Monica Rathbun

AI is changing how we approach SQL Server performance tuning, but faster recommendations do not replace understanding. Learn the foundations you need to understand what SQL Server is doing, diagnose the real problem, and optimize with confidence.

As organizations have chased speed through AI, multi-platform estates, and Cloud, database complexity has outpaced the practices needed to manage it. Flexibility has increased, but oversight, confidence, and control have weakened. So how do you regain control in increasingly complex database landscapes? Join industry experts Monica Morehouse, Matt Gordon, Thomas Kronawitter and Grant Fritchey in discussion with Redgate’s Louise Domeisen, to unpack the key findings from the 2026 State of the Database Landscape report. You’ll hear first-hand experience and actionable tips from the panel on the key report topics including: • The defining tension of 2026: organizations are losing control as everything accelerates. • Structural complexity is rising again, making control harder than ever. • AI adoption is exploding, landing on top of unstable data, security, and governance foundations. • Risks are shifting from technology to ownership, structure, and decision-making. • To regain control, organizations must fix the data foundations that everything else depends on. You'll walk away with a clearer understanding of where your organization sits in this landscape and practical steps you can take to start regaining control.

As organizations move to cloud platforms, optimizing performance is crucial for scalability, efficiency, and cost savings. In this session, we’ll cover the top five performance considerations for cloud deployments: • Cloud hardware and its impact • Getting the best performance from your infrastructure • Managing TempDB usage • Key database configuration best practices • Avoiding cloud throttling These factors can greatly affect your workload's performance. We'll look at how cloud resource choices like CPU, memory, and storage impact performance and costs. We'll also discuss infrastructure configuration, including network design and resource allocation, that influences performance and availability. We’ll explore TempDB settings, which are vital for database performance but often limited in cloud environments. Finally, we’ll cover cloud throttling, how it works, and its potential effects on database performance. By understanding these considerations, you can better optimize performance and reliability in the cloud.

Everyone wants their database to go faster, whether it's shaving hours off your ETL process, taking minutes off the runtime for reports, or trimming milliseconds off a critical OLTP query.

Dive into SQL Server performance like a true data detective. Learn how to analyze query plans, uncover hidden bottlenecks, and chase down the real culprits behind slow-running queries.

I rely on Query Store every day—it lets me uncover performance issues in minutes, even without knowing the app code. If you want real insight into plan choices, regressions, and control over execution plans, you need to turn it on.

Are you struggling with database performance in the cloud? Database professionals who are new to Azure, SQL Database in Fabric, or the public cloud may face challenges understanding infrastructure differences and balancing resource costs with performance.

As a performance tuning consultant, I rely on Query Store to quickly identify and fix performance issues without needing in-depth knowledge of my clients’ code or applications.

I live and breathe in Query Store everyday as a Performance Tuning consultant. I am able to quickly find performance issues without knowing my clients code or applications to help them fix or discover on going performance issues.

In the fast paced "always plugged in world" we all live in today, getting burned out is something that you will most likely experience. That feeling of emotional and physical exhaustion that leaves you overwhelmed, trapped, defeated and stagnant can be unbearable. Taking the time to learn how to avoid burnout can be game-changer for your mental health, motivation, and productivity. In this session, we will discuss ways to help prevent that burn out.

Everyone wants their database to go faster, whether it's reducing ETL process hours, shortening report runtimes, or optimizing critical OLTP queries. Learn how to master tuning techniques, regardless of the scale, in this full length training day.

Have you experienced performance problems caused by contention in TempDB? Have you ever wondered why your TempDB is suddenly 3 TB? In this session, you will learn about all the various components of SQL Server that use TempDB. Whether it be AlwaysOn Availability Groups, Read Committed Snapshot version stores, spills, or simply temporary tables, learn about how to identify what SQL Server or your applications are doing in TempDB. Once you understand all the ways SQL Server uses this critical resource, and how to proper configure it, you'll be better prepared for your workloads whether it be an Azure VM, a physical server, or a container.

Do your users complain about slow reports? Are your database servers overwhelmed during times of high usage? Every SQL Server environment can benefit from performance tuning whether your environment has one server or thousands. In this full-day session you will learn about how identify problems using a wide variety of tools and scripts and how to implement best practices across your environment. Additionally, you will learn how to begin reading execution plans and how to tune queries to improve your performance within SQL Server. You will walk away with a list of items to evaluate in your environments and ways to resolve common issues. This session will guide you through real-life performance problems which can be solved by best practices and practical skills. Taught on a level anyone can understand, this session will focus on Microsoft SQL Server 2016 and forward. You will also learn about maintenance activities and how they affect your server’s overall performance, and how to identify when your infrastructure is affecting your performance. Lastly, we will cover the newest performance enhancements coming with the latest release, SQL Server 2022. You’ll leave this demo-filled session better prepared to tackle many issues that can plague SQL Server performance along with the knowledge of how to resolve them.

Everyone needs a list of what to double check in your environment to ensure your servers and databases are optimized in order to make SQL Server run faster, better and more efficiently. In this session you will learn about what you need to review and implement to get a performance and configuration improvements.

Have you moved to a cloud database like Azure SQL Database and are having performance issues? While the Azure SQL services running in Azure are similar to SQL Server, they are key differences in performance tuning methodologies. In this session, you will learn about monitoring options, changes in cloud DMVs, and additional cloud tuning tools like Azure SQL Analytics and Performance Insights that can allow you quickly get to performance data across a number of instances. You will learn about what you need to keep in mind when choosing between scaling-out to readable secondaries and scaling-up to higher tier solutions. Discuss with Microsoft MVP Monica Rathbun the challenges and benefits of tuning, what to keep in mind, and what to expect in the cloud.

Everyone wants to know if there are magic buttons you can push to make SQL Server run faster, better and more efficiently. In this session we will go over some of my go-to performance tricks that you can implement to get the biggest improvement with the least amount of change.

Everyone wants to know if there are magic buttons you can push to make SQL Server run faster, better and more efficiently. In this session we will go over some of my go-to performance tricks that you can implement to get the biggest improvement with the least amount of change.

Everyone wants to know if there are magic buttons you can push to make SQL Server run faster, better and more efficiently. In this session we will go over some of my go-to performance tricks that you can implement to get the biggest improvement with the least amount of change.

Everyone wants to know if there are magic buttons you can push to make SQL Server run faster, better and more efficiently. In this session we will go over some of my go-to performance tricks that you can implement to get the biggest improvement with the least amount of change.

Everyone wants to know if there are magic buttons you can push to make SQL Server run faster, better and more efficiently. In this session we will go over some of my go-to performance tricks that you can implement to get the biggest improvement with the least amount of change.

Everyone wants to know if there are magic buttons you can push to make SQL Server run faster, better and more efficiently. In this session we will go over some of my go-to performance tricks that you can implement to get the biggest improvement with the least amount of change.

Many of us have to deal with hardware that doesn’t meet our standards or contributes to performance problems. This session will cover how to work around hardware issues when it isn’t in the budget for newer, faster, stronger, better hardware.