Click the link above to register!

Presented by my buddy, David Klee at House of Brick, one of the nations top VMWare consultancies specializing in Oracle and SQL Server deployments.

David has a great write-up of this boot camp at http://www.davidklee.net/2012/10/01/virtualizing-your-business-critical-sql-servers-free-boot-camp-by-house-of-brick/.

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The PerfMon Counters That Just Won’t Die

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It’s always a feel-good experience for me to return to SQL Saturday in Orlando, the place where SQL Saturdays  were started by Andy Warren (Twitter | Blog).  On this trip, I delivered a full-day, pre-conference seminar on Troubleshooting and Performance Tuning SQL Server.  I also delivered a session… Read more

I was chatting with my buddy, Buck Woody (Twitter | Blog), about a week ago and we were discussing that it’s pretty hard to put together the entire history of SQL Server.  Then the thought hit me that I’d already done this, to a degree, in my book… Read more

Relational?!? Move On, Geezer!

Maybe you’re thinking that relational databases management systems (RDBMSs), like Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle, are going the way of punched cards and rotary phones.  After all, there’s been a lot of hype these days in the IT media about the rise of so-called NoSQL… Read more

PASS SQL Saturdays are free 1-day training events for IT professionals interested in Microsoft SQL Server, providing a variety of high-quality technical sessions, all happen through the efforts of local volunteers.  The leadership team of the local chapter of PASS here in Nashville (Facebook | LinkedIn) have worked… Read more

I had the honor of traveling the great state of Colorado last week, speaking at the PASS chapters in Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Denver.  At all three events, we had a stellar attendance and, at least in Denver, broke all the records in recent memory both in… Read more

Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat – I’m not typing “Board of Directors” repeatedly throughout this blog post.  It’s just too much typing.  BoD will have to do.  Live with it.

Perhaps, you’ve been paying attention to the PASS Twitter feed, read the newsletters, or otherwise stay… Read more

Even though I’ve recently changed jobs, I’ll still be speaking at a lot of SQL events across the country and internationally.  There are still a few trips that I’ve yet to finalize, in particular with the fine folks in Houston, run by my friend Nancy Hidy (blog | twitter Read more

I was just telling the good people of Charlotte about how they (and how YOU) need to read all things by Paul Randal (blog | twitter), except for all of his cheesy romance novels like Caress… Read more

What’s Going on at SQLServerPedia.com?

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I’d like to start this post first by thanking everyone who sent well wishes, both public and private, about my decision to move on from Quest Software.  It was very uplifting and encouraging to hear from you!

So, again, the question of “Where am I off to?”  The answer… Read more

The week of the 4^th of July is a happy week for Americans.  Most families get out for a parade, a fireworks display, a picnic in the park, a movie where Will Smith puts the beat down on a bunch of aliens, or an afternoon at the pool or… Read more

Louisville has a special place in my heart because it was my brother’s home for more than 15 years. I spent a lot of time on I-65 traveling from my home town of Huntsville, AL to visit my bro in Louisville and New Albany, after he bought a place on… Read more

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cephas Lin, of Microsoft, last year at the SQL Saturday in Indianapolis and then later at the PASS Summit in the fall.

Cephas has been writing content for SQL Server 2012 Always On. Cephas has recently published his first whitepaper, a migration guide… Read more

You might have noticed that Microsoft has recently launched a cool set of Trust Services for Azure.  This is an application-level encryption framework that can be used to protect sensitive data stored on the Windows Azure Platform.

One of the hindrances to adoption of Azure that I keep hearing about… Read more

If you’re like me, you like for things to be semantically reliable.  Huh?

Said another way, I like for things to mean what they say and say what they mean.  Here are a few examples of I get annoyed by failed sematics – when a footpath is used almost entirely… Read more

Speaking at a recent SQL Saturday, an attendee in one of my sessions wanted to know how they could more flexibly react to locks on their application than to wait for blocks to occur and then kill the SPID at the head of the blocking chain.  They were also… Read more

Operations Manager Management Pack Development Kit

I just recently told you about some cool new things happening with System Center – before I stumbled across this tidbit.  Hey, if I could, I’d go back in time and add this entry to the previous one — yeah, and totally NOT play… Read more

Steve Balmer very publicly pronounced that Microsoft was “all in” for cloud computing and Windows Azure.  So that means Microsoft is using cloud for its internal IT as well as building products to utilize the cloud.  If you want to learn how Microsoft IT is using Windows Azure to move… Read more