When it comes to SQL Server performance, best practices may not always be best. Each SQL Server instance is different. To ensure that your SQL Server is performing optimally, you first need to know what the norm is before you can measure and pinpoint where the performance bottlenecks are. The challenges in analyzing SQL Server performance are twofold: There are overwhelming amounts of metadata, statistics, and performance counters available. At the same time, deciding where one should start the analysis can be quite confusing. In this session, IT Pro expert Robert Pearl will dive into creating a SQL Server performance roadmap by showing how to create a performance baseline, using the time-tested performance methodology known as waits and queues. He will discuss some of SQL Server's native DMVs to capture real-time performance data, aggregate it for historical analysis, and report on useful data to highlight performance issues. This session will be helpful for experienced as well as non-expert DBAs who do not have the time to ramp up on the art of performance tuning. Subsequently, Bullett Manale from IDERA will discuss IDERA's powerful performance monitoring and diagnostics solution for SQL Server. SQL Diagnostic Manager proactively alerts administrators to health, performance, and availability problems from a central console, at your desk or from a wide variety of mobile devices. Bullett will also focus on its add-on SQL Workload Analysis that provides a granular breakdown of SQL Server wait states with easy drill-down to isolate problems quickly. Its dashboard displays trending database activity and top utilization to identify root cause, tune queries, and apply actionable recommendations to improve performance.

Speaker: Robert Pearl is a SQL Server MVP and creator of the award-winning database and monitoring alert system, SQLCentric. He is the founder of Pearl Knowledge Solutions and joined Linchpin People as a partner. As a SQL Server community evangelist, he covers local SQL Server events in the New York City area and maintains the Pearl Knows blog.

Speaker: Bullett Manale, IDERA's VP of Sales Engineering, has been working in technology for over 25 years. Starting as a tech support technician for Iomega supporting their backup software, he has since been a technical trainer and consultant for Deloitte, a sales engineer at Centerbeam, and a project manager at Shell Oil Company.

Topics: Database Performance, Database Monitoring, Database Diagnostics, SQL Query Performance
Products: SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server