I will be presenting four sessions for the SSWUG Ultimate Virtual Conference that will be held online October 20-22, 2010. I get to fly down to the studio in Tucson in a couple of weeks to record my sessions. During the actual conference, I will be available in a chat session to answer any questions that may come up about the session. There is a great slate of speakers for this iteration of the conference. My four sessions are listed below:

Using Data Compression and Backup Compression to Improve Performance

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.

SQL Server Database Mirroring Deep Dive

Database mirroring is a valuable HA technology that can be an important component in your overall HA/DR solution. This session will cover how to effectively integrate database mirroring, fail-over clustering, log shipping and database snapshots to build a robust HA/DR solution that can meet your recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) requirements. This session goes far beyond the basics, showing you how to programatically set up, maintain and monitor database mirroring for maximum performance and reliability. Mirroring multiple databases on the same instance can be challenging from an administrative perspective, so this session has specific tips and techniques to automate this process, with practical techniques, scripts and tips to help you take advantage of database mirroring as part of an effective HA/DR strategy.

Dr. DMV: How to Use Dynamic Management Views to Monitor and Diagnose Performance Issues With High Volume OLTP Workloads

SQL Server 2005 introduced Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) that allow you to see exactly what is happening inside your SQL Server instances and databases with much more detail than ever before. SQL Server 2008 R2 adds even more capability in this area. You can discover your top wait types, most CPU intensive stored procedures, find missing indexes, and identify unused indexes, to name just a few examples. This session (which is applicable to both 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2), presents and explains over thirty DMV queries that you can quickly and easily use to detect and diagnose performance issues in your environment.

Getting Started With SQL Azure

SQL Azure is Microsoft's solution for hosting basic SQL Server relational databases in the cloud. Microsoft continues to add new features in each Azure Service Update that makes SQL Azure a more viable solution. For smaller databases that don't require features such as Reporting Services, Analysis Services, or Full Text Search, it can be an easy to use technology that can save lots of money in hardware, license and maintenance costs. This session shows you how to configure, connect to, and manage a SQL Azure database, both from SQL Server Management Studio and from a .NET application, and it gives best practices and tips on how to get the most benefit from SQL Azure.