> sum(its parts)

Six in Six - SQL Server 2012 Webinars

JustinL — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:19:00 GMT

We're running six webinars over the next six months covering our experiences with SQL Server 2012 and customer deployments. I'm presenting the first on upgrading to SQL Server 2012 next month, subsequent sessions will be delivered by colleagues:

NOVEMBER: SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Approach and considerations. Friday 23rd November 12:00 – 13:00
Present approaches for upgrade testing, managing risk and rollback. The session will include details on minimizing downtime and upgrading from SQL Server 2000, 2005, and 2008 including.... More details and register.

DECEMBER: Delivering Mission Critical BI with SQL Server 2012– Friday 14th December 12:00-13:00
Information is the lifeblood of many organisations and the availability of timely, accurate information is critical to strategic decision making. This session covers the features and capabilities… More details and register.

JANUARY: Architecting Highly Available solutions with SQL Server 2012 – Friday 18th January 12:00- 13:00
Overview and comparison of the high availability features available within SQL Server 2012. The session considers business requirements for availability and recoverability and presents a number of alternative solution designs to meet… More details and register.

FEBRUARY: Private cloud deployments with SQL Server 2012 – Friday 15th February 12:00- 13:00
Cloud based technology provide cost effective scale and flexibility. This session provides an overview of the benefits organisations can realise through private cloud… More details and register.

MARCH: Visualising data patterns with SQL Server 2012 – Friday 22nd March 12:00- 13:00
This webinar demonstrates the ease of delivering business insight by exploring information and identifying trends through data visualisation. SQL Server 2012 provides new capability with enhanced performance and … More details and register.

APRIL: Architecting Highly Available solutions with SQL Server 2012 – Friday 26th April 12:00- 13:00
Customers are increasingly interested in leveraging the benefits of cloud based solutions to provide scalable and flexible infrastructure to host their applications. This session looks at common design patterns and workloads… More details and register.

Justin Langford - Coeo Ltd
SQL Server Consultants | SQL Server Remote DBA

SQL Server 2012 - Upgrade Whitepaper

JustinL — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:24:00 GMT

Just a short note to mention Microsoft have released the Technical Reference Guide for upgrading to SQL Server 2012.

The paper is available for download here: http://tinyurl.com/84xm5b4

There's some interesting details on approaches to upgrade, including features such as high availability, full-text search, service broker and other components (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS). Additionally, there's a (fairly) recent initiative to organise and present TechNet content more easily, there's some useful content (with interesting presentation) at the link below:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh393545.aspx

Good luck planning your upgrades,

Regards,

Justin

Coeo and SQL Server Community Events - SQLBits and SQL Relay

JustinL — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:53:00 GMT

It's been a busy week for Coeo, with the SQLBits conference being the highlight of our European SQL Server conference season. We've been involved with the conference for sometime, but SQLBits 9 was our first time as Gold sponsors and the event was a great success!

We were pleased to deliver one pre-conference training day and three conference sessions as follows (in order of appearence):

Christian Bolton (MCA, MCM, MVP) - Upgrading your DBA Skills to SQL Server Denali
Chirag Roy (MCM) - Transaction Log Performance and Troubleshooting - Deep Dive
Chris Testa O'Neill (MVP) - Controlling resources in SQL Server
Gavin Payne - Through the virtual looking glass

Community events continue this week with the UK's first ever SQL Relay - a series of simultaneous events taking place around the UK each night this week, culminating in a finale where T-SQL legend Itzik Ben-Gan will speak at Microsoft in London on Thursday 6th October. In addition to sponsoring the SQL Relay event, we are excited to be supporting the following user group events:

Monday 3rd October:

Gavin Payne (Organiser) - SQL Server in the Evening, Farnham in Surrey
Christian Bolton (MCA, MCM, MVP, Speaking on SQL Server Denali) - at SQL Server in the Evening
Chris Testa-O'Neill (MVP, Organiser and Speaker) - Manchester User Group event

Tuesday 4th October:

