Michael Wall
Architect/DBA at 3Cloud Consulting
Vancouver, Washington, United States
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Michael Wall has been an IT professional going back to when he had his own software store and worked with his customers with their “dose” problems. Originally hired by a small consulting firm to write web pages, he was thrust into the SysAdmin world when their lead consultant changed the passwords of all of the servers at a major pulp and paper company’s systems to 100%s$%t and walked out the door. He was sent down with a copy of UNIX for Dummies and 50 cents for the bus ride back. Fast forward a few years, he was asked if he wanted to be a DBA after successfully managing a fifty server Y2K upgrade. Since then, he’s never looked back and has survived a number of data and system challenges.
When not wrangling cats at home, he currently keeps busy with being active in the SQL Community by presenting and coordinating. He is blessed with a wonderful family and two lazy cats and keeps treading water literally down at the local pool.
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Azure Best Practices for Lift and Shift
Going to the Cloud can be a very scary proposition for most companies, but many of your fears can be mitigated as long as you prepare for the experience. Come learn with me and learn from my experiences as we cover the preparatory steps that can be taken to improve the initial experience. Next, we will be review all of the items that need to be setup in order to maintain an expected level of performance. Next, we will be working on how to improve performance on an existing hybrid VM running SQL Server. Finally, we will learn how to use Azure Monitor and Azure Metrics to maintain your investment in the cloud!
This will be a deep dive into Azure Storage layer and configuration, be ready for some optimization fun!
Note, this session will primarily deal with issues on a hybrid VM running SQL Server in Azure. We will be covering performance issues for Azure SQL instances with some real life examples of production servers.
Becoming a Master by Giving it all Away
Novices absorb knowledge like a sponge, immediates horde it for themselves, and Masters just simply give it away. This a simple yet powerful phrase that you too can use to advance your skills, your career, and your life! By holding onto your knowledge, you are literally keeping yourself from moving forward in all aspects of your life. Come to an fun and inspirational session on how you too can become a Master!
Storage: You want to put what where?
Migrating to the cloud has become a fairly commonplace activity, but what do you do once your systems and data are up there? If I’ve chosen a VM, how do I set up my storage? Should I choose premium disk or ultra? What are the limitations? What about the cost?
Now we have the choice of Azure SQL Business Critical? Is my business critical? Why would I need such a solution? It’s the same with Azure SQL Managed Instance! There are multiple tiers of service and storage and which one is needed for my business?
Join us for a session that dives deep into the various options in the cloud for storage, how to determine your business needs, and finally look at some real life scenarios. Everything has changed and nothing has changed in the migration to the cloud, but there are a number of tips and tricks that can be used in order to optimize your not so cheap investment in the cloud!
SQL MI - Making the leap
With the advent of Next Gen SQL MI, SQL MI can truly be said to be a "Fairly" cost-effective solution for migrating your data estate to the cloud! Come join us while we consider the following:
Which SQL MI flavor will work for me?
What's under the covers?
What method will work for migrating?
What are some of the limitations and gotchas before I migrate?
How do I setup DR in SQL MI?
Bring your question for an interactive session!
Azure Backup - ready for prime time?
Azure Backup has some limitations. We'll be comparing the performance with backups locally, to a storage account, and maybe something else!
Let's go over all of the different options for when you're getting ready to move your SQL Server backups to the cloud and also what happens when you perform the restores! "Your last backup is only as good as your last restore..."
Using different sizes of databases, we'll discuss how long it takes to backup and restore these databases to a variety of storage options in the cloud.
Don't worry, we're NOT going to do live demos of backups....
A Tale of Two D365s
Are you a DBA who's been told to connect your company's D365 instance to a data lake for reporting? If so, you should talk to me. There are two ways for this to happen and I'll be talking about both ways.
There are lessons to be learned with both, and both have their advantages and disadvantages!
We will cover the few gotchas and then talk about how to set up your Azure environment to be ready for the flood of D365 data.
Trust me (I hate that phrase), but it's a lot easier to report on D365 from a data lake!
To ASR or not to ASR
One of the challenges as a database architect in Azure is coming up with a cost-effective and resilient solution to ensure that all sizes, shapes, and performance levels of databases are covered and there is always an option to provide HA, DR and Business Continuity (BC). Come join me as we review the differences and similarities between these terms, look at multiple production database scenarios in regards to performance requirements, sizes, locations, and RTO/RPO and really design a layered system of recovery for any environment! Bring your questions and expect to come away with a simple guide to help decide what really CAN and SHOULD be done in your own environment!
Divided By Continents, brought together by Data
One was the getaway driver for a group of bank robbers, the other was the activities coordinator for a cat sanctuary. While their careers languished, their minds realized there was a better path, speaking professionally on data topics. At almost the same point in history, each of them decided to start speaking at local user groups about different topics on SQL Server, PowerBI, Azure, and other data topics. They struggled at first, but persevered. But...the gods were not done with them. These two men, separated at birth, were brought
together in a small classroom in a university, to speak on data topics TOGETHER!
Join Frank Geisler and Michael Wall as they talk about the life experiences that turned them into professional speakers on data topics and how putting yourself out there really makes a difference!
Peanut Butter and Jelly, Bacon and Banana, ADX and Polybase?
You've successfully connected Azure Data Explorer to stream a few billion rows of data into your Azure data lake. Now the question is, what should you do with this immense amount of
data? While there are many serverless solutions out there, they are all expensive. You've got all of these servers in your data center just sitting around. Why not install Polybase on them for your reporting and analytics needs?
Frank Geisler and Michael Wall will perform multi-directional data tricks with immense amounts of data by using Azure Data Explorer (ADX) and Polybase. Watch billions of rows be ingested by ADX and then have Polybase reach out via external tables and local processing to prepare the data for reporting in your data lakehouse only to be then streamed to far-reaching locations by ADX!!
Come prepared to ask questions and learn how these two tools can be used together!
SQL Saturday Jacksonville 2025 Sessionize Event
Michael Wall
Architect/DBA at 3Cloud Consulting
Vancouver, Washington, United States
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