A common question that I get asked a lot is whether Microsoft officially supports a specific configuration … or not…   – Can I add the secondary replica in an Always On Availability Group as a publisher in a transactional replication topology? – Is running a guest Windows cluster on VMWare supported by both VMWare […]

This question came up during a conversation I had with a client. He is a consultant who wanted to become an expert in SQL Server Always On Availability Groups. He is constantly being assigned to projects that involve working with the technology. Yet he does not have the skills to confidently troubleshoot a problem nor […]

I’ll be doing this on a weekly basis so make sure you keep an eye out for announcements on my social media profiles (LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube)    Subscribe to my mailing list. * indicates required Email Address * First Name

Do you sometimes get discouraged?   – You’ve been trying to learn SQL Server Always On Availability Groups for months – even years – and you feel like giving up because it’s too complicated and confusing. – You attempted to set it up from the ground up – but failed miserably. You started to question […]

As SQL Server DBAs working with Always On Availability Groups, sometimes our hands are tied when working with “black box” systems.   – the host machine running your Always On Availability Group VMs that is causing outages. Your Always On Availability Groups are experiencing a lot of unexpected failovers and outages. But since it’s a […]

I was reviewing a client’s Always On Availability Group architecture last week and spoke to their internal team about their design choices. They brought me in to find out what’s causing unexpected outages and how to prevent them from happening in the future.   The DBA team is top-notch and one of the smartest group […]

– Are you dealing with too many incidents and outages with your SQL Server Always On Availability Groups? – Are you in constant firefighting mode trying to keep the lights on? – Do you get woken up in the middle of the night when the databases unexpectedly become unavailable? – Do you feel like your […]

I was on the phone with a client the other day where they had to push back on a database migration scheduled the weekend prior. They were migrating from a SQL Server 2008 standalone instance and into SQL Server 2019 Always On Availability Groups. I can feel the tension in his voice over the phone […]

Every SQL Server high availability solution fall into these two (2) categories – ones that you built and ones that others built. Simple, right?   The problem lies when somebody else – a different team, a consultant, a managed services provider – built the solution, didn’t follow design and implementation best practices, and left the […]

Do you find it very confusing dealing with SQL Server Always On Availability Groups and not knowing what questions to ask? Even worse, you start having more questions the moment you get an answer to your previous one. Is it…   – How many replicas do I need? – How do I configure the cluster […]