August 4th of this year will be the forth annual Baton Rouge SQL Saturday and Tech Day. Patrick LeBlanc got the ball rolling 4 years ago and now a team of IT professionals from Baton Rouge have continued the effort.
This blog starts a series of blogs over the next few weeks to spotlight the tracks for this FREE event. Of course, nothing like this is possible without sponsors. This year we have Platinum sponsors Sparkhound and USGS Technical Community. So far, Gold Sponsors are Confio and Amedisys (a previous employer).
The first track is the DBA 1 in the main auditorium. MVPs Sean McCown (Dallas) and Wesley Brown (Austin) are 2 of the speakers. It is good to see the Texas crew coming to Louisiana. Jim Murphy (Austin) and Ryan Adams (Dallas) are scheduled in this track as well as Mike Byrd.
8:20AM AlwaysOn - Finally, A usable 'mirror'!
In the past, High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HADR) had many limitations. Clustering and Mirroring are great, but the mirror/secondary database is not very usable since it is not online. Finally, AlwaysOn solves this limitation by merging both multi-node Clustering and mirroring. AlwaysOn also allows the secondary database to remain ONLINE, so we can use it for reporting purposes without resorting to a Snapshot! Come see this lively session with extensive demos of setting up, configuring and testing AlwaysOn. We'll also test automatic fail-over using a real web app to see how well this feature works.
Session Level: Beginner
Jim Murphy 
Jim Murphy has been using Microsoft SQL Server since version 6.0 back in the 90's. He is the President/CEO of SQLWatchmen, LLC., a managed DBA service provider for smaller companies who do not need a full-time DBA. He runs the Austin SQL Server User Group: CACTUSS Central and sits on the board of SQLPOSSE.com. He has been a professional DBA and developer for over 20 years and has run a consulting company full-time for over a decade.
Jim Murphy has been using Microsoft SQL Server since version 6.0 back in the 90's. He is the President/CEO of SQLWatchmen, LLC., a managed DBA service provider for smaller companies who do not need a full-time DBA. He runs the Austin SQL Server User Group: CACTUSS Central and sits on the board of SQLPOSSE.com. He has been a professional DBA and developer for over 20 years and has run a consulting company full-time for over a decade.Contact URL: http://www.sqlwatchmen.com/blogs/jim
9:35AM - Nuts and Bolts of Table Compression
Objective of session is to show with examples when and what and how and if to implement table compression. Session will review table compression as implemented for SQL Server and then dive into many examples including benchmarking. Come to the session to see the results -- they were surprising to me!
Session Level: IntermediateMike Byrd 
Former rocket scientist, retired USAF fighter test pilot; now a database geek. Former CTO for Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (9 years) and now SQL Server guru for Newgistics, Inc. (a direct competitor with FedEx and UPS for ground transportation for small packages) and part-time consultant. Expertise is performance tuning.
10:50AM - Benchmarking, Baselines and Monitoring Storage
Benchmarking, Baselines and Monitoring Storage There are several steps in the life cycle of your storage systems. We have several tools to help us understand our storage systems from initial deployment through its useful life. We will cover: SQLIO, a specific SQL Server benchmarking tool. Iometer, a general IO benchmarking tool and simulator. SQLIOSim a specific SQL Server base lining tool and simulator. TPC style testing focused on TPC-C, TPC-E and TPC-H. Monitoring your system using WMI and virtual file stats. Finally, what it all really means, how to read these results and compare them with each other. With these tools you can plan, deploy and manage your storage for years to come!
Session Level: Beginner
Wesley Brown
Wes Brown is a PASS chapter leader and SQL Server MVP. He writes for SQL Server Central and maintains his blog at http://www.sqlserverio.com. Wes is Currently serving as a Database Administrator Consultant for Dell. Previous experiences include Product Manager for SQL Litespeed by Quest software and consultant to fortune 500 companies. He specializes in high availability, disaster recovery and very large database performance tuning. He is a frequent speaker at local user groups and SQLSaturdays.
Contact URL: http://www.sqlserverio.com
1:10PM - How Active Directory affects SQL Server
There are many things that can go wrong with SQL server, and a lot of times they come from outside influencers. Active Directory is one of the largest influencers that can have many interesting and unexpected issues that are not apparent. We'll discuss how the location of your server in AD is important, how security can be compromised, and even AD DNS configuration. By the end of the session you'll have a check list of things to discuss with your domain administrator when you return to work. This includes the biggest perpetrator, Group Policies Objects.
Session Level: Intermediate
Ryan Adams
Ryan has worked for a Fortune 100 company for 14 years. He is the sole SQL Server DBA for his group. His primary focus is database design and performance, but also works with SSRS and SSIS. He enjoys being involved in the SQL community and serves on the Board of Directors for the North Texas SQL Server User Group and the PASS Performance Virtual Chapter. He also serves as a Regional Mentor for PASS and holds the following certifications: MCP MCSA MCSE MCDBA MCTS MCITP
Contact URL: http://www.ryanjadams.com
2:25PM - The Backup Tune-up
Have you ever gotten tired of your 1TB database taking 4+ hrs to backup? Are you sick of having your users breathe down your neck for 2hrs because it’s taking too long to restore a DB? Well now you don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’m going to show you some little known tricks, methods, and trace flags you can use to tune your backups just like you would a query. Backups actually have kind of an execution plan that you can access if you know how, and knowing how to get the individual portions of your backup process down will allow you to knock 80% and even more off of your backup and restore time. I’m not holding anything back in this session. This is a method I’ve used for 15yrs to tune my backups and I’ve had great success.
Session Level: Intermediate
Sean McCown
Sean McCown is a Certified Master in SQL Server 2008. He is also a SQL Server MVP with 17yrs experience in databases. Sean is also founder and co-owner of the renowned website MidnightDBA.com where he records free SQL Server training videos and co-hosts the popular webshow, DBAs@Midnight.
Contact URL: http://www.MidnightDBA.com
