Search results matching tag 'High Availability'

SQLintersection!

KKline — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:47:00 GMT

The best emotion to describe how I'm feeling is 'astounded'. I'm astounded that I'm in such august company to be speaking the SQLIntersection (#iSQL) conference. Read the blog post from my first SQL Server mentor, Kimberly Tripp, which tells you all about SQLintersection.

Check out this list of speakers:

Aaron Bertrand, Sr. Consultant, SQL Sentry, Inc. [blog | twitter]
Andrew J. Kelly, Mentor, SolidQ [blog | twitter]
Bob Ward, Principal Architect Escalation Engineer, Microsoft [blog | twitter]
Brent Ozar, Brent Ozar Unlimited [blog | twitter]
Conor Cunningham, Principal Architect, SQL Server, Microsoft [blog]
Grant Fritchey, Product Evangelist, Red Gate Software [blog | twitter]
Jeremiah Peschka, Brent Ozar Unlimited [blog | twitter]
Joseph Sack, Principal Consultant, SQLskills.com [blog | twitter]
Kendra Little, Managing Director, Brent Ozar Unlimited [blog | twitter]
Kevin Kline, Director of Engineering Services, SQL Sentry, Inc. [blog | twitter]
Kimberly L. Tripp, President/Founder, SQLskills.com [blog | twitter]
Mat Young, Senior Director of Products, Fusion-io [blog | twitter]
Paul S. Randal, CEO / Owner, SQLskills.com [blog | twitter]
Paul White, SQL Kiwi Limited [blog | twitter]
Steve Jones, Editor, SQLServerCentral.com [blog | twitter]
Sumeet Bansal, Principal Solutions Architect, Fusion-io [blog | twitter]

Read the list of SQL Server sessions here. On top of the list of outstanding sessions to attend, I'll be giving a keynote on Tuesday afternoon. Witness:

So the only thing between the attendees and the booze in the reception hall is our keynote address?!? Oh yeah, that's going to go down real smooth, isn't it? I'll last about as long as a puny henchman between James Bond and the villain of the movie. Sumeet Bansal, from Fusion-IO, will have to survive until the credits roll. We'll be talking about high performance computing on SQL Server 2012 with an eye towards high availability, AlwaysOn, and Availability Groups.

If you're in Las Vegas, I hope to see you there! If not, you should consider coming to this excellent conference.

-Kevin

-Follow me on Twitter!

Is the SAN dying???

RickHeiges — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:55:00 GMT

Is the SAN dying?

The reason that I ask this question is that MSFT has unleashed technologies this year that point in that direction

Always ON Availability Groups shuns shared storage
Windows 2012 has Storage Replication Technology that does not require a SAN
Windows 2012 has Hyper-V Replica Technology that does not require a SAN
PDW v2 continues to reinforce the approach to avoid shared storage

I'm not saying that SAN technology does not have its place or does not have benefits inherent to the beast. I'm just pointing out that MSFT has made investments in technology that diminish the need for SANs.

Thoughts?

Conquer Your Fear of Virtualization with a Free Day of Training at PASS!

KKline — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:50:00 GMT

Click this link to register: http://www.houseofbrick.com/education/sqlserverbootcamp/Registration.

Presented by my buddy, David Klee at House of Brick, one of the nations top VMWare consultancies specializing in Oracle and SQL Server deployments.

David has a great write-up of this boot camp at http://www.davidklee.net/2012/10/01/virtualizing-your-business-critical-sql-servers-free-boot-camp-by-house-of-brick/.

High-Availability White Papers and Resources for SQL Server

KKline — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:00:00 GMT

In foreground, attendee makes dreaded "shoot myself" hand sign to the speaker.

I was just telling the good people of Charlotte about how they (and how YOU) need to read all things by Paul Randal (blog | twitter), except for all of his cheesy romance novels like Caress and Conquer written under the nom de plum of Connie Mason.

There's lots more good stuff from Paul, just not romantic.

