Couchbase for the SQL DBA

New projects, scalability limits, or previous design decisions often lead to additional data platforms being introduced alongside relational systems, and those platforms are increasingly NoSQL rather than relational.

For SQL Server DBAs, this can be uncomfortable territory. Familiar concepts still exist, but they behave differently, and assumptions that work well in a single-node relational system do not always hold in a distributed, multi-model environment.

In this session, I’ll draw on four years working with Couchbase, followed by a return to SQL Server, to explain what SQL DBAs actually need to know when Couchbase becomes part of their landscape. We’ll look at which relational instincts transfer well, where they break down, and how to think about performance, availability, and operational responsibility in a distributed system.

The session focuses on practical realities rather than features. We’ll cover how Couchbase handles querying and indexing, how high availability and replication change operational thinking, what monitoring and troubleshooting look like in practice, and where DBAs are often surprised when supporting Couchbase alongside SQL Server.

The goal is not to turn SQL Server professionals into Couchbase specialists, but to give them enough understanding to manage, support, and ask the right questions when Couchbase appears alongside their relational platforms.

After attending this session, you will be able to: Identify which SQL Server concepts translate well to Couchbase, and which assumptions break down in a distributed, multi-model platform. Understand how querying, indexing, and high availability work in Couchbase from an operational DBA perspective. Support Couchbase alongside SQL Server by recognising common operational challenges and knowing where to focus monitoring and troubleshooting efforts.