I are thrilled to announce that I has been renewed for the sixth time as a Microsoft Data Platform MVP for 2019 to 2020. The MVP award remains incredibly special to me, and I feel very lucky to be part of this program. It’s truly an honor to be included in this group of world-class data professionals.
At the time of this writing, the group of people who are lucky enough to receive this award is just 332 people and less than 75 in the USA. I could never take this for granted, and will never expect to be renewed as an MVP. It’s an elite group to be a part of!
I often get asked by people what it takes to be an MVP. Some think it’s a certification track or other items you can test into, but it’s nothing that straightforward. The reality is that it is centered around knowledge sharing and giving back to your community in your area of skill. I was lucky enough to find out early that I learn the best through teaching others, and am humbled that Microsoft feels that I am worthy of this award.
To everyone that has helped me along this amazing journey, thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I’m thrilled to be able to share what I know what this amazing technical community, and make new friends along the way.
I want to especially thank Microsoft for continuing to support this incredible program. We are are eager to continue to share with you our thoughts and experiences so that we can continue to make your products stronger. Not all technologies and product vendors support their community evangelists like you do, and we welcome the opportunities to help you because you continue to make our lives better through your products and features.
Session Abstract: Virtualization is the new norm in datacenters. Even the ubiquitous “cloud” is nothing more than virtualized servers in someone else’s datacenter with advanced automation on top of it. However, just because it’s everywhere doesn’t mean it is implemented and managed correctly. Done incorrectly, your SQL Server performance can take a massive dive. Are your SQL Servers running at their best possible performance?
This full-day boot camp covers all aspects of performance engineering for virtualized SQL Servers. We will review critical topics such as virtualization layers, VM construction, NUMA, resource scheduling, query parallelization and physical server alignment, “right-sizing,” and storage performance-oriented presentation. Availability and disaster recovery guidelines will also be reviewed. Most importantly, this seminar informs you on methods and terminology to help you work better with your infrastructure team to streamline your critical SQL Server performance. You will understand how to review your critical SQL Servers for both their performance and availability as they relate to the virtualization and physical compute layers underneath, and work with your infrastructure team to implement and streamline any of your findings.
In addition to the preconference training day, I am presenting an abridged technical fire hose session on key topics in a session called “Virtual SQL Server Performance Deep Dive“. This session is designed to ramp up attendees on critical (and silent) performance killers in both cloud and on-premises virtual SQL Servers.
Session Abstract: Your business-critical SQL Servers should not suffer from virtualization-related bottlenecks. When properly architected and managed, the principal bottleneck of performance of these SQL Servers should be only limited by code. However, if not properly constructed, silent and seemingly random performance killers can strike and significantly hurt your database performance. Items such as CPU scheduling, storage queueing, and memory overcommitment can all penalize database performance, and are tough to identify.
This session is packed with many live examples of tips and tricks gained from years of experience in getting the most performance from your virtual SQL Servers. The major roadblocks to performance will be discussed, and tools, techniques, and processes will be demonstrated to help you measure and validate the system performance of the key components underneath your data.
If you’ve never attended the PASS Summit before, I urge you to go. This conference is the best Microsoft data-platform-centric conference there is, and the information you will gain is second to none. Just look at this list of sessions! The friends you make last a lifetime. The sessions are certain to improve your career and your job. I know won’t miss it, and I hope to see you there! If you want to meet up and talk shop for a bit, or just hang out, let me know!
SQL Server Enterprise Edition can leverage large memory pages to reduce the amount of memory pointers required for larger SQL Server deployments. Reducing the number of pointers makes the database engine more efficient, especially for SQL Servers with greater than 32GB of RAM. A normal memory block is 4KB, and many thousands of pointers are required to manage the memory underneath a larger SQL Server. Large memory pages can change the block size to 2MB, greatly reducing the number of pointers required for memory management.
Leverage SQL Server trace flag 834 to enable this setting and restart the instance to validate.
Note: Large memory pages requires the use of lock pages in memory for the service account before large memory pages are enabled.
For maximum performance of SQL Server in a virtual machine, the use of large memory pages is highly recommended, as it reduces the number of translation lookaside buffer (TLB) misses, which will improve the performance of the SQL Server. Large memory pages are fully supported within all modern hypervisors.
Note: Do not use large memory pages if columnstore indexing is in use in any SQL Server database on this instance.
Note: Be careful if the VM is also under memory pressure, as if the operating system is squeezed too hard, SQL Server will not return memory to the OS and system instability can occur.
To enable large memory pages, add trace flag 834 to a startup parameter for the SQL Server service through the SQL Server Configuration Manager. Restart the instance once this trace flag is added.
To validate that large memory pages are enabled, execute the following query.
You can check the error log for entries related to large memory pages on instance startup.
If the results show large memory page allocations greater than zero, large memory pages are enabled.
Now, validate your system performance before and after! Let me know the results!
We have a discount code for last-minute attendees looking to go to our exciting preconference training session at this year’s SQL Saturday Atlanta on May 17th, 2019, called “Level Up Your Data Platform Cloud Infrastructure“! The discount code is PAPERJAM, and enter it on the EventBrite signup page. If you’re even remotely thinking of the cloud for any of your servers, this precon is for you!
Abstract: While your on-premises infrastructure is likely maintained by another team, in the cloud this responsibility falls on you. Whether your organization is just planning for the cloud, all-in, or leveraging a hybrid architecture, this course is designed to ramp you up on maximizing your investment in the cloud components that you utilize.
Infrastructure skills are essential when managing your environment in the cloud. Knowledge is power; key items such as firewalls and connectivity, storage presentation and performance, baselining, and even platform selection are all necessary areas of concern. Capacity management is also crucial, as the old ways of “throwing hardware” at a performance problem will translate into a larger bill each month.
Attend this session to learn how to efficiently manage cloud resources, set yourself apart from your peers, improve the performance of your mission-critical workloads, and potentially save your employer money!
I am very proud to announce that I have been selected to present an exciting preconference training session at this year’s SQL Saturday Atlanta on May 17th, 2019, called “Level Up Your Data Platform Cloud Infrastructure“. If you are in the cloud or even remotely considering it, I urge you to attend this session!
Designed to help people that are starting to consider cloud for their data platforms ramp up quickly on all of the items that they need to hit the ground running and make the best choices while selecting and using the platform.
Abstract: While your on-premises infrastructure is likely maintained by another team, in the cloud this responsibility falls on you. Whether your organization is just planning for the cloud, all-in, or leveraging a hybrid architecture, this course is designed to ramp you up on maximizing your investment in the cloud components that you utilize.
Infrastructure skills are essential when managing your environment in the cloud. Knowledge is power; key items such as firewalls and connectivity, storage presentation and performance, baselining, and even platform selection are all necessary areas of concern. Capacity management is also crucial, as the old ways of “throwing hardware” at a performance problem will translate into a larger bill each month.
Attend this session to learn how to efficiently manage cloud resources, set yourself apart from your peers, improve the performance of your mission-critical workloads, and potentially save your employer money!
I’m honored and humbled to be awarded the VMware vExpert award for the seventh year in a row! Thank you VMware and those in the organization that value my contributions to the virtualization ecosystem.
The vExpert program is VMware’s global evangelism and advocacy program, and the vExpert award is for individuals, not companies, and last one year in duration.
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