One of the advantages of working as an independent consultant is the opportunity to work with SQL Server DBAs with different backgrounds from different cultures. My curiosity would lead me to asking questions about their experience working with Always On Availability Groups. A large number of them do not have any experience working with […]
PostYour Backup Questions Answered – Practical SQL Server HA/DR Show
If there’s one thing that remained the same ever since enterprise technology was made available to us, it’s BACKUPS. The way we’ve done backups have evolved – from punch cards, magnetic tape storage, local hard drives, SAN/NAS, all the way to the cloud. Yet we still have the need to do them. While most […]
PostHigh Availability Basics – What SQL Server Cannot Do For You
Ever since I started doing the Practical SQL Server HA/DR Show, I noticed a trend on the questions that people submit using the online form. More often than not, the questions fall under the “HOW” category. Sure, as technology professionals, we get paid to DO the work. So, it makes sense to know the […]
PostThis week on the Practical SQL Server HA/DR Show – Monitoring HA Solutions
I decided to focus on a theme every week for the Practical SQL Server HA/DR Show. This week’s theme – Monitoring HA Solutions. I couldn’t count the number of times that I’ve seen customer environments running complex and expensive Always On Availability Groups yet don’t have a monitoring solution. I don’t understand how someone […]
PostYour Always On Availability Group Databases Have Huge Log Files. What Do You Do?
Imagine getting a phone call in the middle of the night. While still figuring out who it was on the other line, you get a text message from your manager. He’s telling you that the databases are offline and that the operations team have been working on it for the past hour. But they’re stumped […]
PostThis week on the Practical SQL Server HA/DR Show – Patching and Maintaining HA Solutions
I decided to focus on a theme every week for the Practical SQL Server HA/DR Show. This week’s theme – Patching and Maintaining HA Solutions. Regular care and feeding of digital assets – servers, apps, platforms, etc. – is essential to keeping them up and running. Hotfixes and patches are being released on a […]
PostThe Problem With Most How-To Instructions Regarding Synchronizing Logins Across Availability Group Replicas
A common administrative task that you need to deal with when managing an Always On Availability Group solution is to recreate SQL Server logins on all replicas. That’s just a fact. Because at any given point in time, an automatic failover can happen and move the Availability group to a different replica. If you don’t […]
PostAsk your SQL Server high availability and disaster recovery questions
I did my very first AMA session live almost a month ago and I’ve had great results. People were interacting during the live Q&A session while some sent follow-up questions afterwards. Given the below freezing temperatures where I’m at, I’ll keep doing this indoors for now until I can stay outside for longer than 5 […]
PostWhy DBAs Keep Getting Confused With Complex Always On Availability Group Configuration
One of the subjects I had in senior high school was technology and home economics. Since my teacher majored in architectural drafting, she taught us how to read blueprints to have an idea about how structures are built. That’s when I noticed a crack on our wall near the TV. In the Philippines, walls are mostly […]
PostHave your SQL Server Always On Availability Groups and Windows Server Failover Clustering Questions Answered
For more than a decade-and-a-half of working with SQL Server high availability and disaster recovery, I’ve gotten hundreds of questions from clients, event attendees, and training class students. That number has increased when Microsoft introduced Always On Availability Groups. I’m guessing it’s because of the level of complexity of the technology that tech professionals are […]
