Sourabh and I completed our 24HOP session in the morning (or at least my morning… night, afternoon or evening, depending on which part of the world) you live in. A big THANK YOU to everyone that attended the session and we had a ball presenting the session. We have a little over 200 people attending the session and we hope see a good number of these during our pre-conference session at PASS.

The Summit gives you an opportunity to attend sessions from technical experts across the world and is the largest gathering of Data Platform Professionals in the world. To me SQL PASS Summit is a great way to connect with the SQL Family with whom I only have virtual conversations throughout the year. If you want to do deep-dive of sessions on various things in the SQL Server space, then you have a line-up of pre-con sessions.

There will be a contingent of engineers, program managers and Microsoft Services folks at the SQL Server Clinic to help answer your queries regarding SQL Server. So, don’t forget to stop by the SQL Clinic in case you have a question that you have been meaning to ask for a while!

Apart from all the nerdy and geeky overdose, you have the option of painting the town red during the week that you are in town and attend social gatherings after the sessions. There is always more than one happening and you get to take your pick! It was definitely fun when I attended it last time and it’s going to be fun this time as well. If you are attending for the first time, then brace yourself for an action-packed, geeky overdose and fun-filled SQL adventure! And don’t forget to check out the first-timers page on the Summit website. If you are returning attendee, then you know what I am talking about! J

Sourabh Agarwal [b|t] and I are going to be presenting on How to be a Ninja: Troubleshooting SQL performance on Azure Virtual Machines [DBA-399-PM]. This is a demo packed full day session which will cover a plethora of stuff related to SQL Server. To name a few:
1. Automation deployment on Azure Virtual Machines for SQL Server instances
2. Best practices for using SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines and some of these apply to on-premise SQL Server instances as well. We will document the differences between the two based on our vast experience working on issues with Microsoft customers. We have gathered working for different teams within Microsoft specializing in SQL Server.
3. Troubleshooting performance issues. This is where you will gain your Ninja status! We have made a career within Microsoft on troubleshooting complex SQL issues. We will show you how to troubleshoot performance problems on SQL Server instances which applies to Azure VMs, on-premise SQL Server instances and virtualized environments.
4. We will also give you a preview of some of the enhancements done for SQL Server deployments on Azure by the SQL Server product group at Microsoft.
5. And it is about having fun…. We will definitely give you a thing or two to laugh about as well.

A screenshot of our agenda slide for the pre-con is available below. We also have a bunch of Easter eggs that we will crack open in the session. Psssst.. Some of the stuff is still under works and should be out of the door when we present!

When: 27^th October

Time: 8:30am – 4:30pm PST

Where: Washington State Convention Center

Session URL: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2015/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=38085

Lastly, we loved the notes that Matt Penny [t] took during our session. A screenshot of that is shown below. Thank you Matt! J The 24HOP session presentation is attached on the session page.