What Do You Get When You Put 600 Database Developers In A Room?

Well, earlier this afternoon at least, you got SQL-Fest, which is believed to be the largest SQL Server training event ever held at Microsoft. It was my honor to act as master of ceremonies for this event.

The focus of today's session was the new Database Mirroring technology. We heard from two early adopters of the technology within Microsoft, as well as several members of the SQL development team who were instrumental in building the technology. We were then treated to a demonstration of the technology by Saleem Hakani, a database engineer on the MSN team (We were pressed for time, so I exercised my discretion as MC and cut my technical talk, which was a discussion of mirroring in context with other high availability solutions. As a result of this editorial license, my major contributions to this event were an attempt to keep things moving and a couple of acronym-related jokes).

Saleem's demo was very cool, and included both manual fail-over and a simulated disaster (How do you simulate a disaster? You kill sqlservr.exe from the Task Manager!). Everything in the demo went perfectly, which was especially impressive given that this was Saleem's first presentation experience. Mark the name down; this is someone you'll be hearing a lot from in the future.

A number of people had a hand in planning and staging this event, and they all deserve a huge round of applause (our time management issue meant that most folks had left by the time this became practical). So, to all of you SQL-Fest Managers -- and you know who you are -- well done and good on you!

If you're interested in database mirroring as a component of your high availability strategy, there's a fine overview here. You can also post a comment here if you'd like more information on this technology.

     -wp