Clustering Simplified Archives - Page 105 of 114

No More Free Google Apps

February 7, 2018 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Free Google Apps – A Great Intro Before Purchase

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/12/changes-to-google-apps-for-businesses.html

I’m glad I got Boy Scout Troop 20 registered under the deadline. Free Google Apps was a great intro to the product for me and I looked at it as a gateway “drug” that gave me enough of a look to consider the premium version for any “serious” cloud based business operation, i.e., not a Boy Scout Troop.

Is The Subscription Worth It?

While $50/year per user is not expensive, it certainly can be a show stopper for many small non-profit organizations who may have otherwise been potential customers. So the question is will Microsoft take advantage of this opening to gain market share? If so, I know where I will be deploying my next cloud based small business site.

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2012/12/10/no-more-free-google-apps-googleapps-azure/

Alwayson Availability Groups A Viable Alternative To Failover Clusters?

February 7, 2018 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Is Alwayson Availability Groups A Viable Alternative To Alwayson Failover Clusters In The Public Cloud?

I recently read an article entitled SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn: High Availability database for cloud data centers where the author John Joyner makes a case for using AlwaysOn Availability Groups for SQL Server high availability in the cloud. I have been investigating AlwaysOn Availability Groups since it was available in pre-release versions of SQL Server 2012. While it certainly has some valid uses (mostly in disaster recovery configurations), saying that it is a “new way to achieve HA SQL” glosses over many of the issues that make deploying AlwaysOn Availability Groups as a replacement for failover clusters simply not a viable option in many cases.

My Response

In a response I wrote to the article I proposed that an AlwaysOn Multisite Clustering using the host based replication solution DataKeeper Cluster Edition is a much better alternative and I went ahead and explained why..

My original response to the article seems to have been deleted, so I decided to repost my response to the original article below:

There are a few things to consider with AlwaysOn Availability Groups. As you mention, “Microsoft announced support for some System Center 2012 SP1 applications to work with SQL AlwaysOn”, meaning that there are still applications that do not support AlwaysOn. In fact, there are a LOT of applications that do not support AlwaysOn Availability Groups, including any applications that use distributed transactions. And what about the other limitations, like not being able to keep MSDB, Master and other databases in sync? I blog about these limitations here.

https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2012/11/09/how-to-overcome-the-limitations-of-sql-server-alwayson-availability-groups-sqlpass/

I agree that SQL HA is important, however, the only way to get “High Availability” (meaning automatic recovery in the event of a failure) with AlwaysOn Availability Groups is by using synchronous mirroring. At PASS Summitt in Seattle earlier this month I sat in many different presentations on AlwaysOn and almost without fail the presenters talked about AlwaysOn in an asynchronous configuration. The reason being is that AlwaysOn synchronous replication has a SIGNIFICANT impact on the performance of your application. I have personally measured up to a 68% performance penalty with AlwaysOn Synchronous mirroring, and that was across a dedicated 10 Gbps LAN! I blog about this result here

Unfortunately, in an asynchronous configuration you give up automatic failover, so you really are not getting HA, you are getting data protection, but certainly not the same RTO as you can expect from a traditional SQL failover cluster.

And then finally there is the cost to consider. SQL Server 2012 Enterprise is nothing to sneeze at. If you want to build a 2-node cluster and take advantage of readable secondaries and you are using a 2-socket, 16-core servers you are looking at shelling out close to $220k for SQL Server 2012 Enterprise licenses. I broke down the associated cost in my blog article here.

Don’t get me wrong, SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups can solve many problems, but I would not categorize the asynchronous configuration required in most cloud deployments as an HA alternative. Many people are overlooking the other “AlwaysOn”, AlwaysOn Failover Clusters. New features of SQL Server AlwaysOn Failover Clusters, including enhanced support for cross subnet multisite clusters, will give you a true HA solution and overcomes all of the limitations I describe above. Of course in a pure cloud solution you may not be able to integrate with array based replication to support multisite clusters, but you can always use host based replication solutions such as SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition to build multisite clusters in public or private clouds and in your own physical data center and you can do this with SQL Server 2008 through 2012 AND it works on SQL Server Standard edition as well as Enterprise.

Have you done any testing with AlwaysOn Availability Groups in a HA configuration? If so I’d be curious to know if you measured the overhead associated with synchronous replication in your environment.

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2012/11/27/is-alwayson-availability-groups-a-viable-alternative-to-alwayson-failover-clusters-in-the-public-cloud/

SQL Server Alwayson Features Without The Hefty Price Tag? Try DataKeeper

February 6, 2018 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Want SQL Server Alwayson Features But Can’t Afford SQL 2012 Enterprise Edition?

No doubt AlwaysOn Availability Groups is a hot topic here at SQL PASS Summit. As I mentioned in my previous posts, you need to consider the overhead associated with AlwaysOn as well as other limitations as you deploy SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition. Read on as I introduce SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition.

Price Comparison

I priced out (list price) a 2-node solution using SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups with a read-only target with a typical 2-socket, 16-core server configuration. I also added a comparable configuration. Running DataKeeper Cluster Edition on SQL 2012 Standard Edition and was as SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition.