This is a 'so-last-version' whitepaper describing five common high-availability and disaster-recovery architectures deployed by customers, along with a case study of each. Although the white paper is specific to SQL Server 2008 R2 and isn't updated for AlwaysOn features, it's still really, really good. It covers:

Failover Clustering for High Availability with Database Mirroring for Disaster Recovery
Database Mirroring for High Availability and Disaster Recovery
Geo-Clustering for High Availability and Disaster Recovery
Failover Clustering for High Availability Combined with SAN-Based Replication for Disaster Recovery
Peer-to-Peer Replication for High Availability and Disaster Recovery

You can get it from this link. Not everything is transferable to new AlwaysOn technologies, but then again AlwaysOn is an Enterprise Edition feature. So the database mirroring recommendation can be upsized, in many if not all cases, to SQL Server 2012, while the SAN and peer-to-peer recommendations continue to hold fast.

In addition, I encourage you to get up to speed on AlwaysOn. There are two great AlwaysOn FAQs that I recommend. The first is Microsoft’s official AlwaysOn FAQ at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/gg508768.aspx. The second comes from my buddy and high-availability expert Allan Hirt (blog | twitter) at http://www.sqlha.com/2012/04/13/allans-alwayson-availability-groups-faq/.

To get started with AlwaysOn, check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645581.aspx.

Enjoy,

-Kev

Review the New Migration Guide to SQL Server 2012 Always On

KKline — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:19:00 GMT

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cephas Lin, of Microsoft, last year at the SQL Saturday in Indianapolis and then later at the PASS Summit in the fall.

Cephas has been writing content for SQL Server 2012 Always On. Cephas has recently published his first whitepaper, a migration guide to SQL Server AlwaysOn. Read it and then pass along any feedback: HERE

Enjoy,

-Kev

-Follow me on Twitter!

Microsoft Document Watch for Operational Excellence

KKline — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:59:00 GMT

Back when my day-to-day duties included database administration work and enterprise architecture, I became rather obsessed with the idea of operational excellence. I read everything I could on the topic. I made a list of favorites, which became somewhat shabby over time, as I dog-eared important pages and scribbled notes in the margins. (Perhaps that list of favorites might, in and of itself, make a good blog post). Fast-forward a decade and I'm still mightily interested in operational excellence for IT organizations. It's just that so much good material is available for free on the web. Here's a run-down of several useful documents and downloads to improve overall operation performance for those of you in a Microsoft-centric IT organization:

Microsoft Operations Framework

Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) version 4.0 guide is practical guidance for IT organizations. With the release of version 4.0, MOF now reflects a single, comprehensive IT service lifecycle—it helps IT professionals connect service management principles to everyday IT tasks and activities and ensures alignment between IT and the business.

Infrastructure Planning and Design

The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture. The guides in this series help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, with each guide addressing a unique infrastructure technology or scenario.

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.2 (for IT Professionals)

The Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer provides a streamlined method to identify missing security updates and common security misconfigurations. MBSA 2.2 is a minor upgrade correct minor issues and add optional catalog support.

Security Compliance Manager

The Microsoft Security Compliance Manager provides centralized security baseline management features, a baseline portfolio, customization capabilities, and security baseline export flexibility to accelerate your organization’s ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies.

Microsoft Windows Platforms Blog Watch

KKline — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:44:00 GMT

Remote Desktop Services Component Architecture Poster

Grab your own poster! A visual guide to key Remote Desktop Services technologies in Windows Server 2008R2

Virtually Free

Get the latest update rollup package for the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 R2 and be sure to bookmark the Windows Virtualization Team Blog. Be sure to check out blog World Simplified is a Virtual World. And doncha evah neglect application virtualization, such as the goodness at the App-V Product Team Blog.

Let's Optimize Some Desktops (Assuming You Have Gone Full Cloud Yet)

Check out The Official Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) Blog where you can get cool tools like the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DART), currently in its v7 beta release.

We Can Always Perform a Little Better

Have you checked out the Ask the Performance Team blog yet. You should! Then there's the Microsoft Enterprise Networking Team blog. And if you're looking for help with the Windows Server Core, be sure to check out the Ask the Core Team blog. Excellent stuff! As the Tool Time columnist at SQL Server Magazine, I'm always on the lookout for great free tools that get on-going support from their creators. One common experience is finding a nice debugging tool, only to discover that there's no information on how to interpret the debugger result sets! (SQLIOSim anyone?) That's why I love the Microsoft Advanced Windows Debugging and Troubleshooting blog. Another must-have on your Favorites list.

