Amazon Web Services (AWS)

A Single Database View Cost Me $50/Day for Months.

Last Updated June 11, 2020

Our SQL Server monitoring product, SQL ConstantCare®, uses Amazon Aurora on the back end. I blogged about our choice of database back in 2018, and at the time, I said: I know, I know. The Microsoft geek in you – and me – wants us to use SQL Server on the back end, but here’s…

Upsizing the SQL ConstantCare® Database Servers

Last Updated December 7, 2019

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL ConstantCare

If you’re looking for SQL Server news, just skip this post. I’m going to talk about general business & capacity planning type stuff here today. Our SQL ConstantCare® customers install an app that polls diagnostic data from their SQL Servers and Azure SQL Databases, upload it to us daily, and then automatically get advice on…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: What Cloud Hosting Costs

Last Updated December 7, 2019

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL ConstantCare

In our behind-the-scenes posts about building SQL ConstantCare®, I’ve written about how we picked serverless architecture for the application layer, and how we picked AWS Aurora for the database layer. Hosting costs were a big driving factor in those decisions – so how has that worked out? Presented for your enjoyment, here are our total…

Updating Paste The Plan to use the Serverless Framework

Last Updated June 14, 2018

Richie Rump

Amazon Web Services (AWS), PasteThePlan.com

I just updated PasteThePlan, and the change you’ll notice first is that we’re using the latest version of Justin Pealing’s html-query-plan. It adds missing index hints, yellow bangs for warnings like implicit conversions and no join predicate, and more. Check out this example plan: PasteThePlan, June 2018 Edition Plus variable line widths for different amounts…

Builder Day: Cloudbuilding Episode 1 – The Road to HANA

Last Updated June 23, 2017

Erik Darling

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Computing

Staving off obsoletion Brent has recently set aside “free” time to learn about stuff up in the cloud. I only put free in quotes because we do have to do something with a cloud theme, but we can pick whatever we want. Naturally, I chose the hardest thing with the least practical use. I chose…

Builder Day: Doing a Point-in-Time Restore in Amazon RDS for SQL Server

Last Updated June 13, 2017

Tara Kizer

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Backup and Recovery

Brent had an idea that we should set aside a day per month where we could build things in the cloud and blog about our experiences. I was tasked with Amazon RDS for SQL Server: create an instance, configure backups and test point-in-time restores. After grabbing some coffee, I logged into the AWS console. We…

Builder Day: Doing a Point-in-Time Restore in Azure SQL DB

Last Updated June 20, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Backup and Recovery

We’re trying something new at the company: Builder Day. We define a slightly-out-of-the-norm task, and then the team splits up and tackles the task on different cloud platforms, writing it up as we go. These posts aren’t going to make you an expert on the topic – they’re just meant to let you skim through…

7 Things I Learned About Aurora at AWS re:Invent 2016

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Richie and I attended the AWS re:Invent conference in Vegas last week. Here’s some of my favorite takeaways about Amazon Aurora, their homegrown relational database with MySQL compatibility. 1. AWS has a grudge against Larry Ellison. Andy Jassy’s keynotes made repeated jokes about Oracle’s cloud product (or lack thereof), the high cost of proprietary databases,…

SQL Server Timeouts During Backups and CHECKDB

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Backup and Recovery, CHECKDB and Corruption, Cloud Computing

So you’re hosting your SQL Server in the cloud – say Amazon EC2, Azure VM, or Google Compute Engine – and you’ve noticed that when you’re running a backup or a DBCC CHECKDB, you suffer from extreme performance problems. Queries run slow, and even worse, applications report timeout errors even just trying to connect to…

HOLY COW. Amazon RDS SQL Server Just Changed Everything.

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, SQL Server

Platform-as-a-Service users (Azure SQL DB, Amazon RDS) often ask me: OMG How can I move my data into the cloud? Can I just take a backup on-premises, and restore up in the cloud? How can I use the cloud as inexpensive disaster recovery? Once I go to PaaS, why can’t I just get a backup file…

When Should You Hire a Consultant for Amazon RDS?

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL Server

Powered By Somebody Else’s Database on Somebody Else’s Computer You’re hosting your SQL Server databases in Amazon RDS, and performance has been getting slower over time. You’re not sure if it’s storage IOPs, instance size, SQL Server configuration, queries, or indexes. What’s the easiest way to find out? Ask a few questions: Are you using…

Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts: Much Cheaper SQL Server Licensing

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Licensing, SQL Server

When you build SQL Servers in your data center, and you license the host with Enterprise Edition, you get the ability to run as many virtual SQL Servers as you want on that hardware. In the cloud, though, you haven’t had that luxury. In the past, with Azure VMs and Amazon Web Services’ EC2 VMs,…

The Easiest Way to Restore Transaction Logs to A Point In Time (Spoiler: Use AmazonRDS)

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Kendra Little

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL Server

… is to use a SQL Server where a robot does it for you! Let’s take a look at how you can do this in AmazonRDS’s hosted SQL Server these days. Normally, restoring transaction logs is super tedious. You’ve got to restore all the files in the right order, for every single database. Even if…

Sizing SQL Server for AWS

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Let’s skip the shenanigans and get right down to it – you’re responsible for SQL Server and someone in your company wants to move things into Amazon Web Services (AWS). You’ve got SQL Server setup covered thanks to our helpful SQL Server setup checklist and you’re confident you’ve got hardware under control, but things are…

What Amazon RDS for SQL Server Users Need to Know about Multi-AZ Mirroring

Last Updated February 10, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Database Mirroring

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) now supports multi-availability-zone SQL Servers. This means you can have a primary database in one data center, and a secondary replica in another data center. Those Portland folks were always a little bit backwards anyway. When your primary server goes down, OR when the entire AZ goes down, you can fail…

Auto-Scaling SQL Server Always On Availability Groups with Virtualization

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Virtualization

Time for a thought exercise. Thought exercises are hard. You’ve got a database application that has bursty and unpredictable loads. Out of nowhere, you’ll suddenly get socked with a large amount of SELECT queries. Due to the way the app is written, you can’t cache the query results – the queries keep changing, and the business…

Cloud Alternatives to Microsoft SQL Server

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Computing, SQL Server

When people say “cloud”, they’re simplifying a lot of different solutions into a single catchphrase. Let’s break out the different options and compare them. 1. SQL Server in Amazon EC2 and Azure VMs Amazon EC2 is a virtualization platform. Amazon buys servers, installs their secret sauce software, and rents you Windows virtual machines by the…

Long Term Backup Storage With Amazon Glacier

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

A while back, Jes asked who’s taking your backups. Making sure you have good backups is important. How much thought are you giving to handling historical backups? Right now, there’s a really good chance that you’re using a solution based on tape. While tape backups work, there’s a better way. How Are You Archiving Backups Right…

Amazon Web Services Architect Training Recap

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Computing, SQL Server

Going into Amazon Web Services (AWS) architecture training last week, I expected to get whiteboard-level training for project planners, and it met expectations. We spent time talking about how Amazon’s most popular services fit together and how they can be used to solve our business needs. Nothing in the training itself was groundbreaking for me – I keep…

Why I’m at Amazon Architect Training This Week

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Architecture, Cloud Computing

People bring me in when they’re having data problems. They can’t store data fast enough, they can’t make it reliable enough, they can’t hire people to manage it, etc. When I’m in the conference room, it’s because there’s a fire in the disco datacenter. You know how it is as a DBA, though – DBA…