Last year, as part of launching my very first online course, I gave away FREE access to my SQL Server High Availability and Disaster Recovery Deep Dive Course. I’m doing it again this year but with a totally different reason. Here’s why.

I’ve been very active in the SQL Server community in one way or another. A lot of people ask me why I do what I do. It all started in late 1999 when, fresh out of college with no one wanting to hire me, a potential customer asked me to write an inventory application for their small business. This might sound really exciting for somebody who would consider this their very first consulting opportunity immediately out of college. This plus considering the fact that my potential customer was willing to pay me any price I would charge them for it. But not for me. You see, I didn’t have a computer science/engineering degree. I even failed my only computer programming course. The only reason I passed the second time I took it was because I asked my best friend to help me write my final project. So, taking this project on was really not a good idea for me. But my then customer really wanted me to do this project for them because they liked me and trust that I would do a great job at it. So, I gave in and that was the beginning of my career in the IT industry. I managed to finish the project in about 6 months and my customer was happy. End of story.

Well, not quite yet. If you read between the lines, you’ll see that I’m not really good at writing code. Heck, I can barely read code at that time. So, how did I manage to finish the project and make my then customer happy? I started learning about how to write code – Visual Basic 4 at that time. I borrowed a book from one of my former classmates and started reading, slowly learning one line of code at a time. This, of course, was before a lot of content was even available on the Internet. But what really got me thru was a young guy named Ken (I don’t even know if this was his real name) who I met in one of the bulletin board system (BBS) that I constantly visit to learn about Visual Basic programming. I would ask questions, he would answer. Patiently. When I didn’t understand a syntax, he would explain further. When a piece of code didn’t work, I would send it over to him and he would look at it, acting as if he was my virtual debugger with an explanation of why I got the error and how to possibly fix it. I spent an average of 16 hours a day on the computer writing code, almost half of that time was with Ken asking questions and following his advice. That was my routine for almost 4 months. And, that’s the reason behind why I was able to finish my project and ended up having a happy customer.

I never got to meet Ken personally. I don’t know where he is from, what he does or if he still writes code. But I’m thankful that I met him virtually on one of the BBS. Since then, I’ve started doing what he did for me – helping online communities by answering questions on forums, presenting at events, mentoring others, etc. I hope I bump into Ken one of these days and personally thank him for what he did for me.

I’m very thankful for communities like that of the SQL Server community. I’ve met folks who have become my friends, extended family members, prayer partners, career advisors, etc. There’s a reason why the #SQLFamily hashtag exists on Twitter.

And this is why I’m doing this again. I owe the SQL Server community big time. And this is my way of saying a big “thank you” to every one who contributes to make this community even better every day.

Now, in order to be one of the ten lucky individuals who will receive FREE access to the full course, you must take the following actions:

1. Leave a comment below. What are the TOP 3 things that you are thankful for about the SQL Server community? Be very specific. If you need to reach out to the folks whom you are thankful for, do it via email or social media and share it with the whole world. That’ll be a great way to put a smile on their face that day.
2. Fill out my Contact Form. Provide a valid email address that you check on a regular basis. You want to make sure that my email announcement doesn’t end up in your Spam folder.
3. Share this this blog post via social media.  Use the #SQLHADRRocks hashtag on Twitter, share it on Facebook (I know Facebook now uses hashtags as well,) LinkedIn, Google+, Reddit, and anything else you can think of. Include at least one of the links in your comment below.

On Saturday, 06-Dec-2014, I will be selecting ten (10) lucky individuals based on my evaluation of their submission. If you have been selected, you will receive a personal email from me on 13-Dec-2014. If you didn’t receive any email from me, you can assume that your submission was not selected.

Thanks for reading this blog post. And if you’re in the United States or an American living elsewhere, Happy Thanksgiving!

[UPDATE: 13-Dec-2014] The winners have been chosen. Expect an email from me and enjoy FREE access to the online course.

The second one is about networking best practices for SQL Server high availability and disaster recovery. The premise of the webcast is that SQL Server DBAs are now dependent on the things that they have no control over. Knowing what SQL Server depends on for high availability and disaster recovery enabled SBAs to be better prepared to communicate with the other teams to meet their overall objectives. You can check out the recording from the MSSQLTips.com website.

