The Agenda

Attend this full day pre-con to gain in-depth knowledge of SQL Sentry products and services. Whether you are already a customer or considering adopting our platform, you will learn how to make the most of it directly from our product and sales engineering teams. 
CEO Greg Gonzalez will discuss the direction and future of SQL Sentry. Session topics include: SQL Sentry configuration and optimization, applying SQL Sentry software to identify and solve real world issues, setting up the best alerting environment, mining performance data from your repository, what's new in Plan Explorer, and details on our solutions for monitoring APS, Azure SQL DW, and Azure SQL DB. 
You will also have the opportunity to interact with the sales and product teams during breaks and lunch as well as a dedicated Q&A session at the end of the day to get your own questions answered. This day of deep dive technical training will provide you with the knowledge and tools to make your own environment run as efficiently as possible. 


Keynote (30 Minutes) - 200 
Greg Gonzalez, CEO 
Greg will talk about all the recent and upcoming exciting events happening at SQL Sentry. Get an inside look at what's happening with the company as well as our entire product line. 


Configuration Personal Training (60 Minutes) - 300 
Scott Fallen 
Get your SQL Sentry environment configured and organized for the best results. We will focus on installation, retention thresholds, site configuration, SQL Sentry Client preferences, and integration with other tools (SCOM and ticketing). 


Drop and Give me 5!!! Get Your SQL Server in Shape with SQL Sentry (60 Minutes) - 400 
Richard Douglas 
Whether physical or virtual, every SQL Server instance has its own performance profile based on available resources, workload, host configuration, and other factors. Yet many performance issues share root cause and performance metric patterns. In this session we will demonstrate how to recognize these patterns and identify the root cause for 5 common performance issues using SQL Sentry Performance Advisor and Event Manager. You will also discover the additional performance and configuration information we can provide about a virtualized SQL Server’s host, whether it be Hyper-V or VMware.


Reveille! Wake up with SQL Sentry Advanced Alerting (60 minutes) - 300 
Scott Fallen 
In this session we will take a deep dive into the advanced features and options available in SQL Sentry’s alerting system. We will cover how to have your alerts follow a call schedule, filtering alerts to allow automated response to very specific situations, making the most of response rulesets, and crafting our own alerts with Custom Conditions. For those that already have alerting in place, we will discuss tips and tricks for reducing alert noise. We’ll conclude with a discussion of alerting best practices and Q&A. 


Performance Data Surveillance (60 minutes) - 300 
John Martin 
Within the SQL Sentry repository there is valuable environment data for monitored systems, as well as historical performance data, all available to the end user so that they can mine this information for themselves. This session is a starting point to help get users acclimated with the data structures in the SQL Sentry repository, and some of the information that is available. This session should provide the SQL Sentry user with the building blocks to continue this journey of mining the SQL Sentry repository on their own in the future. 


Plan Explorer Reconnaissance (60 Minutes) - 300 
Aaron Bertrand & Greg Gonzalez
SQL Sentry Plan Explorer has become the tool of choice for tens of thousands of SQL Server professionals working to improve query performance through execution plan analysis. The latest release brings more of what we love, and marks the evolution of Plan Explorer into a comprehensive platform that will help us address even more performance problems, as well as prevent them in the future. 


Classified Files : APS, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, and Azure SQL Database (60 Minutes) - 300 
John Martin 
Whether you use an in-house Analytics Platform System or the cloud-based Azure SQL DW, we have your monitoring covered. In this session, John will show you how we can help you gain insight into data movement, troubleshoot distributed queries step-by-step, and review current and historical information about loads, backups, and restores. You will also learn about our comprehensive health alerts, our notification system, and our familiar, Outlook-style Event Manager calendar. Finally, we’ll go over the features offered in our monitoring solution for Azure SQL Database.


Operation Debrief (60 minutes) - 200 
SQL Sentry Team 
Interact with the entire team to find out the answers to all of your questions about anything SQL Sentry related. This will be an open Q & A session, feedback opportunity, and chance to learn anything we don't cover in the sessions.