Hartford SQL Server User Group Meeting Tomorrow

Sorry for the late post on this, but better late than never, right?

Tomorrow at noon (ET) will be the second meeting for the Hartford SQL Server User Group (HSSUG). That’s right, we meet during the day because we prefer to be home at night instead of, well, at a user group meeting. Weird, I know. And I bet some people would rather we met at night because they can’t get the time off from work but we know we can’t please everyone. So we decided to please ourselves first and worry about others later.

Anyway, the pizza starts flowing at noon and the first speaker takes the stage at about 1PM. And who do we have lined up for that slot?

Installing SQL Server 2008 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Cluster

Abstract: As DBAs we get to work on a lot of the features of the SQL Server product, but it is not uncommon for us to spend our entire careers without having a chance to work closely with clustering.  There are a lot of DBAs who are otherwise perfectly qualified in all respects for attractive job openings that absolutely require clustering experience. Chuck Boyce will walk through the basics of installing SQL Server 2008 on a Windows 2008 R2 failover cluster and show you some ways that you can obtain this skill on your own using a tool called VMLite.

Bio: Chuck Boyce is a Database Administrator who has worked for several multi billion dollar companies on the US East Coast. He began working with database technologies in 1998, working with Sybase on Unix platforms. Chuck began working with SQL Server in 2000.   Chuck has been awarded the Microsoft MVP award three times – twice for SQL Server. He is the former Executive Chair of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Chapter Program. He founded the Philadelphia PASS chapter and has served as both Track Lead and Co-Chair of the Philly Code Camp. He participates regularly in the SQL Server community on twitter and can be found there most days at http://twitter.com/chuckboycejr

After Chuck finishes up we will have a brief intermission to let people stretch their legs and their minds. We will get started up again after we all sit down and listen to our sponsor talk for about ten minutes. Well, everyone has to sit down except for me, because I’ll be the one speaking. I’ll also be handing out extra tickets for people that (1) attend my talk and (2) are active participants. What are the tickets for? Great question.

The door prize for tomorrow is my one remaining MSDN Ultimate subscription. It is a one year subscription that has a potential value of just under $12k. That’s right, one lucky attendee tomorrow is going to win an MSDN subscription.

After my talk is done we will have the second session of the day:

PowerPivot Demonstration and Discussion

Abstract: PowerPivot is a data analysis add-in for Microsoft Excel.  In this session we will discuss and demo the new SQL Server 2008 R2 PowerPivot feature.

Bio: Jon Gore is a BI Technical specialist from Microsoft Corporation.

After Jon is done we will hold the drawing for the prize and yes, you will need to be there to win.

Interested in attending? Go to the website to register otherwise bring your own lunch because we won’t be ordering for you unless we know you are coming. And by “register” I mean “click to join HSSUG”, so we can send you an invite to the meeting. We aren’t fancy technical here folks, just two guys that like to meet twice a year in a secluded spot for a few hours at a time.