When I was preparing for the course, I had two things in mind. First, I wanted the course to have an impact on both the ones taking it and those who matter to them. I had several assumptions of those who might be interested in taking it. They’re the ones who really do care about their personal growth – those who invest time and resources to learn about something new so that they can improve themselves. These are the folks reading books, blog posts, whitepapers, articles and even someone else’s code during their spare time. They attend conferences, user group meetings and events so long as their time and budget allow them to. They search the internet for free stuff when their budget doesn’t allow them to invest in additional resources and they regularly try out something new. They do this not only because they feel the personal satisfaction of improving and developing themselves but also because they want to spend more time on the things that really matter to them – family, friends, loved ones, etc. Second, I want the course to become a part of their career. They say “experience is the best teacher“. I say learned experience is. What good is knowledge if it isn’t applied. How many books have been collecting dust on the bookshelf, waiting for their turn to be opened and read by their owners? How many concepts learned have been applied? We don’t need more ideas. What we need is to apply the ideas and lessons that we’ve already learned.

And, that’s the story behind why I am giving away FREE access to my online course. I have made the first five lectures of the online course accessible to anyone who has access to the internet – no need to register to Udemy to access them. If you’ve found this blog post, it means you are a SQL Server professional who is serious about personal growth (and I’m pretty sure you’ve also seen the free lectures.) The first five lectures contain very important concepts in high availability and disaster recovery, things that we technology professionals don’t even think about sometimes. In fact, this is the foundation behind implementing effective high availability and disaster recovery solutions. Even non-SQL Server professionals will benefit from these free lectures.

In order to be one of the twelve lucky individuals who will receive FREE access to the full course, you must take the following actions:

1. Leave a comment below. What are the TOP 3 ideas that you have taken away from the first five modules of the course? And how do you intend to apply those 3 ideas in your organization or your customers? Be creative. You’ll never know if those ideas end up being implemented – either by you or someone else.
2. Fill out my Contact Form. Provide a valid email address that you check on a regular basis. You want to make sure that my email announcement doesn’t end up in your Spam folder.
3. Share this this blog post via social media.  Use the #SQLHADRRocks hashtag on Twitter, share it on Facebook (I know Facebook now uses hashtags as well,) LinkedIn, Google+, Reddit, and anything else you can think of. Include at least one of the links in your comment below.

On Tuesday, 01-Oct-2013, I will be selecting twelve (12) lucky individuals based on my evaluation of their submission. If you have been selected, you will receive a personal email from me on 13-Oct-2013. If you didn’t receive any email from me, you can assume that your submission was not selected.

[UPDATE: 01-Oct-2013] I’ve received requests to extend the deadline to 07-Oct-2013 due to very tight schedules. So, you still have a week to go to take advantage of this. I guess I didn’t promote it well enough

[UPDATE: 08-Oct-2013] The winners have been chosen. Expect an email from me and enjoy FREE access to the online course.

I’ve been working on this personal project since early this year. If you’ve been following my blog posts, my articles on MSSQLTips.com or even my presentations at various events, you know that my area of expertise is on SQL Server high availability and disaster recovery. I’ve compiled years of experience and exposure with SQL Server and related technologies to prepare this online course, some of which were delivered to events and conferences worldwide. One of my personal favourite is the topic on Database Recovery Techniques where I vividly recall delivering my presentation at Microsoft TechEd Southeast Asia back in 2007 in a room full of about 200 attendees where my demos failed dramatically. Imagine trying to present on the topic of database disaster recovery when the most important thing that you need to do was the very thing that you forgot to do. It was the basis of a previous blog post on delivering presentations.

