availability groups

AlwaysOn Availability Groups: The Average of its Parts

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Business is booming; the sales team is bringing in more business and the software developers are successfully scaling out at the web server tier. There are signs of pressure on the database tier and you realize that it’s time to scale out. You’re using SQL Server 2012, you need to improve performance, and the first…

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Always On AGs at StackOverflow

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, SQL Server, Stack Overflow

I recently finished helping the StackExchange team migrate their SQL Server 2008 infrastructure to SQL Server 2012. These servers power StackOverflow, DBA.StackExchange.com, the new AskPatents partnership with the US Patent and Trademark Office, and hundreds of other Q&A sites that together form one of the biggest web site networks. It’s one of the most visible…

Before You Fail Over a SQL Server Always On Availability Group

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups

Think fast! When it’s time to do a manual failover with SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups, we need to make a few decisions and perform a few tasks as quickly as possible to get the business back up and running. Here’s what you need to consider ahead of time so you can stay calm,…

AlwaysOn Availability Groups in AWS Revisited

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Always On Availability Groups, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

If you’ve ever wanted to use the cloud for a DR site, there’s good news: as of this week you can use AlwaysOn Availability Groups and set up an asynchronous replica of your data into Amazon Web Services (AWS). If you’re already in the cloud, or if you were holding off, this means that you…

Why Your SQL Server’s Network Connection Matters

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, Clustering

If you’re using SQL Server 2012’s hot new AlwaysOn Availability Groups feature, your databases will go offline when your network connection does – even if you’re using asynchronous replication. This is not a bug. This is working as designed – and it’s important to understand the underlying concepts. Nothing to see here, I'm just going…

SQL Server Always On Availability Groups in AWS

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Always On Availability Groups, Cloud Computing

Many companies are investigating a move into cloud hosting. With the recent release of SQL Server 2012, these very same companies are also looking at a migration to SQL Server 2012 to take advantage of readable secondaries. Combining Amazon Web Services and SQL Server 2012 seems like a perfect match. Unfortunately, there are some gotchas,…

Why Availability Groups Make It Cool Again to Be a Sysadmin

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Kendra Little

Always On Availability Groups

Professions go through phases. Some skills are highly valued for a while, then go out of fashion. Just like leg warmers and skinny jeans, some skills come back into style when you least expect it. Sideburns are back Database Administrators Started Out in the Server Room In the early days, most database administrators started out…

Where to Run DBCC on Always On Availability Groups

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups

With SQL Server 2012’s new AlwaysOn Availability Groups, we have the ability to run queries, backups, and even DBCCs on database replicas. But should we? Paul Randal (Blog – @PaulRandal) covered this issue in today’s SQLskills Insider newsletter, and he says: “It’s not checking the I/O subsystem of the log shipping primary database – only…

How to Set Up SQL Server 2012 Always On Availability Groups

Last Updated March 5, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups

251

Before we get started, we need to talk about something. I’m going to be using the C word – that’s right, Clustering. Deep, calming breaths. Relax. We can do this, you and me. This isn’t the old-school clustering with shared disks, heartbeat networks, and hardware compatibility lists. This is just another feature you’re going to…

Scaling Up or Scaling Out? Part Two

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups

In part 1 of this post, I covered how SQL Server handles scaling up. We talked about how quickly it becomes expensive to add more CPU power, memory, and storage throughput to our database servers. Today, we’re going to focus on a different way to scale. When most folks talk about scaling out SQL Server,…

SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups Rock

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups

105

SQL Server 2012 brings huge improvements for scaling out and high availability. To put these changes into perspective, let’s take a trip down memory road first and look at the history of database mirroring. SQL Server 2005 first introduced mirroring, although it wasn’t fully supported until a service pack. In many ways, mirroring beat the…