Enjoy!

-Kev

Follow me on Twitter

Pain of the Week/Expert's Perspective: Performance Tuning for Backups and Restores

KKline — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:39:00 GMT

First off - the Pain of the Week webcast series has been renamed. It's now known as The Expert's Perspective. Please join us for future webcasts and, if you're interested in speaking, drop me a note to see if we can get you on the roster!

The bigger your databases get, the longer backups take. That doesn't really seem like a huge problem — until disaster strikes and you need to restore your databases as fast as possible.

Join my buddy Brent Ozar (blog | twitter), a Microsoft Certified Master of SQL Server and good friend, as he reveals ways to make these critically important maintenance tasks run faster.

You'll discover:

Why Instant File Initialization is so important for restores
How to use DMVs to check restore progress
How to find the bottleneck while you're backing up or restoring data

Watch the recorded presentation at http://www.quest.com/events/ListDetails.aspx?ContentID=13358!

Enjoy!

-Kev

Follow me on Twitter at kekline

Microsoft SQL Server High-Availability Videos and Q&A Log

KKline — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:11:00 GMT

You Want Videos? We Got Videos!

I always enjoy getting the chance to catch up with author, consultant, and Microsoft Clustering MVP Allan Hirt. Allan and I recently presented two sessions covering an overview of high availability in Microsoft SQL Server and, the following week, a demo of how to implement several different kinds of high availability techniques including database mirroring, transactional replication, and Windows clustering services.

You can see videos of these presentations at the Quest Software Pain of the Week webcast site.

Archives of other videos are here.

We're joined by my new cohort in crime, Iain Kick, also renowned for his role as the editor-in-chief at SQLServerPedia.

Allan is the author of these and other books: ...and...