But this is more than just an online course. It is my commitment to continuous personal growth. It’s also an expression of faith and taking risks. I’ve experienced a lot of failures in my entire career, one of which is the now defunct BlogcastRepository.com website where I hosted my very first attempt at creating video lessons on SQL Server 2008 back when it was still in CTP. Part of preparing this online course is realizing that it may or may not work, similar to what happened with the video lessons I recorded for BlogcastRepository.com. But I set aside my fears and decided to work on it anyway – skipping holiday weekends and possible movie nights. I even had to put down my digital camera for a while to focus on this project. This online course contains within it several parts of who I am – the risk taking, fearful, committed, and dedicated individual who chose to persist despite his failures.

This is just the beginning. I’m still experimenting and trying out a couple of ideas. But I have an offer to make. If you’re a SQL Server DBA who is serious about taking your skills and career to the next level and willing to help someone else in the process, let me know how I can help.

And if you’re in New York City or the nearby cities and want to see this whole process in action, catch me at SQL Saturday #158 this coming 4-Aug-2012.

[UPDATE:] Part 2 of the series has been published on 26-July-2012. Stay tuned for the rest of the series.

[UPDATE:] Part 3 of the series has been published on 13-Aug-2012. Stay tuned for the rest of the series.

[UPDATE:] Part 4, the last of the series has been published on 06-Sep-2012.

Being a high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) guy, AlwaysOn is one of the features that I like about SQL Server 2012. This provides organizations with more options to consider when implementing an HA/DR solution.  Two things that are being introduced here are AlwaysOn Availability Groups and AlwaysOn Failover Clustering.

On the 30th of November 2011 (3PM EDT), join me and the guys from Fusion-IO and MSSQLTips.com as we explore this new feature in SQL Server 2012 called AlwaysOn Availability Groups. To register for this webcast, simply click on this link. If you have questions about AlwaysOn Availability Groups  even before the webcast, you can post them here so we can discuss it further. I will try my very best to make sure that your question be mentioned during the webcast

1. A presentation is a performance: Many will disagree with me on this, especially experts who believe that to demonstrate their expertise, they should be writing code and doing live demos during a presentation. Whenever I go up the stage to deliver a presentation, I always think about the attendee/audience. My goal is not to display my expertise nor to brag about what I can do that the audience could not. I always remember that my presentations are not about me, but about the audience. Which is why I do a lot of preparation prior to delivery – research, writing an appropriate storyline (you got it right – storyline), selecting the right demos, building test environments, writing demo scripts, rehearsing my presentation, etc. Yes, I rehearse my presentations and I say it out loud. I do the best that I can to make sure that the audience will be entertained, engaged, enlightened, educated and encouraged. If I’m doing a presentation on disaster recovery, I even plan out what type of disaster will I be simulating. Doing this will help me make sure that I don’t go beyond the time limit that was allotted for my session while covering all of the items that I intend to. I’d be very happy if the audience will walk out of my presentation with something that they will do when they get back to their regular routine. I keep in mind what Dr. Nick Morgan, one of America’s top communication theorist and coach, always say:”The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.” So, if you’ll be attending a presentation I’m delivering in the future, I’ll assure you that you won’t be disappointed. 
2. Presentation time is limited: I hear presenters and speakers apologize for not covering the full content of their presentation. In some cases, you would see them breeze thru their slides as they get to the summary slide. If the presentation was rehearsed and scripted, they would know how long it will take to cover everything in their slide and add or remove as necessary. Copying and pasting code is my way of saying, “I value your time so much that I would rather copy and paste code so that I can move on to more important stuff than let you suffer from every typographical error I would make while typing.” As I said, many won’t agree with me on this but I need to focus on the more important content of the presentation.
3. Focus on the important: Same as the previous point. Enough said.

Title: Disaster Recovery Is Not Just About Technology
Abstract: Failover Clustering, Database Mirroring, Backup Strategies, etc. These are just some of the terms that you hear when tasked to work on a disaster recovery project. However, you’re missing a lot on the non-technology aspects. This session will describe the principles that should drive disaster recovery strategies and how they need to become the foundation of the technology solutions that you need to implement. You will certainly look at your disaster recovery strategies differently after learning these concepts.

This presentation was inspired by my blog series about the non-technical aspects of disaster recovery. I will be adding a few more posts to the blog series. If you’re thinking of attending the PASS Community Summit 2011, let me know. I might buy you a cup of coffee if you attend my session.