Break Time During Day One Training

Monday, our first day on board SQL Cruise Miami found us sitting in the Bangkok and Singapore meeting rooms attending a full six hours plus of training at the hands of Brent Ozar.  We covered two sessions that day: The SAN Admin Lie Detector Test and after a lunchtime break for food and sun, we covered Wait Stats in depth.  Brent extensively called on his background in SAN and virtualization to discuss how to accurately gauge SAN performance and configuration as well as the proper techniques for configuring your SAN backed SQL instances.  Luckily we were able to also include an additional Cruiser in this discussion: Ben Block, SAN Administrator at one of Brent’s former employers was also able to shed light on the discussion and provide a counter (to Brent’s point) from time-to-time.  I know for one that I am always interested in learning more about that black box called the SAN so I can work more effectively with the SAN Administrator.  Brent’s discussion of the topic definitely provided all of us with a greater understanding of the intricacies of all things SAN.

The noon hour brought a needed break for all.  Some of us chose to spend it refreshing ourselves with food and drink; personally I thought it was therapeutic to get some much needed late-winter sunshine to cure my self-diagnosed Seasonal Affectiveness Disorder (aka Whiteness).  The decks were packed with college students baking in the sun, I luckily found my spot for a bit of time before returning to the afternoon session on Wait Stats.

The topic of wait stats always interests me in that I typically use it as my starting point in any performance tuning situation.  The first thing I do is determine what the accumulated count, duration, and average wait duration is by wait type in order to guide my subsequent performance tuning.  Brent delved into the various common wait types and from there addressed where you would want to turn your attention to next.  While I have what I would call a decent understanding of wait types and their causes, I still managed to pick up quite a few things I will be able to use in active tuning engagements I have in my role as a production Database Administrator.

At the end of the day we held our Quest Software-sponsored Quest Through Your Laptop Bag contest.  Random items were called out by yours-truly. If you had it in your laptop bag you scored a point.  The winner this cruise was Mike Decuir of AllRecipes.com.  He walked away with a $200 gift certificate to Amazon.com courtesy of Quest Software!  Thank you Quest Software and congratulations to Mike!

The day drew to a close with a formal dinner for those of us who decided to dress for the occasion: The aforementioned Mike and his lovely girlfriend Cami, the Rich Zuechs (both Senior and Junior), Crys Manson and her mother Sue Foor and my 12 year old son Austen all sat down for a pleasant dinner at the Aqua restaurant and later joined the remaining Cruisers and their “plus ones” for what we refer to as Prom Night on the cruise ship.  You get to see everyone in their finest attire (which you learn is a variable term with no minimum value) and take pictures against cheesy backdrops for exorbitant prices if you so choose to purchase the pictures on display for all to see over the remainder of the cruise.  Since this cruise also corresponded with Spring Break I’ll let you draw the mental imagery of what most of those photos looked like.  That’s right, 1800 college Spring Breakers on board the Norwegian Dawn this time around.  Apparently New Jersey community colleges were on vacation this week by the looks of the assemblage of personalities collecting around the pool and hot tubs during the cruise.

Overall the day started strong with learning, and finished strong with community!  No better way to kick off our most-recent SQL Cruise in my opinion!