High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HA/DR) is an area that every SQL Server DBA needs to be comfortable with, especially when dealing with mission-critical database systems. One cannot wait until a real disaster strikes before learning how to deal with it. This advanced, deep-dive course is designed for SQL Server DBAs and system administrators to […]
NO, that is certainly not a typo. I really did intend to say SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008. Note that a previous blog post mentioned that you only have less than a year before SQL Server 2005 is out of extended support. So, why, you might ask, would I still be talking about features […]
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” This week started off with news about the Amazon AWS DynamoDB’s outage and Skype’s network-related issues. For organizations who do not run mission-critical applications on Amazon or who use Skype for communications, this may not be a big of a deal. But for companies like NetFlix, Buffer (I use […]
“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 […]
