TempDB: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly by Pam Lahoud

If you ask 100 SQL Server DBAs what their biggest headaches are, at least 99 of them will say something to do with TempDB. Over the years, there have been many different recommendations about configuration options for TempDB and they have changed over time. The behavior of TempDB has also changed over time. What hasn't changed is the criticality of TempDB and how its proper use and configuration can have major implications in the performance of your application. In this session, we will discuss some of the improvements with TempDB in the latest versions of SQL Server and what good TempDB practices look like today. We will also discuss the improvements that were released in SQL Server 2019 that will unlock scalability of TempDB-heavy workloads now, and into the future.​

Pam Lahoud is a Program Manager in Azure Data, based in Redmond, WA, USA. She has been with Microsoft since 2006 and is currently responsible for Program Management of database engine features for in-market and vNext versions of SQL Server, with a special focus on the Storage Engine and SQL on Azure VM areas. She is passionate about SQL Server performance and has focused on performance tuning and optimization, particularly from the developer perspective, throughout her career. She is a SQL 2008 MCM with over 20 years of experience working with SQL Server.