December 2020 session - PolyBase - It's what's for dinner by Michael Wall (@MichaelDWall1)

PolyBase is Microsoft’s great new replacement to linked servers. With the current version in SQL Server 2019, one can connect to multiple data sources such as Teradata, Apache, Hadoop, Oracle, and many many more. We will review best practices for setting up PolyBase and its Scale-Out groups as well as showing how it interacts in an Always On Availability Group. When Scaling-Out (up!), PolyBase is able to work harder and deliver more data. What happens when one of its node disappears? We will have a live demo demonstrating how to manage the Scale-Out group when bad things happen. In addition, the DMVs for managing PolyBase will be reviewed, and finally, there will be results of the impact of using multiple nodes in the Scale-Out group on the PolyBase queries!

Prerequisites: Basic database administration skills/knowledge of HA concepts

About Michael

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.