“I want zero downtime and zero data loss” – anonymous IT manager Don’t we usually hear this a lot when implementing a new high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) solution? The stakeholders want zero downtime and zero data loss. As IT professionals we struggle so much trying to find the right solution that would […]
Pop quiz: You manage a production database and you need a copy of your backups to restore them on a development environment for application testing or performance tuning. You need to do this on a regular basis. Do you Take a backup of the database and restore it on your development environment? Configure replication between your […]
Have you ever wondered why your SQL Server database takes a long time to restore? How about why a failover of your Availability Groups, Failover Clustered Instances or even database mirroring configuration is taking a long time? I know I have. I’ve gone from querying the sys.dm_exec_requests DMV to check for the status and percentage […]
Have you been made aware of an item in your household that seem so common and familiar but that could have an impact in your safety? Like that little remote you tuck in the sun visor of your car to open your garage. In case you are not aware, someone might be able to hack open your […]
This is a very common question that gets asked on the technical forums, newsgroups, social media, etc. when it comes to synchronous SQL Server Always On Availability Groups (AG): “Why did my AG not automatically failover?” Notice that I mentioned SYNCHRONOUS and not asynchronous. Only when Always On Availability Group replica databases are configured for synchronous commit […]
Whether you need to have a good network connectivity, a tight integration with Active Directory or DNS, a stable Windows Server Failover Cluster, etc. the most common advice that technical experts will give you regarding SQL Server Always On Availability Groups falls into one category: TECHNOLOGY. I’ve just listed a handful of them and there’s […]
Have you ever done something for a long time believing it to be true but actually isn’t? You know, something like going over 10% of the speed limit when you’re driving and thinking that you’re not over speeding? I’m guilty of this myself. But what’s even worse is that there are a lot of information on the […]
Have you ever had a conversation with your boss (or customer, if you’re a consultant) that went something like this: Boss: We need a solution where we can run SSIS packages on a secondary server should failures occur. You: Why do we need it? Boss: Because I want to. You: We can run either failover clustering […]
Taking database backups is still considered to be the most important task that any database administrator does. That’s why it is also important to make sure that database backups not only complete successfully but have also been validated and tested. I’ve written several blog posts about the importance of backups and why having successful backups is not enough. […]
More than a decade ago, I wrote a blog post about what I call the poor man’s SQL Server log shipping. In it, I outlined the process of how log shipping works. This became the basis of the chapter I wrote for the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives Volume 1 book. What’s interesting is that while […]
