Category Archives: Conferences

EightKB is coming!

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The next EightKB is coming on January 27th, kicking off at 2pm UTC.

Once again we have 5 mind melting sessions on 5 in-depth SQL Server internals topics, from 5 top notch speakers.

Registration is free and you can sign up here: – https://eightkb.online/

Let’s have a closer look at the sessions 🙂

SQL Server Memory Internals & Troubleshooting – Amit Bansal @ 14:15

Welcome to the dungeon.

Yes, SQL Server memory concepts are like entering a dungeon where you are guaranteed to get lost. It’s dark and complex out there and not many have come back alive.

Join Microsoft Certified Master of SQL Server, Amit Bansal (b|t), and find your way out from the dungeon.

In this deep-dive session, you will understand SQL Server memory architecture, how the database engine consumes memory and how to track memory usage. Complex concepts will be made simple and you will see some light beyond the darkness.

This session will be an eye-opener for you. Assured.

The Ins and Outs of SQL Server Data – Bob Pusateri @ 15:45

While data compression is best-known for reducing a database’s size on disk, it’s also an effective tool for making your queries fly. Come see how reduced disk usage and increased performance mean that with compression, less really can be more!

Join Microsoft Data Platform MVP and MCM, Bob Pusateri (b|t), who will arm you with the knowledge and understanding to capitalize on both of these aspects of SQL Server’s row and page compression features, as well as columnstore and updateable columnstore indexes.

This session will combine a lesson on the internals of compression with real-world scenarios to show you how to determine the most appropriate compression type for any situation.

Since there’s no such thing as a “free lunch” in computing, the drawbacks of these features will also be discussed.

Intelligent Query Processing? What’s up with that? – Gail Shaw @ 17:00

One of the major changes in SQL Server 2017 and 2019 is addition of Intelligent Query Processing, which includes a number of improvements to the way queries are optimised and executed.

Join Microsoft Data Platform MVP and MCM, Gail Shaw (b|t), who will show why this is a radical departure from the way that things worked previously and how it can improve the performance of some query forms.

This session will look at the places where Intelligent Query Processing works and compare the performance of queries using these features to see just what kind of improvement it can make.

Latches, Spinlocks, and Lock Free Data Structures – Klaus Aschenbrenner @ 18:30

You know locking and blocking very well in SQL Server? You know how the isolation level influences locking? Perfect!

Join SQL Server expert and author, Klaus Aschenbrenner (b|t) in this session for a deep dive into how SQL Server implements physical locking with lightweight synchronization objects like Latches and Spinlocks. He will cover the differences between both, and their use-cases in SQL Server.

You will learn about best practices how to analyze and resolve Latch- and Spinlock contention for your performance critical workload.

This session will talk about lock free data structures, what they are, and how they are used by the new In-Memory OLTP technology that is part of SQL Server since 2014.

Scaling SQL Server beyond two CPU’s – Thomas Grohser @ 20:00

Join SQL Server Infrastructure Architect and Engineer, Thomas Grohser for this session on how to build and configure a large SQL Server (CPU, Memory, Storage, Network) and how to modify your data model to support the scaling.

The whole talk is based on real world examples with servers as large as 224 cores and over 2 PB of storage.

We are REALLY excited for this event, it’s going to be a blast 🙂

Hope to see you there!

EightKB is back!

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We’re back!

The first EightKB back in July was a real blast. Five expert speakers delivered mind-melting content to over 1000 attendees!

We were honestly blown away by how successful the first event was and we had so much fun putting it on, we thought we’d do it again 🙂

The next EightKB is going to be on January 27th 2021 and the schedule has just been announced!

Once again we have five top-notch speakers delivering the highest quality sessions you can get! Expect a deep dive into the subject matter and demos, demos, demos!

Registration is open and it’s completely free! You can sign up for the next EightKB here

We also run a monthly podcast called Mixed Extents where experts from the industry join us to talk about different topics related to SQL Server. They’re all on YouTube or you can listen to the podcasts wherever you get your podcasts!

EightKB and Mixed Extents are 100% community driven with no sponsors…so, we’ve launched our own Mixed Extents t-shirts! Any money generated from these t-shirts will be put straight back into the events.

EightKB was setup by Anthony Nocentino (b|t), Mark Wilkinson (b|t), and myself as we wanted to put on an event that delved into the internals of SQL Server and we’re having great fun doing just that 🙂

Hope to see you there!

