Virtualization | Convergence of Data and Infrastructure

Multiple disk controllers in VMs can mean improved performance

SQL Server, Storage, Virtualization 1 Response »

Feb 012018

I recently had a great question on some of the differences in virtual machine disk presentation from one of our amazing clients, and I thought I’d share the answer here because it’s a common question that I receive.

Some hypervisors (including some hyper-converged compute platform vendors who shall remain nameless) do not give you much flexibility in the way storage is presented to a VM. You pick the VM and click to add drives. That’s it. No knobs to turn, no mess, no fuss. It’s meant to be easy, and for almost all situations, that’s just fine.

But, that might not be the completely optimal way to configure a VM that is hungry for I/O (such as a large SQL Server), if you have the option to configure it a bit more closely.

MSSQLTips Webinar with SIOS – Thursday 1p Eastern

Business, Events, SQL Server, Virtualization No Responses »

Nov 142017

Come join SIOS and me for an exciting webinar discussing the inherent challenges with infrastructure problems, database performance, and bridging the silos within the IT organization. We’ll be discussing some new and exciting upcoming developments from my company in joint collaboration with SIOS.

Learn why legacy tools fall short in helping you fully solve SQL Server problems
Comparison: Step through how to troubleshoot the cause of a SQL Server problem vs. using Machine Learning
Get answers you need to help prevent future SQL Server performance challenges

Attend this webinar to learn more.

Webcast Date

Thursday, November 16, 2017
6:00 PM UTC | 1:00 PM EST

Register for this webinar here.

PASS Summit 2017 Precon – Virtual SQL Servers: Right to Ludicrous Speed

Best Practices, Business, Cloud, Events, Performance, Professional Development, SQL Server, Storage, Technology, User Groups, Virtualization No Responses »

Sep 152017

PASS has continues to ramp up the plans for the PASS Summit in Seattle this October, and my precon session, “Virtual SQL Servers – Right to Ludicrous Speed” has a few open slots for this Tuesday session. This topic is near and dear to my heart, and I’m thrilled to be able to present to the group advanced SQL Server VM tuning techniques learned from over 17 years of performance tuning.

If any of you want to excel your DBA skills, not only for your on-premises SQL Server VMs but also your VMs in the cloud, I hope all of you can join me in what I consider the best SQL Server ecosystem conference in the world.

Session Details:

Join this full-day introduction session focused on managing and boosting the performance of a virtualized SQL Server environment. The focus of the course is to help those new to virtualization, infrastructure, and cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service concepts to become familiar with the concept and purposes of virtualization and how it can benefit them as data professionals. Participants will gain exposure to all layers of virtualization underneath SQL Server, from storage to hypervisor to the SQL Server instance, no matter if on-premises or in the cloud, and will learn how to construct the entire stack with a strong emphasis on SQL Server performance.

Intended Audience
The intended audience of this course is information workers (both business and IT-centric) involved with architecting a virtualization strategy for SQL Server, or managing business-critical SQL Servers that have already been virtualized.

Course Topics
The following topics will be addressed during the course:
• The Physical Infrastructure Underneath the VM
• Storage and SAN Concepts and Design
• Virtualization and Infrastructure Fundamentals
• The SQL Server Virtual Machine
• Networking, Support, and Licensing
• SQL Server Infrastructure in the Cloud
• High Availability and Disaster Recovery and SQL Server
• Performance Investigation and Tuning of the Entire Stack

A working set of the screens and configuration settings referenced in the session, together with the reference slides and documentation, will be provided to attendees, for strategic reference in working with virtualized SQL Server in their own environments.

Register today! Seats are sure to fill up for these precons!

SQL Saturday Minnesota Preconference Training Session

Best Practices, Business, Cloud, Events, Performance, Professional Development, SQL Server, Storage, Technology, User Groups, Virtualization No Responses »

Sep 072017

This is just a quick reminder to encourage you to attend my next round of all-day precon training session at the upcoming SQL Saturday in Minnesota on Friday, October 6 called ‘The Complete Primer to SQL Server Infrastructure and Cloud‘.

The focus of the course is to help those new to the enterprise server infrastructure concepts become familiar with the concept and purposes of each layer of the architecture around their databases, and how this knowledge can benefit them as data professionals. Participants will gain exposure to all layers of infrastructure, virtualization, and cloud underneath SQL Server, from storage all the way through to the SQL Server instance, and will learn how to review and engineer the entire stack with a strong emphasis on SQL Server performance.

The following topics will be addressed during the course:

Datacenter Fundamentals
Cloud versus On-Premises
Infrastructure Stack Fundamentals
Storage and SAN Concepts and Design
Networking and Interconnect Topologies
Physical Server Technologies
The SQL Server Virtual Machine
High Availability and Disaster Recovery
Performance Investigation and Tuning of the Entire Stack

I am really happy to be delivering this precon, and look forward to seeing you all there! Reserve your seat at this exciting event here. Tickets are available at just $110!

Q&A Session with SQL Server on VMware Experts at VMworld EMEA

Best Practices, Cloud, Events, Performance, Professional Development, SQL Server, Storage, Technology, Virtualization No Responses »

Sep 072017

Greetings everyone! We had so many people stay after our SQL Server on VMware sessions at VMworld USA to ask great questions, I thought I’d extend an offer to everyone at the European show coming up in a week! Let’s talk SQL Server! We are going to crash the VMvillage hang space on Tuesday, September 12 at 3pm local time to hold an open-ended SQL Server on VMware Q&A session. This unscripted and unofficial session is for you, has no official agenda, and marketing is strictly off-limits.

Our illustrious experts include:

Michael Corey, Founder – Corey and Associates	Thomas LaRock, Head Geek – Solarwinds
Argenis Fernandez, Principal Architect – Pure Storage	Niran Even Chen, Double VCDX, VMware Corp.
… and me!

Mark your calendars, and bring your questions, specific challenges, or discussion points, and let’s do this! Anything goes – performance, availability, setup and configuration, conflicts between best practices for SQL Server and VMware, anything!

SQL Server on VMware VMworld USA Videos Now On YouTube

Best Practices, Business, Cloud, Events, Performance, Professional Development, SQL Server, Virtualization No Responses »

Sep 062017

I just realized that our two SQL Server on VMware sessions that I co-presented on Tuesday at VMworld USA, both of which made the top 10 sessions of the day list at the conference, are now on YouTube! They are free to watch for everyone!

For those of you with virtualized SQL Servers, regardless of platform and cloud or on-premises, I urge you to watch these two sessions at your convenience.

Monster VMs (Database Virtualization) with vSphere 6.5: Doing IT Right (VIRT1309BU) (co-presented with Michael Corey)

Performance Tuning and Monitoring for Virtualized Database Servers (VIRT1430BU) (co-presented with Thomas LaRock)

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