Category Archives: SQLServerPedia Syndication

My Kit For The Summit

As an old timer at the Sumit I have gone through several iterations of what I carry in my bag.

Luggage
I always take a large suitcase. It is half empty on arrival and completely full when I leave. As a chapter leader it is a great opprotunity to gather give-a-ways. You will get a of stuff from vendors and from PASS as well. There is a FedEx at the convention center if you prefer to ship stuff home.

Cables and Batteries
You need cables! USB full,micro and mini depending on your phone/tablet. All your chargers for your fun toys. Batteries for your mouse, pointer or wireless keyboard. I also take it a step futher and pack a rechargeable battery pack so my phone and laptop have a buffer. I always see people glued to a wall outlet all week long and sitting on the floor. Good luck jockeying with a thousand other people for that outlet!

Laptop
I make sure my laptop is in tip top shape. There are computers available in a pinch but getting time on them can be hard.

Tablet
I carry a tablet for the bulk of the event and leave the laptop in my room. Lighter and better battery life are the biggest reasons.

Phone
Again, do a checkup on your phone! It is your connection to home, friends and work(yuk!). It is also your gateway to all the impromtu events. Find a twitter client and watch the #sqlpass hash tag. Google plus and Facebook are also good sources for info. I also have a GPS car finder app. I tag where I am then go exploring knowing I can always get back. I hope they do a guidebook like they did for SQLRalley. Lastly, I use Skype on my phone and laptop so I can video chat with my three year old son.

Portable Hotspot
Internet can be spotty with a full hotel and full convention center. I carry a Clear 4G puck since there I coverage in Seattle. Most smart phones have a teathering option as ell. Be careful though, it usually costs more and you can burn through your data plan.

Finally
I wrote this post using the wordpress app on my phone 🙂

Come For The Education Stay For The Networking

OMG! SQLSATURDAY #97 IS HERE!

I am really excited about SQLSaturday #97! In just a few short hours we will be opening the doors to a crowd of people wanting to learn about SQL Server.

We have a crazy good lineup of speakers and a truly awesome group of sponsors to come see and hang out with. For all of that, you should really come to meet new people, make a connection and carry that forward after SQLSaturday #97 is in the books. You have a great opprotunity to meet some new folks and maybe see them again at the PASS Summit in just a few days as well.

Again, I can’t thank my core team AJ Mendo, Jim Murphy, Mike Byrd, Richard Heim and Amy Muehleman enough for the months of work that went into this. If you bump into them tomorrow make sure to thank them, pat them on the back and let them know it was worth your time to attend.

 

SQLSaturday #97 Speaker Selection Process

Hard Choices

First, thank you for submitting to speak at SQLSaturday #97 in Austin, TX. Myself, Richard Heim and Mike Byrd had a good time reading and discussing all the abstracts.

Now that we have rapped up the selection process let me say it was no easy chore. I’d love to tell you that it was a completely unbiased and the selection committee didn’t have any agenda at all. That simply isn’t the truth. Queue ominous chung CHUNG here….

The Most Un-secret Conspiracy Ever

SQLSaturday is a very unique thing. It’s a free regional event. It provides training. It also provides a venue for local speakers and teachers to sharpen their skills. If you have ever spent any time talking with Andy Warren about SQLSaturday you will find that he also thinks it is an opportunity to promote local over more well known national people. I also have a pragmatic view of things. There are three groups of people you are trying to make happy. In a perfect world there would only be one group, us. That just isn’t so.

You Can’t Make Everyone Happy

Speakers

There are a lot of speakers these days, I know I’m one of them. SQLSaturday has been a huge boon to the new group of up and coming teachers and leaders. One of the things not to lose site of that a scant 3 years ago this pool was much, much smaller than it is today. There is a significant group of very active speakers on the “SQLSaturday Circuit” and we do rely on them to kick start things. If you are in a region where there just isn’t a very active local pool these fantastic speakers are a true asset. For me, it was a reassurance that we would have enough speakers and topics to meet the community need. Luckily for us in Texas we have a pretty sizable group of speakers between Austin, Dallas, Ft. Worth and Houston there are easily 30 or more speakers. It can also be a bit of a problem. Part of me wants to load up with the most seasoned and well known speakers to help draw a crowd. That isn’t the whole goal of a SQLSaturday though. So, I reached out to people in the area and made sure they submitted sessions. I worked with some of them personally to help with abstracts and presentations. I also made sure they had a spot to speak at the local chapter meeting to get them a little experience. You will see people on the schedule you have NEVER heard of. You may not know them. They are some of the best at what they do in our region. This also means I may have passed up a more season speaker to promote someone new. Remember, someone gave you your first chance to speak don’t begrudge me for doing the same thing for others.

