Dustin Dorsey
dustindorsey.com
Director of Data Management at Lifepoint Health, SQL/Azure cost management specialist, active blogger and speaker, user group leader and co-organizer of SQLSat Nashville.
SQLBits 2020
Baselining Performance with DEA
Learn what the Database Experimentation Advisor is and how you can start using it to baseline performance from a target and source server when new changes are introduced.
The Database Experimentation Assistant (DEA) is a new A/B testing tool that Microsoft offers that allows you to evaluate differences in performance from a source and target SQL server. It does this by allowing you to capture a trace on an existing server and replay the trace back on a new server to see how it impacts query and resource performance. This is incredibly valuable when you are planning SQL Server upgrades and want to see how new features and changes to the optimizer affect your queries, but this is also valuable when you are trying to compare hardware or planning a move to an Iaas offering in the cloud.
In this session, I will introduce you to this amazing and underutilized tool and show you how and when you should use it. We will also look at the built-in analysis and comparison reports it provides and how to apply it. And finally, we will talk through several considerations you need to be mindful of when using this.