Becoming an Azure SQL DBA – Performance Monitoring, Tuning and Alerting

Erin Stellato

In this session you will learn how to extend your Azure SQL DBA skills in the domain of performance monitoring, tuning, and alerting from the perspective of on-premises DBA.

While there are similarities between a fully-managed Azure SQL PaaS service and SQL Server, in this session you will gain a deeper understanding of performance monitoring, troubleshooting, tuning and alerting specific to Azure. Learn how to use the cloud-native DB watcher monitoring solution and Query Performance Insights to monitor and identify database performance issues in Azure. We’ll step through automated tuning and automated plan regression correction (APRC) and demonstrate, using Resource Health, to understand the health of the environment as well as setting up alerts to quickly identify performance issues. Finally, we’ll discuss how to optimize performance with resource right-sizing, choosing the appropriate storage type, and configuring file structures.

In each of the areas and throughout the session, we will map on-premises SQL Server DBA responsibilities to the Azure SQL DBA role – highlighting what responsibilities are new, which ones stay the same, and what is shared or fully delegated to Microsoft. You will walk away with an understanding of the relevant DBA skills you need to evolve as an Azure SQL DBA.