Vendors

This event wouldn’t be possible at all without vendors, end of story. It takes money to put on a SQLSaturday no matter how big or small. There are a finite number of dollars to put on these events and vendors have to pick where they think the money will do the most good. Not just in marketing terms, but in bolstering their local communities as well. I’ll let you in on a little secret, I’ve been the guy that had to choose where those dollars went. I had to look at the size of the market. Did we want to pull in more of the market share in that region. Would we be able to support a push by sales to continue the initial drive. All of these things are a factor. At the end of the day, will there be a direct or indirect benefit to the company. Why should I put dollars into your event and NOT into some other marketing channel? To that end, I want to see that you are stacking the speaker list to put as many butts in seats as possible. This isn’t 100% against the goal of getting some new people on the roster, but it isn’t a guarantee that we will maximize eyeballs on product ether. You will find that 99 times out 100 a vendor will gladly take that gamble.

Attendees

Big names do draw a part of the crowd that attends a SQLSaturday. Not as much as most people think. You may look and see someone well known speaking but there is usually a lot of other content that you want to see. What I have seen is people going to the sessions that are teaching something they want to learn. What a shocker! Yes, people will pack a session if there is a topic that is hot and there is a well known speaker presenting. I’ve also seen well known speakers speak to a hand full of people. What I’ve found is a lot of the attendees have never been to a SQLSaturday or any event like it. They may not know that you, the veteran speaker, are totally awesome and they should come see you. Even if you are talking about turnips. You, as an attendee, may choose to come because there are some super stars speaking. Trust me on this one, you will learn from every session you attend.

It Ain’t Always Easy

Myself and my team have made every effort to balance the needs of all three groups as best we can. If you submitted this year and didn’t get a slot to speak, please don’t let it stop you from submitting again next year! If you opted not to be a sponsor I completely understand that too. If you choose not to attend that’s OK, there are other events in the region I hope you can make it to. We did our best to promote local, balance the schedule and make sure that there was enough solid content to make this a true learning experience. I hope everyone, speakers, attendees and vendors all get some benefit from our event.

I will make you this promise. I will never put myself on the schedule. I’ve been blessed with a job that allows me to travel and with the support of the community, I have been given lots of opportunities to speak. I will gladly make sure that a slot is held open for the next new person in hope that they grow into the next rock star and give back to the community.

Again,

A huge thanks to everyone that submitted a session, I cannot express how humbled I was to see the number and the quality of submissions. I look forward to having this same problem next year.

Plucking Wallflowers

Wallflowers Bloom

My friend Tim Mitchell wrote an awesome personal account a while back and shared it again recently. It’s a tale I have seen and heard all to often. A tale of a really smart guy who just lacks the courage and confidence to step forward and participate in the social aspects of our great community. If you have had the privilege of meeting me at the Summit, or anywhere else for that matter, you know I don’t suffer from “Wallflower Syndrome”. As a matter of fact I have the incurable reverse of that infliction.

Who are you, where are you from and what do you do?

If you meet me for the first time this year at the Summit, or the second time my memory isn’t what it use to be, I will ask you that question. Usually, in a very loud and assertive way. I get a lot of smiles, some shocked looks and sometimes brushed off completely after asking. Oh, and I may just come up to you out of nowhere to ask you. You got it, I come up to complete strangers and engage them with confidence and good cheer. I’ll let you in on another little secret, if I see you sitting alone and shunning the crowd I will make it a point to come shake you awake. I pluck wallflowers. As Tim pointed out, if you aren’t engaging in the social aspect of the Summit you are missing half of the reason to be there at all.

I SAID WHO ARE YOU, WHERE ARE YOU FROM AND WHAT DO YOU DO!

That’s right, even if you blow me off my memory is so shoddy I will forget that you gave me the stink eye and come back for a second round. I may even send in others to help me in my task of drawing you in to the crowd. You have to fight kicking and screaming to get me off your back and let you sit on the wall all alone, you know like at your last high school formal. I will get the message eventually though. There are so many people that do come to the Summit secretly hoping that they will be invited to go sing karaoke, or a least go hang out and socialize that I will forget about you (shoddy memory again) and just go have a good time.

