PASS has added a new feature to the session selection process for the PASS Summit 2011, which they are calling the PASS Summit 2011 Session Preference Survey. This allows you to mark multiple proposed sessions for the PASS Summit 2011 as “Preferred”.  This gives you the opportunity to have some input on which sessions are selected for the Summit. You have until midnight Pacific time on May 20th to make your selections.

Now, I have to make my shameless plug for my proposed sessions! Below, I have listed my four session abstracts. If you are interested in seeing any of these sessions, I would really appreciate it if you would take the time to mark them as preferred sessions.

DMV Emergency Room! [300]
Session Category: Regular Session (75 minutes)
Session Track: Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment
Speaker(s): Glenn Berry
If you have ever been responsible for a mission critical database, you have probably been faced with a high stress, emergency situation where a database issue is causing unacceptable application performance, resulting in angry users and hovering managers and executives. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, thank your lucky stars, but start getting prepared for your time in the hot seat. This session will show you how to use DMV queries to quickly detect and diagnose the problem, starting at the server and instance level, and then progressing down to the database and object level. Based on the initial assessment of the problem, different types of DMV queries will help you narrow down and identify the problem. This session will show you how to assemble and use an emergency DMV toolkit that you can use to save the day the next time a sick database shows up on your watch in the Database ER!

Hardware 301: Diving Deeper into Database Hardware [300]
Session Category: Spotlight Session (90 minutes, Invitation only)
Session Track: Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment
Speaker(s): Glenn Berry
Making the right hardware selection decisions is extremely important for database scalability. Having properly sized and configured hardware can both increase application performance and reduce capital expenses dramatically. Unfortunately, there are so many different choices and options available when it comes to selecting hardware and storage subsystems, it is very easy to make bad choices based on outmoded conventional wisdom. This session will give you a framework for how to pick the right hardware and storage subsystem for your workload type. You will learn how to evaluate and compare key hardware components, such as processors, chipsets, and memory. You will also learn how to evaluate and compare different types of storage subsystems for different database workload types. This session will give you the knowledge you need to make sure you get the best performance and scalability possible from your hardware budget!

Scaling SQL Server [300]
Session Category: 1/2 Day Sessions (3.5 hours)
Session Track: Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment
Speaker(s): Glenn Berry
How can you scale SQL Server? Scaling up is relatively easy (but can be expensive), while scaling out requires significant engineering time and effort. If you suggest hardware upgrades you may be accused of simply “throwing hardware at the problem”, and if you try to scale out, you may be thwarted by a lack of development resources or 3rd party software restrictions. As your database server nears its load capacity, what can you do? This session gives you concrete, practical advice on how to deal with this situation. Starting with your present workload, configuration and hardware, we will explore how to find and alleviate bottlenecks, whether they are workload related, configuration related, or hardware related. Next, we will cover how you can decide whether you should scale up or scale out your data tier. Once that decision is made, you will learn how to scale up properly, with nearly zero down-time. If you decide to scale out, you will learn about practical, production-ready techniques such as vertical partitioning, horizontal partitioning, and data dependent routing. We will also cover how to use middle-tier caching and other application techniques to increase your overall scalability.

Using Data Compression and Backup Compression to Improve Performance [200]
Session Category: Regular Session (75 minutes)
Session Track: Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment
Speaker(s): Glenn Berry
Native Data Compression and Native Backup Compression are two very useful features that were added with SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. Both of these features were improved in SQL Server 2008 R2, yet many database professionals are not familiar with how to use them effectively to reduce I/O requirements and improve overall performance. Modern multi-core processors make various forms of compression a much easier choice in many situations. Knowing how to determine which indexes are good candidates for data compression is extremely important if you want to get the best results. This session will give you real-world, practical examples and guidelines for how to take advantage of both data compression and backup compression.