DataKeeper-Get SQL Server Alwayson Features without SQL 2012 Enterprise Edition

As you can see, deploying SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition (required for Availability Groups) your expense is much greater than if you deploy a similar replicated cluster solution using DataKeeper Cluster Edition.

Reproduced with permission from Clusteringformeremortals.com

Overcome Alwayson Availabilty Groups limitations with SIOS Datakeeper

February 5, 2018 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Overcome Alwayson Availabilty Groups limitations with SIOS Datakeeper

After hearing all of the great sessions at SQL PASS Summit on Availability Groups, are you thinking about biting the bullet to upgrade to SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition? Before you get your checkbook out, stop and ask yourself these questions and also, allow me to introduce SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition.

Do I use/need

to lower my SQL Server cost?
replication or log shipping?
to minimize the impact that replication has on the performance of my application?
Lync Server, Dynamics CRM or other applications that use distributed transactions?
to ensure that SQL Agent jobs such as database backups, optimizations, DTS and others continue to run regardless of the node in service?
to ensure that SQL login accounts are kept in sync between cluster nodes?
to minimize my administrative burden?

Alwayson Availabilty Groups Limitations

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may want to reconsider your options when it comes to your SQL Server HA/DR deployment. While AlwaysOn Availability Groups certainly have their place, you may want to consider the overhead associate with them. Read my previous article. Also, you really need to consider what applications will be utilizing the SQL Server database as not all applications support AlwaysOn Availability Groups. This includes many of Microsoft’s applications such as Lync Server and others (check your application documentation).

Introducing SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition

What I would propose instead is to consider building a traditional active/passive cluster which overcomes all of the Alwayson Availabilty Groups Limitations listed above. But instead of using shared storage, use the cluster integrated block level replication solution from SIOS Technology called SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition. Using this replication solution, you are able to eliminate the SAN as a single point of failure as well as eliminate all of the limitations associated with AlwaysOn Availability Groups listed above. When you consider the possibility of using high speed local storage solutions such as @Fusionio in conjunction with DataKeeper, you can have a high speed, highly available SQL Server cluster with a minimal investment in hardware and software. And best of all, this solution works with SQL 2005/2008/2008R2/2012 Standard Edition as well as Enterprise Edition. The cost saving alone on SQL Server licensing can more than pay for the solution. More on costs saving in my next post.

How Should I Start?

You can buy a 2 server pre-package solution that includes HP, Dell or Supermicro servers, Fusion-io ioDrives. DataKeeper software to help you deploy you first high speed, highly available SQL cluster. For more information see the press release here.

http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/About/News/PressReleases/PartnerPressRelease9.aspx

Like how Datakeeper help overcome Alwayson Availabilty Groups limitations? Read here for more success stories

Reproduced with permission from Clusteringformeremortals.com

Overcoming Performance Issues With SQL Server Alwayson Availability Groups

February 5, 2018 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Asynchronous vs synchronous replication on AlwaysOn

From attending the sessions at PASS Summit this week, it has become obvious that AlwaysOn is a hot topic with about six sessions dedicated to this solution . The one thing that I learned is that although the solution certainly has its applications, most of the successful deployments are based on using AlwaysOn in an asynchronous fashion. The reason people avoid the synchronous replication option is that the overhead is too great. During synchronous replication any write must be committed on the replica before it is committed on the source. In the testing that I have done, this overhead introduced can be as much as 68%.

For example, in a test where I have a database inserting about 1,000,000 rows per second and we measure the throughput on the log file, we see that with no mirroring in place we are writing about 400 MBps. Once we start replicating that database with AlwaysOn Availability Groups across a 10 Gbps LAN, we see about a 68% drop off in performance, with this particular database slowing down to about 250,000 inserts per second.

Asynchronous vs synchronous replication on AlwaysOn — Figure 1 – MBps written to a SQL Server database before and after AlwaysOn Synchronous Mirroring

If you are considering the solution as a replacement to your failover cluster, this drop off should be of a major concern to you. In order to achieve the automatic failover that you are accustomed to in failover clustering, you must use synchronous mirroring, which means that you must live with this performance hit. Generally this is not going to be acceptable, which is probably why you don’t hear the experts recommending such configurations on a regular basis.

So what should you do?

Should you stick with you traditional failover cluster and a SAN? What if you want to take advantage of fast, high speed storage such as Fusion-io? In that case, you can’t use a traditional cluster…or can you?

The good news is that you can build a cluster without a SAN and do it all without the expense, limitations and overhead associate with AlwaysOn Availability Groups (more on the limitations and expense in my next blog post). By using DataKeeper Cluster Edition you can build clusters without shared storage AND the overhead associated with Synchronous replication is closer to 10% vs. the close to 70% we see with AlwaysOn Availability Groups.

Come to booth 351 at #SQLPASS and I’ll be glad to demonstrate how the solution works.

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2012/11/09/how-to-overcome-the-performance-problems-with-sql-server-alwayson-availability-groups-sqlpass/