Final Day @ TechED 2012

I am too late to write about it, but the final day of TechEd 2012 was really amazing. It was really an wonderful experience to be part of this yearly event by Microsoft. Here is a short preview of the first two days @ TechEd 2012.

# Preview (Day 1 & 2)

Microsoft’s TechED 2012 was started in Bangalore at The Lalit Ashok on 21st March, 2012. For me, the prime attraction of Day 1 was the SQL Server track (Data and Developer – Synergy with SQL Server). More than 250 SQL Enthusiastic attended all the SQL sessions on Day 1. There were five rocking SQL Sessions on Day 1:

• T-SQL Rediscovered with SQL Server 2012 by Jacob Sebastian
• Catapult your data with SQL Server 2012 Integration Service by Praveen Srivatsa
• Processing Big Data with SQL Server 2012 and Hadoop by Stephen Forte
• SQL Server Misconceptions and Resolution – A Practical Perspective by Pinal Dave & Vinod Kumar
• Securing with Contained DB in SQL Server 2012 by Pranab Majumdar

For me, Day 2 (22nd March, 2012) @ TechEd 2012, was more about Networking with other Community experts. Most of the time, I was in the Partner booths with Manas, although I had attended two session on System Center 2012 & Windows 8. Post lunch, we spend sometimes with Nakul Sir & Tejas Sir, near Partner expo area. You can read more about it here.

# Day 3 (Friday, 23rd March, 2012)

The Final day of TechEd 2012, and yet again another SQL Server track (Know Your Data – A Day in Life of a DBA) !!! The decision was quite clear for me. I had planned to attend all the sessions on the SQL Server track; however, I still remember that the SQL Server track on Day 1 was full. As always, Manas and I reached the venue before time, and met Vinod Sir @ MTC Glass room. Later Sahal joined us, and we met our UG Lead Kaliyan (t) before going for the keynote session.

# Keynotes

The opening keynote of the final day was started by Mr. Chakrapani Gollapali, General Manager, Consumer Channels Group, Microsoft. Some of the key take away from his keynote were:

• The largest developer community in India attended TechEd this year
• 4 Products to focus: Windows PC, Office, XBOX and Windows Phone
• 65000+ App, 500+ New features available for windows phone
• XBOX is the highest selling console in India

The second keynote was presented by Mr. Gerard Rego, Director, Nokia India. Some of the key take away from his session were:

• There will be more devices coming in a few months from MS/Nokia which will address a broader range of people
• The applications, currently running on high end windows phone, will be available for future devices, which are targeting a wide range of audiences.
• Will have the same experience for upcoming low-end mobile devices

# Sessions

As expected earlier, Lalit – 1 & 2, where the SQL Server sessions were scheduled, was completely full before starting of the very first session. Peeling SQL Server like an Onion: Internals Debunked: The first session of the day by Vinod Sir (b|t) was having tons of information about how SQL server works internally. Some of the key take away from his sessions were:

• Difference between Sector and Cluster in term of disk sub-system
• 512b vs. 512E, usage of fsutil to find the information about disk subsystem (you need administrative right to use this command)

• Virtual Account, Service Account with SID
• 19 New permissions available with SQL Server 2012
• VLF issues and the Enhancement done in SQL Server 2012
• Prepare Restore Strategy; not the Backup Strategy, also test it
• SQL Server licensing is changed from Socket-Based to Core-Based
• Checkpoint and Indirect-Checkpoint in SQL Server (2012)
• AWE support has been removed from SQL Server 2012

The second session of the day was by Pinal Sir (b|t) on Speed Up! Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance. The session was very informative. It was a completely new topic for me. SQL Server is smart enough to do the choice: if I have to summarize the session in one single line, this is the line, which I will pick from the session. Some of the key take away from his sessions were:

• Distribute, Repartition, and Gather is Parallelism
• SQL Server is smart enough to do the choice.
• “It Depends” doesn’t exist in case of SQL Server, there is always an answer for the question

Post Lunch we had a session by SQL Expert Balmukund Lakhani (b|t) on Keeping Your Database Available – “AlwaysON”. This is a new feature available with the new version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2012. During last year TechED, I had an opportunity to attend his session. Some of the key take away from his sessions were:

• AlwaysON feature uses the Windows Failover Clustering feature.
• All the nodes should have installed Windows Failover Clustering.
• A shared storage system (for quorum disk) is not required while configuring AlwaysON using SQL Server 2012 … (Yes, you heard it correct, no Quorum disk !!!)
• You can failover multiple databases at once.
• One Primary database, four secondary replicas, and two secondary synchronous replicas can be configured.
• PowerShell Cmdlets are available to configure AlwaysOn feature
• AlwaysOn dashboard is one the best utility to watch the status of the availability group.
• Log backup and Full backup with COPY_ONLY option can be performed on any replicas.

The next session was on Lesser Known Facts of SQL Server Backup & Restore by Amit Banerjee (b|t). Backup and Restore is one of my favorite topic and I was really looking forward to attend this session. Some of key take away from his session were:

• Three types of Backup Methods available, using T-SQL, VSS, and VDI.
• Various type of backups, Full backup, t-log backup, file backup, file group backup, differential backup
• Piecemeal restore of the database
• For VSS storage, the backup software should support the features and SQL Server should be installed on a supported build
• The usage of Native compression while performing backup using t-sql
• Usage of SQL Server Backup Simulator
• And Kolaveri di Recalled the Memory Dump Analysis session in SQLSaturday (#SQLSAT116)

# Closing Keynote

Again, Kolaveri di… And this time, its none other than Mr. Moorthy Uppaluri, General Manager, Academia, Microsoft. A few point from his keynote were:

• This is the biggest TechED till now in India, with maximum number of In-person and online attendees.
• Kinect/XBOX is the No 1 console in the world.
• By 2015, No.2 worldwide on Windows Phone
• Desire … Dream … Vision ..
• Data Scientist will be a new profession
• Social Networking will change in future

Later he distributed awards to the winners of Hackathon. My friends, Manas (b|t), Sahal (b|t) and Balmukund (b|t) received awards for maximum number of tweets during the whole event.

Want to have more information about TechEd 2012, read the web-log by Manas and Sahal about their TechEd 2012 experiences: Manas ( Day1, Day2, Day3) & Sahal (Day1, Day2, Day3).

A special thanks to my mentors, Vinod Sir, Pinal Sir and Jacob Sir, without whom this was not possible.

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