Justin Langford (MVP, Speaking on SQL Server Denali) - at the first ever Maidenhead User Group, organised by Richard Douglas
Chirag Roy (MCM, Speaking on Troubleshooting Transactional Replication) - at the first ever Maidenhead User Group, organised by Richard Douglas
Chris Testa-O'Neill (MVP, Speaker) - London User Group event organised by Neil Hambly

Wednesday 5th October:

Justin Langford (MVP, Speaking on SQL Server Denali) - at the Southampton User Group organised by Mark Pryce-Maher
Chris Testa-O'Neill (MVP, Speaker) - Essex User Group event

Thursday 6th October:

Chris Testa-O'Neill (MVP, Speaker) - SQL Relay Finale at Microsoft, Cardinal Place, London

If you haven't signed-up for one of these events, and the topics sound interesting - please do register and come along. It's a great opportunity to discuss new technology topics and network with others in the SQL Server Community. Additionally, there are many other events taking place around the country, so check out the SQL Relay schedule and find an event near you.

We're excited to be involved in so many community events, it's the annual SQL PASS Summit in Seattle next week. We have four of our team attending and Christian and Chris are both presenting at the conference!

Best regards,

Justin Langford - Coeo Ltd

SQL Server Consultants | SQL Server Remote DBA

SQL Server in the Evening - 19th Jan in Frimley, Surrey

JustinL — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:33:00 GMT

Just a short note to mention, Gavin Payne (blog and twitter) is organising an event shortly in Frimley, Surrey - SQL Server in the Evening.

The Agenda focuses on Infrastructure DBAs, with the following sessions planned:

Getting the most for SQL Server from VMware – VMware Sales Engineer
SQL Server Transparent Data Encryption – Gavin Payne, Solution Architect, Attenda
Understanding where cloud services really fit within your data centre – Matt Mould, Advisory Practice Consultant, EMC Consulting

If it sounds like it might float your boat and/ or you fancy meeting some fellow SQL Server DBAs, it's free to register here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1125559579

Regards,

Justin Langford - Coeo Ltd

SQL Server Consultants | SQL Server Remote DBA

SQL Server - MVP 2010

JustinL — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:59:00 GMT

I was very happy to receive an email last week to confirm I would receive the MVP Award for SQL Server for 2010 - very exciting news !

I missed the first FedEx delivery, however this weekend they were able to successfully deliver the package from Microsoft and it began to feel very real as I opened the box to find the MVP glass-ware!

Since leaving Microsoft, the past couple of years have been incredibly challenging, exciting and satisfying. The MVP Award is really special, the SQL community has a fantastic, international base with many successful events, leaders and contributors providing an impressive network both online and in-person.

I'm really excited about the year ahead - starting this week with SQL Bits in London, followed by PASS EMEA in Germany next week and at the London PASS user group meeting on Monday 26th April.

Regards,

Justin Langford - Coeo Ltd

Architect Insight Conference - SQL Server consolidation

JustinL — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:42:00 GMT

Hi,

Just a short post to mention the Microsoft Architect Insight Conference at Microsoft's London office (Cardinal Place) at the end of March.

This is the fifth annual Architect's conference and is packed with presentations from Microsoft Program Managers, Architects and MVPs.

I'm presenting a session on the first day on SQL Server Consolidation. If this is something that interests you - drop me an email or sign-up for the conference.

Regards,

Justin Langford - Coeo Ltd

SQL Server Consultants | SQL Server Remote DBA

SQL Bits Presentation - Consolidation with SQL Server

JustinL — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:25:00 GMT

I had a great time presenting at SQL Bits Goes West this weekend. The conference goes from strength to strength as the attendance grows and the speakers and sessions get better and better - the content just gets better with each conference.

The session I presented on Saturday 21st November covered running a SQL Server consolidation project. The presentation looks at how to approach a consolidation project - including designing the consolidated environment, managing risk and effective workload isolation.

I've posted a PDF of the SQL Server Consolidation presentation and there's a selection of recent presentations on the Coeo SQL Server Conferences page.

