Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Backup and Recovery

builder day

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

December 2, 2016

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

October 5, 2016

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.

July 28, 2016

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?

April 26, 2016

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL Server

amazon

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

October 6, 2015

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL Server

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)

July 16, 2015

Kendra Little

… 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

June 12, 2014

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

May 28, 2014

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

December 18, 2013

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

always on, availability groups, scalability, 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

April 16, 2013

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

November 20, 2012

aws, backup, sql server

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

September 17, 2012

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

amazon, amazon web services, aws, cloud

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

September 11, 2012

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Architecture, Cloud Computing

amazon web services, aws, training

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…

Architecting with AWS – Course Overview

July 19, 2012

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The Friday before class started I received an email from people running the Architecting with AWS training class about how to get to the class, what time class got started, a schedule of topics, and a link to prerequisites that I should go through before arriving at class on Monday morning. Most training classes I’ve…

Architecting with AWS – Before You Go

July 17, 2012