.

As usual, we will have pizza and drinks for you!

The meeting starts at 5:30PM CST with food and a QA session.
Main presentation is at 6:00PM CST. We may even talk about what some of us did last week. :)

Cheers!

Location Information
Quarry Oaks II
10900 Stonelake Blvd., Suite 225
Austin, TX 78759
Phone: (512) 795-5300
Fax: (512) 343-8498

VISITOR PARKING: Upon arriving at Quarry Oaks II, you may park on the surface lot in the front of the building or in parking garage at the back of the building.

Reminder Meeting Tonight at the Experis Austin offices   ( www.bing.com/maps/)

The meeting starts at 6:00 PM CST with food, Introduction by Experis and a QA session. Main presentation starts at 6:30 PM

Jim Murphy will be presenting his SQL Saturday session Denali AlwaysOn - Finally, A usable 'mirror'! So if you won't be at SQL Saturday next month here is your chance to see Jim's session.

Denali AlwaysOn - Finally, A usable 'mirror'!

In the past, High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HADR) had many limitations. Clustering and Mirroring are great, but the mirror/secondary database is not very usable since it is not online. Finally, AlwaysOn solves this limitation by merging both multi-node Clustering and mirroring. Denali AlwaysOn also allows the secondary database to remain ONLINE, so we can use it for reporting purposes without resorting to a Snapshot! Come see this lively session with extensive demos of setting up, configuring and testing AlwaysOn. We'll also test automatic ConnectionString fail-over using a real web app to see how well that feature works.

Jim Murphy has been using Microsoft SQL Server since version 6.0 back in the 90's. He is the President/CEO of SQLWatchmen, LLC. and has been a consultant for over 10 years. Jim's background is in database administration and .NET development. Before becoming a full-time consultant, he worked in Software Engineering for Packard Bell/NEC for 9 years and also for a small dot com in California at the turn of the century. SQLWatchmen has a staff of DBA's for round-the-clock part-time monitoring. Jim is also the Treasure for POSSE (Professional Organization of SQL Server Educators).

Location Information
Experis IT
301 Congress Avenue, Suite 375
Austin, TX 78701

VISITOR PARKING: Upon arriving at Experis, you may part on the street for free after 5:30PM CST. We will not validate parking in the building garage.

CACTUSS - North

Meeting tomorrow night Tuesday at the Microsoft South Central District Offices. www.bing.com/maps/

The meeting starts at 5:30PM CST with food and a QA session. Main presentation is at 6:00PM CST.

This Month

We will be a SQL Saturday preview.

Hope to see you all there!

- AJ

 Location Information
Quarry Oaks II
10900 Stonelake Blvd., Suite 225
Austin, TX 78759
Phone: (512) 795-5300
Fax: (512) 343-8498 

Without volunteers events like SQL Saturday 97 in Austin (October 1^st in case you forgot) would not be possible. Heck the PASS Summit in all its glory and pageantry would not be possible without the help of the volunteers. I am part of the team from CACTUSS planning and organizing this event and we need your help to make this event happen.

What Volunteers Do

In short, they do everything. Do you remember looking at the event page for SQL Saturday 97? No, well, here is a link, http://www.sqlsaturday.com/97/eventhome.aspx go take a look. What is the 6^th word in the 2^nd paragraph? One of the main reasons we can provide events as this at this price is because of volunteers on the front line and down in the trenches.

Here are a few things we will need help with. Registration desk when attendees first arrive. Room monitors to hand out speaker evaluations and collect them at the end and to help keep the speaker on track. Greeters and General Information Dispensers, Vendor Area setup/takedown, Breakfast Server setup/takedown, Lunch Server setup/takedown , Room Proctors /Monitors.

What Do You Get As A Volunteer?

Well first off you get a really cool shirt! What else do you need? No seriously, when I volunteered I was a room monitor and I used that opportunity to meet and talk with the speakers a little more closely than might be able to right after a sessions. It also helped me break the ice with other speakers and attendees later at the networking party (a must).

There is also the opportunity to get fame and fortune. Well O.K. maybe not, but at least you can say you hung out with a @SQLRockstar, Thomas LaRock ( twitter | blog ) or Jen and Sean McCown the @MidnightDBA dynamic duo ( twitter | blog ) or our very own @SQLServerIO, Wes Brown ( twitter | blog ) or any number of other up and coming local speakers.

What Do We Get From You?

Believe it or not you are giving back by volunteering. When you volunteer you are helping to keep the SQL Community alive, moving forward and continually growing. You are helping to provide a free training event to people that may be just starting out working with SQL Server or any of its related components. You are also helping to save some of the rest of us some sleepless nights and reducing our stress levels.

Final Thoughts

Volunteers are the backbone of these events without them we would not be able to host SQL Saturday 97 or any SQL Saturday events. Volunteering can be rewarding in many different ways. It's up to you how you approach the opportunity and what you make of it. I have volunteered for several SQL Saturday events now with SQL Saturday 97 being the first I am helping to organize. I can tell you each one is different and each one has been very rewarding from the new things I learned to the people I met.

I will go out on a limb and say if you volunteer to help, even a little, you will also get this warm, fuzzy feeling that only comes from volunteering and helping make an event such like SQL Saturday 97 a success.

If you want to volunteer after reading this email me at aj.mendo@sqlposse.com or signup to attend here and check the box to volunteer.

See you there.

Cheers!

SQLAJ

If you attended last month's Presentation by Reindaldo, please leave feedback at Speaker Rate!

http://speakerrate.com/talks/8194 

Some additional links:

a)    AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server)
SQL Server "Denali"
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff877884(v=sql.110).aspx#ClientConnections

b)     Denali Network libraries updates and Client connectivity
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3711.aspx
Look at Section 5.11.3 Client-Connectivity for AlwaysOn Availability Groups in CTP3
This section describes driver support for AlwaysOn Availability Groups and workarounds for using ADO.NET with .NET Framework 4.0 or SQL Native Client 11.0 OLEDB for multi-subnet failover.
Driver Support
The following table summarizes driver support for AlwaysOn Availability Groups in CTP3.

^* Q4 CY2011 indicates the fourth quarter of the 2011 calendar year.

SQLSaturday #97 News:

The event is just over 1 month away! Register for the event, it's FREE!

http://www.sqlsaturday.com/97/register.aspx

Call For Speakers
The call for speakers is open and will close on 9/1/2011. Only 9 days left! If you are local to the area we encourage you to submit a session. This is your chance to start your speaking career. http://www.sqlsaturday.com/97/callforspeakers.aspx

Volunteers
If you wish to volunteer for any part of the event please send an email to Michael.Kaplan@sqlposse.com.
Volunteers make this all happen. There is no contribution too small!

Sponsors
If you are a local business and want to sponsor this event take a look at the sponsor page and let us know.
Email Wes Brown directly at wes.brown@sqlposse.com

PASS Summit 2011 Chapter Member Discount Code:

Members of local chapters can get a $200 discount to PASS Summit 2011 by using the Discount Code CHM11.  This discount has no expiration date.  If you would pass it along to your members, we would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks for all you do for PASS!