Today I decided to give credit and a special thank you to a lot of people in the SQL community whom have either helped me directly or indirectly with their knowledge and skills and most importantly their willingness to share back with the community.
So who do I look to for expert reliable sources for all things SQL Server. Let me start with my favorite trainers who blog. Without advanced training I would not have the skill set I have today. You can learn a lot on the job and my first DBA job lasted 6 years, covered 5 different database technologies across a few hundred servers. You can learn how to firefight well in that environment, but you rarely get a chance to hone your skills in one area. That is where training comes in. It is easy to get caught up in the day to day tasks of your particular job, and loose sight of what is new and changing. SQL Server has a lot of features that may not be applicable to your current job, but important to other jobs you may want to pursue in the future.
My first great training was Kalen Delaney, in Portland OR a few years ago, shortly after SQL 2005 had come out. The class blew my mind. Literally, I went in to the class feeling pretty competent in my skills and came out feeling very humble, and with a huge list of things I wanted to fix, change, and improve in my current job. In addition it made me want to know more and keep up with the changing technology. For that I thank Kalen and refer to her blog often as a great resource!
Kalen Delaney
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/kalen_delaney/default.aspx
As a side note I had the privilege of taking her internals class a second time when SQL 2008 first came out, it wasn't in person, but still was excellent, and I highly recommend her trainings.
Last year was the first time I had the pleasure and opportunity to take a course from Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal. Wow, what a fantastic training. By the time I took their class I had been a production DBA for 6 years with lots of training, and was supporting over 2000 databases on more than 170 servers. I felt I had a pretty good understanding of all things SQL. My first surprise was that their was no computers or labs, it was more reminiscent of a graduate school class, with lecture, and discussion and some demonstration. It was fantastic, every day you felt like your brain had just ran a marathon. I learned a lot and tuned what I already knew even more. The networking was fantastic as well. I am very excited I get to go back for the second Immersion Event this August.
Kimberly Tripp
http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly/
Paul Randal
http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/
Ok, I haven't taken a class from Brent, but I hear that the SQL Cruise is pretty awesome. I have met him once and he's a really nice guy. His social influence in the SQL Server realm is incredible and I have used his blog on many occasions.
Brent Ozar
http://www.brentozar.com/
I've been to a couple of Buck's presentations and he is a fantastic presenter, his blog is great too. Lots of good DBA administration stuff there, great ideas. In fact, one of Buck's talks got me started on tracking performance baselines for all of my systems.
Buck Woody
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/
In the category of I've never met, but am very grateful that they share their knowledge with the community, here are a few of my favorites. There are others too, but I use Glen and Ola's scripts all the time. Fantastic stuff.
Ola Hallengren
http://ola.hallengren.com/
Glen Berry
http://sqlserverperformance.wordpress.com/
Erland Sommarskog
http://www.sommarskog.se/index.html
Michelle Ufford
http://sqlfool.com/
Technical and practical musings of a SQL Server DBA