During the Q&A, we always get a lot of questions. Here are the collected Q's and A's.

~~~

Meeting Questions and Answers: Subject: Pain of the Week We -

October 14, 2010 Start Time: 14 October 2010 16:00:00 GMT+1:0

________________________________________

Paul T Asked: General comment..... copying files is where I love the SAN replication. Don't trust it at all for real database stuff though!

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Sherbaz M C P Changes Question To: Please suggest the best back/restore techique for huge databases. Should we go for SAN level backup technologies or snapshots that uses SQL Writer? Storage admins claims that they can restore a 28 TB database in 30 minutes. They are saying that they can even take transaction log backups and restores.

________________________________________

Ameena L Asked: When we talk to our management about SLA, Recovery object and uptime etc. They say just do your best. They expect no downtime but will not define any of this so how we determine what we are shooting for if target is not identified?

Kevin Kline Answered: That's why actually working through a recovery is so important. I strongly recommend that you perform a full recovery, perhaps to a dev or QA server, and then using that benchmark as the general rules for your SLA.

________________________________________

Stuart A Asked: What do RTO & RPO stand for?

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Fadel Asked: at 2 part questions: part1- what is the advantage of having a sql clustering over Oracle RAC where in the first case, we have at least 1 node sitting there doing nothing waiting on the other node(s) to fail, comparing to the second case where Oracle RAC offers both, HA and scalability - part2: what is the new features on sql 2008 clustering compared to sql 2005 clustering - thanks!

________________________________________

Mohammed Changes Question To: Shouldnt clustering considered as a local HA instead of DR since the other nodes are local?

________________________________________

Alan Xu Changes Question To: Is cluster 2008 support sql 2005 instance and sql 2008 instance in the same cluster?

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sjohn Asked: What is the maximum recomended distance for a synced mirroring with a reasonable size of pipe

________________________________________

Anita Asked: You mentioned about multi - instance cluster( active-active)? I will be interested in learning more about this. we have active-active in our environment. Is it scheduled for next week?

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robert l Asked: Will mirroring work with a large number of "Smaller" databases? 500 2gb databases vs 2 1tb database

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Alvinator Asked: When log shipping if you have a large tlog will it ship it in chunks or the entire log file?:

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James M Asked: What are the advantages of Database Mirroring over transaction replication? or vice versa

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Martin Asked: IDEA - Maybe Quest should provide a Database Invenotry/Request to gather all the information for a HA environment

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Martin Asked: I am very interested in finding a holistic view to HA and DR to handle SQL Server. Oracle and even DB2 - are you aware of such a product/s?

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Alan X Changes Question To: How to handle SSIS in multiple instance?

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Nadim Y Asked: I was coming from a consolidation angle - looking to install muliple instances on each node within the cluster. Is there an upper limit or just based on the resources available on the nodes

________________________________________

Mohammed Asked: IS clusteting possible in std edition sql 2008?

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Anita Asked: You mentioned about multi - instance cluster( active-active)? I will be interested in learning more about this. we have active-active in our environment. Is it scheduled for next week?

Kevin Kline Answered: Next week is mostly demos of how to set up these techniques. However, there are some resource slides at the end that point you to more websites and whitepapers about each of these specific technologies.

________________________________________

robert l Asked: Will mirroring work with a large number of "Smaller" databases? 500 2gb databases vs 2 1tb database

Kevin Kline Answered: absolutely! however, there is some management overhead in that mirroring is configured on a per database level

________________________________________

Alvinator Asked: When log shipping if you have a large tlog will it ship it in chunks or the entire log file?:

Kevin Kline Answered: It doesn't ship the transaction log, it shipps the backups/dumps of the t-logs. That's an especially good use for backup compression. We have a lot of features specifically for this in our LiteSpeed backup tool.

________________________________________

James M Asked: What are the advantages of Database Mirroring over transaction replication? or vice versa

Kevin Kline Answered: We're on those slides now. =^)

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Martin Asked: IDEA - Maybe Quest should provide a Database Invenotry/Request to gather all the information for a HA environment

Kevin Kline Answered: I like it, Martin. I'll put that in my notebook. Btw, have you seen our "Discovery Wizard for SQL Server"? It does inventorying for SQL Servers.

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@SQLRich Asked: I've heard that not all of the SQL components are cluster aware, is this true?

Kevin Kline Answered: Yes, afaik, SSIS is one of the biggest offenders in this area. But I think there are others.

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Desi Asked: Can you mirror a database to more than one locaton?

Kevin Kline Answered: I don't recall the exact steps to do this, but yes. Also available with replication and log shipping.

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Mohammed Asked: IS clusteting possible in std edition sql 2008?

Kevin Kline Answered: Discussed on slide 11, Mohammed. :-)

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sjohn Asked: What is the maximum recomended distance for a synced mirroring with a reasonable size of pipe

Kevin Kline Answered: That's on slide 10, :-)

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Nadim Y Asked: Is there a maximum number of instances you can have in a multinode cluster

Kevin Kline Answered: Not sure what you mean, Nadim. Usually, I don't see more than 2 actives to 1 passive.

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Mohammed Asked: One question before we leave please..i asked this before also. Clustering is more Local HA and mirrroing/ls is DR...is this correct?

Kevin Kline Answered: Clustering across fibre can be miles, sometimes many miles distant, though it's uncommon. Mirroring and log shipping can be long-distance. Latency varies per technology type and is also another issue as to whether the solution is considered HA or DR.

Some things don't change - DB Snapshots & Backups of Snapshots

RickHeiges — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:40:00 GMT

Again, I wanted to blog about something that still does not change between 2005 and 2008. At a recent conference, there were some great questions/ideas that should make it to Connect if they haven't already.

When DB Snapshots were first introduced, one of the questions that I always heard was "Can I perform a Backup on the Snapshot?".

Well - does this mean tht you can actually perform a SQL Backup of the DB Snapshot? No - you can't do that. Can I backup the DB Snapshot file with Windows Backup? Yes, you can do that, but there is no way to "re-attach" a DB Snapshot file to a database. So why bother?

DB Snapshots are still available on a Mirrored DB. We find that many people like this feature because of the ease of setup/management, but they do not like the fact that it is still an Enterprise Edition feature.