Making Lasting Connections

To me, the Summit is more than just education from the best minds in our field. It is about making connections with others. You will meed the greats at the Summit, you know who I’m talking about, the Paul Randal’s, Brent Ozar’s and Steve Jones’s of the SQL Server world. You will also meet peers, people just like you that grind out the less glamorous parts of our job every day. You may end up being a mentor to some, even though you don’t think you are anything special. You will also be mentored by those whom have something to share with you. I still get emails and stay in contact with people I’ve only ever met at the Summit. I got emails this year from people that haven’t been to the Summit in two or more years to let me know they would be there this year and are looking forward to reconnecting. That’s the kind of deep connections you can make with people too. It isn’t just all about “expanding your network”, it’s about making lasting friendships with people who are in the same boat with you.

Fine, Be That Way

If you choose not to do anything social at the Summit that’s OK too. Not the outcome I was hoping for, but not the end of the world ether. Maybe you will make one new friend or go to just one of the after hours events. At the end of the day you did make the effort to come to the Summit. Hopefully, you will be back again, and I’ll have another chance to get the stink eye from you (damn my shoddy memory!).

Building A New Storage Test Server

We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

Not to sound too obvious, I test IO systems. That means from time to time I have to refresh my environment if I want to test current hardware. Like you, I work for a living and can’t afford something like a Dell R910 Heck, I can’t afford to shell out for the stuff that Glenn Berry gets to play with these days. Yes, I work for the mighty Dell. No, they don’t give me loads of free hardware to just play with. That doesn’t mean I, or you, can’t have a solid test system that is expandable and a good platform for testing SQL Server.

The hardware choices, inexpensive doesn’t mean cheap

Well, most of the time. Realize I’m not building what I would consider a truly production ready server. Things like ECC memory and redundant power supplies are a must if you are building a “fire and forget” server to rack up. A good test server on the other hand doesn’t have the same up time requirements.

Case

A couple of years ago I would have bought something like a Aerocool Masstige. It will take a full size motherboard and has 10 5.25 bays. This allows me to then put something like this 3×5 5.25 to 3.5 mobile rack. with 10 bays I can put 15 hard drives in plus have one bay left over for something like a CD-Rom drive or another hard drive. The Aerocool Masstige does have two internal hard drive bays as well making for a total of 18 3.5″ drives in one case. The cost does add up though. The case has been discontinued but can still be found for around 110.00. The three drive cadges will run you another 100.oo. Oh, and you need a power supply that’s another 100.00. That brings the cost up to 510.00. Considering that a 3U Supermicro case with 15 bays will run you 700.00 easily. Not horrible for the amount of drive bays but there are better options now.

Norco RPC-4224 4U Server Case
This thing is big, I mean really big. It is deep and tall. It was designed to be a rack mount server but sits just fine on a shelf if you have clearance in the back. I was looking at another version of this same case that houses 20 drives but the price difference just made this hard pass up. This case isn’t a Supermicro case. It doesn’t have the build quality. To be honest though, I’m fine with that. What it does have is the ability to take a large range of ATX motherboards and a standard ATX power supply. Right now Newegg has this case on for 400.00. With a power supply that brings the total up to 500.00 still cheaper than the Supermicro with a ton of drive bays to boot. If you have worked with servers and had to cable them up you may notice that the RPC-4224 has a very different backplane layout. Every four drives has its own backplane and four lane SFF-8087 connector. Usually, most back planes have a single or maybe two connectors for 8 lanes shared via on board SAS expander. Since this doesn’t have that feature it actually makes it easier to build this thing for maximum speed. I can ether buy a very large RAID controller with 24 SAS ports or I can buy my own SAS expanders. The only down side to the backplanes on this server is the fact they are SAS 3Gb/s and not the newer 6Gb/s ports. For spinning drives it isn’t that big of an issue but if you are planning on stacking some SSD’s in those bays it can hurt you if the SSD’s support the newer protocol.

The one warning I’ll make is this thing is very front heavy. Oddly enough having 24 drives stuffed in the front doesn’t make for good weight distribution.  Pro tip, don’t put the hard drives in until the server is where you want it. It is a lot easier to move the case if it isn’t as heavy as two car batteries.

CPU

Just like Glenn, I think the Core i7 2600k is a very good choice for this build. At 314.00 you are only paying a slight premium over the 2600 for a lot more flexibility, *cough*overclocking*cough*.