EightKB – Schedule published

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Today we announced the schedule for EightKB

EightKB was setup by Anthony Nocentino (b|t), Mark Wilkinson (b|t), and myself as we wanted to put on an event that delved into the internals of SQL Server.

We’re talking straight up, geeking out on the techy side here. We wanted mind-melting sessions with tonnes of demos and well, that’s exactly what we got!

This is an absolutely amazing line-up with in-depth sessions from people who are the top of our industry.

I couldn’t be more excited!

I want to say a massive thank you to all the speakers who submitted. Selection was difficult as we kept this first event small, with only 5 slots available for the 70+ sessions that were submitted, which meant making difficult decisions (there was foot stamping and childish name calling).

N.B. – that last bit didn’t happen, we all get along 🙂

EightKB will be back however! And we will be in touch with the new dates so we will be reaching out to you soon.

EightKB is happening on the 17th of June, kicking off at 9am EDT. Registration is free and you can sign up here

Hope to see you there!

EightKB – A new virtual SQL Server event

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With all the events that have been cancelled over the next few months due to the on-going COVID-19 crisis, Mark Wilkinson (b|t), Anthony Nocentino (b|t), and I wanted to do something for the SQL community.

So, why not put on a virtual event?

There are a few great new events coming up so how do we make our event stand out?

Enter, EightKB. A new virtual event running on June 17th that focuses solely on SQL Server internals hosting level 300 sessions and above.

We want this event to delve into SQL Server…with some truly mind melting sessions! We’re looking for in-depth technical sessions, with the more demos, the better!

Our call for speakers is open until the end of April. So if you have a session focusing on internals, we would love for you to submit!

If this sounds like an event you’d want to attend, it’s completely free and you can sign up here.

We’ll announce the full schedule at the start of May and from the quality of the sessions already submitted…it looks to be a good one!

Hope to see you there!

Looking forward to 2020

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2019 was a busy year for me. I presented sessions in over 10 countries, averaging speaking at two conferences per month. I also helped organise Data Relay and attended all five days which is always a fun (yet tiring) experience.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed myself last year and I hope 2020 brings more of the same! I do intend on not speaking at as many conferences this year although to be honest I did say that at the start of 2019.

I do want to get back into blogging more often this year. I didn’t publish as often as I wanted to last year and the simple reason for that was….time. So this year I plan on getting some cool stuff out there.

I’m currently writing this in Dublin airport waiting to head over to London to present my Chaos Engineering for SQL Server session at Conf42.com. I’ve been diving into the world of Chaos Engineering recently so hope to get a few posts out about it in the next few months.

I’ll also be continuing to explore running SQL Server in Docker containers and on Kubernetes. There’s so much great stuff happening in those areas that it can be difficult to keep up at times! The two main things I’m looking forward to are running SQL Server Edge on a Raspberry Pi (if they ever give me access to the container image) and WSL 2 going GA.

Another thing I’ve been enjoying is delving into the world of Linux. I’ve been using Ubuntu as my primary OS for a while now but had to refresh my laptop over Christmas in order to install Windows 10 as it’s needed for an upcoming project that I’m working on (can’t say too much about that at the moment but it’s quite exciting!). So I installed Windows 10 and then decided to install Fedora 31 instead of re-installing Ubuntu.

I can’t really say why I went for Fedora. There’s a tonne of distros out there (I seriously looked at Manjaro) but I guess the main reason was that Microsoft has two linux SQL Server 2019 container images, one for Ubuntu and one for Red Hat. Plus I suffer from Shiny Tech Syndrome so wanted to try something new.

I’ve also recently purchased a Pinebook Pro. I needed a backup laptop for when I travel (at least that’s what I’m telling myself) so nabbed one. The price can’t be argued with ($200) and the reviews online are all very positive so am looking forward to getting my hands on it. One of the really cool things is that it will boot from a SD card so I’ll get to try out Manjaro after all! 🙂 I’ll definitely be posting a review about it once I’ve had it for a couple of weeks (in fact that might get wrapped up into a larger post about either my linux experiences so far or my current travel kit…haven’t decided yet).

Finally to mention, I’ve also started helping organise a brand new conference in Ireland, Data Céilí. This conference is run by the team behind SQL Saturday Dublin and the response we’ve had so far as been amazing. We’ll be selecting sessions in the next couple of weeks and then prompting the heck out of it!

I reckon that should be enough projects to keep me occupied for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for reading and I hope 2020 is a blast.