Regards,

Justin Langford - Coeo Ltd

SQL Server Consultants | SQL Server Remote DBA

SQL Server Virtualisation - SQL Bits and Usergroup Presentation

JustinL — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:05:00 GMT

I recently presented on SQL Server virtualisation at the user group meeting at Microsoft TVP on Wednesday 11th November and again at the SQL Bits conference on Friday 20th November.

The presentation focussed on running a SQL Server virtualisation project, identifying servers as good candidates for virtualisation and others that are less suitable. The presentation also looks at using virtualisation to provide high availability and troubleshooting SQL Server when running in a virtualised environment.

Here's a link to the PDF of the SQL Server Virtualisation presentation. Links to other Coeo presentation can be found here: http://www.coeo.com/sql-server-events/sql-server-conferences.html. Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback.

Regards,

Justin Langford

SQL Server Consultants | SQL Server Remote DBA

BizTalk 2009 Performance Webcast

JustinL — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:37:00 GMT

If you're involved in design, implementation or operations for solutions involving BizTalk Server 2009 - Ewan Fairweather from the Biztalk Rangers/ Customer Advisory Team is hosting a live meeting session tomorrow, details below:

Event Overview

As part of the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 launch wave, the BizTalk Rangers and Technology Adoption Program (TAP) teams are conducting a performance lab to compare Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2, BizTalk Server 2009 (physical), and BizTalk Server 2009 on a Hyper-V platform. In this webcast, you hear from the product group about the performance characteristics of solutions deployed on different platforms. We outline the tests that we have performed and the results that we obtained, and we share common best practices for deployment. If you would like to understand the performance differences of BizTalk Server 2009 on Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, and Hyper-V platforms before the official guides are published, then this webcast is for you.

Presenter: Ewan Fairweather, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Ewan Fairweather has worked for Microsoft for four years. He currently works as a program manager in the Microsoft BizTalk Server product group on the Customer Advisory Team (CAT). Prior to this, Ewan spent over three years working for Microsoft U.K. on the Premier Field Engineering team where he worked with enterprise customers, helping them to maintain and optimize their BizTalk applications. This involved providing both proactive and reactive on-site assistance within the U.K. and the rest of Europe. Ewan has also worked in a dedicated capacity on some of the world's largest BizTalk deployments, predominantly within financial services.

Ewan coauthored the successful Professional BizTalk Server 2006 (Wrox, 2007) and has written many white papers for Microsoft including the "Microsoft BizTalk Server Performance Optimization Guide," which is available on the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) Web site. Prior to joining Microsoft, Ewan worked as a Cisco Certified Academy Instructor (CCAI) for a regional training organization, delivering advanced routing and networking courses. Ewan holds a bachelor's degree in computing with management from the University of Leeds. Outside of work, Ewan's hobbies include reading, taking part in as many sports as possible, and regularly going to the gym.

Register for the upcoming TechNet Webcast: BizTalk Server 2009 Performance on Hyper-V and Physical Deployments (Level 300)

Regards, Justin Langford

Coeo Ltd

SQL Server Consultants | SQL Server Remote DBA

BizTalk Performance Problems?

JustinL — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:02:00 GMT

The guys in the BizTalk Customer Advisory Team (CAT) continue to publicise new best practise and lessons learned from troubleshooting enterprise deployments and the performance optimisation labs they run. Sharing knowledge and experience gained through optimising these high-performance, low-latency solutions helps the BTS user community improve performance and get better return on their BTS investment. .

I recently reviewed the latest Performance Optimization Guide for BizTalk Server 2009 and provided some feedback that was included in the guide around the SQL Server optimisations.If you're involved in designing or troubleshooting solutions built on BizTalk Server, it's well worth taking a look here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee377064(BTS.10).aspx .

As with any performance optimisation, getting the architecture right is critical and testing early in the project lifecyle will identify problems before they impact the business.

Happy tuning!

Justin Langford

Coeo Ltd

SQL Server Consultants | SQL Server Remote DBA