Motherboard

I thought long and hard on this one and settled on a GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3. This is a very reasonably priced motherboard at 129.00 with some nice features. First, it is based off of the Intel Z68 chipset which means I have video built into the system and don’t have to give up a PCIe slot to video. Secondly, it has USB 3.0 which makes it easy to hook up an external USB 3.0 drive and get some livable speeds. Thirdly, it has SATA III 6Gb/s ports native. It only has two out of the six ports available at that speed but it does give me a few more drive options outside a add on RAID controller. Lastly, the PCIe slots on board are upgradeable to the new PCIe 3.0 standard. This means I don’t have to change my motherboard out to get a nice little bump in speed from newer PCIe RAID controllers or solid state cards.

Memory

Another perk of the Z68 chipset is that it will support up to 32GB of DDR3 RAM, when it becomes available that is. In the short to mid term I’ve got 16GB of Kingston HyperX 1600 DDR3 installed. That’s 115.00 in memory. I could have shaved a few dollars off but buying this as a four piece kit saves me from having to play the mix and match game with memory and hoping that it all works out.

IO System

This is where things get a little complicated. Since I need a lot of flexibility I need to have some additional hardware.

RAID Controller

I have an LSI MegaRAID 9260 6Gb/s card in the server now. At 530.00 it is a lot of card for the money. If you wanted to skip the SAS expanders and get a 24 port card you would be looking between 1100.00 to 1500.00. What’s worse, you really won’t see a huge jump in performance. Hard disks are a real limiting factor here.

SAS Expanders

SAS expanders are a must. There will be times where I will power all 24 drives from a single RAID card that has 24 lanes. There will also be times where I have smaller controllers installed and need to aggregate those drives together across or two connectors on a RAID controller. There are a couple of choices available to you. I opted for the Intel RES2Sv240 expander over the HP 468406-B21. The Intel expander supports the SAS 6Gb/s protocol and has one additional killer feature, it doesn’t require a PCIe slot to run. It was designed to work in cases that support the MD2 form factor. That means it could be mounted on a chassis wall and fed with a standard molex power connector. Why is such a big deal? It means I can stack these in my case and keep my very valuable PCIe slots free for RAID controllers and SSD cards. Newegg has them at 279.00 but you can find them cheaper. The HP expander is listed at 379.00 and requires a PCIe slot for power.

Hard Drives

I opted for smaller 73GB 15,000 RPM Fujitsu drives. They aren’t the fastest drives out since they are a generation behind. What they lack in speed they make up in price. Normally, these drives new cost 150.00 a pop. But, I’m a risk taker. You can find refurbished or pulls for as little as 22 bucks a drive. Make sure you are dealing with a seller that will take returns! I personally have had pretty good luck dealing with wholesale companies that specialize in buying older servers and then reselling the parts. Almost all of them will offer at least a 30 day return. That means you need to do a little more work on your end and validate the drives during your return window. Now I have 24 15k drives for under 600.00 bucks.

I’m using a 2.5″ 7200RPM drive as my boot drive mounted inside the case.

SSD’s

You didn’t think I’d put together a new system and not have some solid state in it did you? I’ve got a few SSD’s floating around but wanted to buy the latest in consumer grade drives and see if they have upped the game any. I opted for the Corsair Force GT 60GB drive, four of them. At 125.00 they are a solid buy for the performance you are getting. Based on the new Sanforce SF2280 controller and able to deliver 85k IOps and 500MB/sec in reads and writes they are a mighty contender. The other thing that pushed me to this drive was the fact it uses ONFI synchronous flash. I won’t hash out why it is better other than to say it produces more reliable results and is faster than its asynchronous or toggle NAND brothers.

Again, the case is so big on the inside I mounted two 1×2 3.5″ to 2.5″ drive bays to house them. That was an extra 50.00 a pop.

Lets Recap

Case 400.00
Powersupply 100.00
Motherboard 130.00
CPU 314.oo
Memory 115.00
RAID HBA 530.00
SAS Expanders 558.00
24 15K drives 558.00
4 SSD’s 500.00

Grand total: 3205.00

What does this buy me? A server that can do 2GB/s in reads or writes and 160k IOps or more. I’ll let you in on another little secret, shop around! Don’t think you have to buy everything at once. Don’t be afraid to wait a week for your parts if you get free shipping. By taking a month to put this machine together I paid about 2700.00. A huge discount over the listed price getting 30% or more off some stuff like the expanders, RAID controller, SSD’s, Case and CPU.

Just in case you were wondering what it looks like:

With the bonnet off (early test setup):

The SAS Backplanes cabled up: