SQL PASS Summit 2009

DBA-437 – The Problem With Parallelism

The SQL PASS Summit for 2009 saw over 2,100 attendees.

I was particularly impressed with the breadth and depth of the presentations on offer. I am very much looking forward to going through all the sessions on the DVDs when they are released.

Thank you very much to the gentleman at the back of my session who asked about worker threads. As I indicated, the defaults are fairly well documented in SQL Server BOL:

The default value for max worker threads, 0, allows SQL Server to automatically configure the number of worker threads at startup. This setting is best for most systems; however, depending on your system configuration, setting max worker threads to a specific value sometimes improves performance.

The following table shows the automatically configured number of max worker threads for various combinations of CPUs and versions of SQL Server.

Number of CPUs	32-bit Computer	64-bit Computer
<= 4 processors	256	512
8 processors	288	576
16 processors	352	704
32 processors	480	960

 Note: We recommend 1024 as the maximum for 32-bit SQL Server and 2048 for 64-bit SQL Server.

Importantly, don’t forget that earlier version of SQL Server defaulted to 255 for the max worker threads configuration option. So if you perform/performed an in-place upgrade on your SQL Server 2000 instance you should ensure that the value be changed to 0 for SQL Server 2005 and 2008.

I have included my presentation below:

http://cid-a65be80360df3915.skydrive.live.com/embedicon.aspx/Presentations/SQLPASSSummit2009.VictorIsakov.DBA-437.TheProblemWithParallelism.pdf

Otherwise, it was great to catch up with the "usual punters" at the "local office", the Tap House Grill. The seasonals were great!

 

See you next year!

 

Microsoft Tech•Ed Australia 2009

SQL311 – Operational Excellence: Managing a SQL Server Infrastructure

I hope everyone had a great experience at Tech Ed.

Thanks for your feedback and reviews.

I have posted a copy of the presentation as promised:

http://cid-a65be80360df3915.skydrive.live.com/embedicon.aspx/Presentations/TechEdAustralia2009.VictorIsakov.SQL311.ManagingaSQLServerInfrastructure.pdf

 

Sydney SQL Server Enterprise User Group – November 2009

DBA: Protecting SQL Data with Storage Technologies

Thank you to Peter Niven for delivering the session for November, I heard a lot of positive feedback for the presentation.

 

Congratulations to Sarah for winning the major door prize, a license of the Idera SQL Admin Toolset (valued at AU $954) that was generously provided by Idera (www.idera.com) and Tony Finnemore from SQL Tools (www.sqltools.com.au).

The content from the meeting is posted below.

 

News:

 

Presentation:

http://cid-a65be80360df3915.skydrive.live.com/embedicon.aspx/Presentations/SydneySQLServerEnterpriseUserGroup.04-Nov-2009.Session.pdf