[Note from Pinal]: In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Mike Lawell talks about his thoughts and observation about SQL Server 2016 and enhancements with AlwaysOn Availability Groups. When AlwaysOn was newly introduced, I was not able to catch up with the feature. I just thought it was just one of the subject which will not be developed by Microsoft, however, as the new versions of the SQL Server are now taking this feature to the next level, I am very delighted that I should have not worried at all. Let us see what Mike says in his own words about Enhancements with AlwaysOn Availability Groups.
SQL SERVER – AlwaysOn Availability Group Stuck in Resolving State For Long time
What is resolving state in SQL Server AlwaysOn?
When there is an availability group, the replica would be either in primary state or secondary state – when its online in failover cluster manager. Resolving is an intermediate state when the transition is happening from primary to secondary or vice versa. If due to some reason the transition is not successful, it goes to “resolving” state. In this state, the database is not accessible.
SQL SERVER – Attaching and Restoring Database in Clustering Generates An Error – Notes from the Field #115
[Notes from Pinal]: In my career, I have seen many database experts who are great with what they do, but when they have to work with clustering or AlwaysOn solutions, they usually avoid it. The reason is that there are not many experts who know this subject well enough. One thing I always personally felt that the documentation is also not widely available when it is about clustering. If one receives some error, they are usually lost. This is when I reached out to Eduardo and asked him what can we do to if we face error while attaching or restoring database in clustering environment in SQL Server.
SQL SERVER – How To Improve Performance by Offloading Backups to a Secondary Replica – Notes from the Field #108
[Notes from Pinal]: If we get one server, we want two servers, and if we get two servers, we want four servers. If we know we are going to get only two servers, we try our best to get maximum out of our available server. Maximum utilization of resources is always our primary goal. In this blog post we are going to talk about almost the same story where we try to get maximum out of our servers. Let us assume that we have two servers, how do we get maximum performance from them. Well, our generic answer would be that we will keep the most important task on our primary server and move all the not so important task on secondary server. This is common sense and essential too. This is when I reached out to Eduardo and asked him what can we do to make our primary server faster by offloading backups to secondary replica.
SQL SERVER – How to Create a Readable Secondary Server in SQL Server Standard – Notes from the Field #107
[Notes from Pinal]: The basic nature of human is greedy. When we get one thing which we desire the next thing. In the early world of SQL Server we got a secondary server as a backup or high availability. In earlier times the secondary server was not readable, it just served as a backup. At this point of time our human nature kicked in and we want to get more from the server, which was just sitting there most of the time. We wanted to make our secondary server readable. This is when I reached out to Kenneth and asked him what can we do to make our secondary server as a readable.
SQL SERVER – Edition Upgrade from Evaluation to Enterprise Core – AlwaysOn Warning!
While preparing for a demo about SQL migration, one of the demo was to show the steps needed to upgrade Evaluation edition to full version of SQL Server. The steps are pretty simple and already blogged at many place on the internet. One of my own blog also shows that:…
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SQL SERVER – Adding File to Database in AlwaysOn Availability Group
Writing some typical interview questions have been on my list always. I look for new ways of tricking the person and most importantly, some of the interview questions are designed to make sure the person has strong fundamentals. This blog is one such attempt to understand the basics of the AlwaysOn Availability Group.