SQL Server

Paradigm Shift!

What do I mean by that? Every once in a while a technology comes along and changes the way things are done, moves the bar…well last week Microsoft released a Channel 9 video on persistent memory using NVDIMMs and DAX on Windows 2016…then combining it with SQL Server! This is one of those technologies that moves the bar! Check it out here.

Why is this important?

Relational databases like SQL Server use a transaction log to ensure the durability of the transactional operations to the database. This is so it can ensure its data is consistent in the event of a system failure. SQL Server uses a logging protocol called write ahead logging (WAL). This means that the data change operations must be written to stable, persistent storage before the process can change data in the database file…so this means our database throughput is at the mercy of the performance of the device the changes (log records) are written to.

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at IT/Dev Connections on October 11th 2016 in Las Vegas! I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to be able to speak at this conference! I look forward to seeing you there!

Here’s the information on the talk!

Designing High Availability Database Systems using AlwaysOn Availability Groups

**Track: **Development Platform Tools and Devops

Abstract:

Are you looking for a high availability solution for your business critical application? You’re heard about AlwaysOn Availability Groups and they seem like a good solution, but you don’t know where to start. It all starts with a solid design. In this session we introduce the core concepts needed to design a Availability Group based system. Covering topics such as recovery objectives, replica placement, failover requirements, synchronization models, quorum, backup and recovery and monitoring. This session is modeled after real world client engagements conducted by Centino Systems that have lead to many successful Availability Groups based systems supporting tier 1 business critical applications.

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Baton Rouge on August 6th 2016! This will be my forth SQLSaturday event this year and I’m really excited that I get to do it as a speaker. I look forward to seeing you there!

If you don’t know what SQL Saturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Sacramento on July 23th 2016! This will be my third SQLSaturday event this year and I’m really excited that I get to do it as a speaker. I look forward to seeing you there!

If you don’t know what SQL Saturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

If you haven’t been to a SQL Saturday, what are you waiting for! Sign up now!

In this post we’re going to introduce the basics of CPU scheduling.

In a computer system, only one thing can happen at a time. More specifically, only one task can be on a processor at a point in time. This can expand to several tasks if the system has multiple processors or a processor with multiple cores, which most modern systems have. For example, a four core system can potentially execute four tasks concurrently.

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQLSaturday Pensacola on June 4th 2016! This will be my second SQLSaturday event and I’m really excited that I get to do it as a speaker. I look forward to seeing you there!

If you don’t know what SQL Saturday is, it’s a whole day of free SQL Server training available to you at no cost!

If you haven’t been to a SQL Saturday, what are you waiting for! Sign up now!

In my opinion one of the key features of SQL Server 2016 is the rebuilt and optimized log redo mechanism for AlwaysOn Availability Groups. Check out the many new AG features here. Check out my posts here and here to learn about how Availability Groups move data.

Early last week I was conducting a load test using SQL Server 2016 and wanted to compare the performance of the log redo thread with that of SQL Server 2014. To establish baseline the performance of 2014, I constructed a load test using a heavy insert workload on the primary. To measure that workload I used the following script to pull database replication performance data from sys.dm_hadr_database_replica_states

Well yesterday was a big day in the SQL Community, Microsoft announced that they will be developing a version of SQL Server for Linux. Check out the announcement here.

Image Source – Microsoft – http://bit.ly/1U8Afd3

This leaves us with a lot of questions, in talking with one of my customers this morning he asked some pretty cool questions. Here’s how the conversation went…

I’m excited to announce that I have been named a Friend of Redgate for 2016. The program targets influential people in their respective technical communities such as SQL,.NET and ALM and enables us to participate in the conversation around product and community development.

Last year was my first year in the program and the value that it provides to the community is immeasurable. I got to see first hand the dedication Redgate has to the SQL community and to making great software. I met a ton of really cool, very dedicated people along the way. Thanks for the recognition and I look forward to another great year!

I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at SQLSaturday Chicago on March 5th 2016! This will be my first SQLSaturday event and I’m really excited that I get to do it as a speaker. I look forward to seeing you there!

My presentation is “Performance Monitoring AlwaysOn Availability Groups”

Here’s the abstract for the talk

Have you deployed Availability Groups in your data center? Are you monitoring your Availability Groups to ensure you can meet your recovery objectives? If you haven’t this is the session for you. We will discuss the importance of monitoring and trending Availability Group Replication, how AGs move data between replicas and the impact replication latency can have on the availability of your systems. We’ll also give you the tools and techniques to go back to the office and get started monitoring and trending right away!