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Webinar: Why Clustering for SQL Server High Availability?

May 24, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Why Clustering for SQL Server High Availability

Webinar: Why Clustering for SQL Server High Availability?

Webinar: Why Clustering for SQL Server High Availability?

When it comes to SQL Server high availability (HA), SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) has been the standard since 1998 with the release of SQL Server 7. Dave Bermingham, Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter MVP and former Cluster MVP, reviews what clusters are, why you should use them for high availability, discusses SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance concepts and why it is an important part of your Mission Critical SQL Server deployment whether you run on-premises, in the cloud or in a hybrid cloud configuration.

Register Webinar: Why Clustering for SQL Server High Availability?

Filed Under: News posts Tagged With: Clustering, Failover Clusters, High Availability, SQL Server, SQL Server High Availability

Webinar: Failover Clustering in the Cloud – Understanding Your Options

May 24, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Failover Clustering in the Cloud – Understanding Your Options

Webinar: Failover Clustering in the Cloud – Understanding Your Options

Windows Server 2016 introduced Storage Spaces Direct, to allow for shared storage in Azure that could help with building and configuring a Windows cluster in the cloud. While this sounded like a killer feature (and it can be with proper infrastructure) it runs into challenges in cloud environments with limited bandwidth available for both storage and data traffic.

In this webinar, you will learn about the configuration of clusters in the cloud, some real-world examples of problems, and alternatives for maintaining a shared storage infrastructure within Azure.

Register Webinar: Failover Clustering in the Cloud – Understanding Your Options

Filed Under: News and Events Tagged With: Azure, Clustering, failover clustering, SQL Server

No-Cost! Address SQL Server 2008 End of Support by Re-hosting in Azure Now

April 14, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

SIOS Technology Offers No-Cost Assessment to Address SQL Server 2008 End of Support by Re-hosting in Azure

SIOS’ experience and expertise building highly-available SQL Server clusters in the cloud can help fast-track customer migrations and maintain SQL Server 2008 security updates

 

SIOS Technology Corp. is the industry pioneer in providing IT Resilience through intelligent application availability. Today, they announced a new no-cost assessment for customers considering migrating Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to Azure to address the July 9, 2019, End-of-Support.

A major challenge when considering this option from Microsoft is how to maintain SQL Server availability. High availability clustering solutions used on premises are not possible in Azure due to their reliance on shared-storage. This new SIOS offer provides businesses a no-cost assessment of their SQL Server 2008 environments and delivers an Azure re-hosting and configuration plan that ensures protection against unplanned downtime and data loss to meet customer-specific SLAs.

“Moving SQL Server 2008 environments to Azure achieves the goal of obtaining continued product updates from Microsoft without the need to upgrade. However, the question of maintaining availability of those SQL Server environments in the cloud becomes a challenge,” said Michael Bilancieri, VP, Product, SIOS Technology. “Shared-storage clustering solutions that deliver availability for on-premises environments are not a native option in Azure. Designing and implementing high availability clusters in the cloud requires specialized skills to ensure that reliable availability is achieved and that the SLAs of critical systems using SQL Server are met. We’ve helped customers deploy thousands of SQL Server instances in the cloud with our software and expertise. We’re looking to help customers take advantage of Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 EOS program in Azure.”

Supporting Resources:

For more information on the SIOS No-Cost Assessment for SQL Server 2008 end of support on Azure, visit here: https://us.sios.com/solutions/sql-server-2008-end-of-support

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 end of support reference page:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/windows-sql-server-2008

Tweet this: .@SIOSTech offers No-Cost Assessment for #SQLServer 2008 End of Support on #Azure http://bit.ly/2VvvQ9x #highavailability #nocost

About SIOS Technology Corp.

SIOS Technology Corp. is the leading expert in IT Resiliency with software and services focused on High Availability and Disaster Recovery. SIOS delivers tightly-integrated availability solutions for business-critical applications running on-premises, in the cloud, and in hybrid cloud environments. Also, it has the flexibility to meet the widely-varying requirements of different platforms, applications, and Linux and Windows Operating Systems.

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software is Microsoft Azure-certified and available in the Azure marketplace. It is the only Azure-certified software that enables customers to create a SANless high availability SQL Server 2008 cluster in Azure using Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC). It eliminates the need for shared storage while maintaining availability SLAs in the cloud.

Founded in 1999, SIOS Technology Corp. (https://us.sios.com) is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and has offices throughout the United States, United Kingdom and Japan.

Media Contact:
Beth Winkowski
Winkowski Public Relations, LLC for SIOS
978-649-7189
bethwinkowski@US.SIOS.com

 

Interested to create SANless high availability SQL Server 2008 cluster in Azure using Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC), SIOS could be a viable solution. Find out more about clus

Filed Under: News and Events Tagged With: Clustering, High Availability, SQL Server, SQL Server clusters

The Availability Equation – High Availability Solutions

December 9, 2018 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

The Availability Equation – High Availability Solutions.jpg

The Availability Equation

Are you familiar with the Availability Equation? In a nutshell, this equation shows how the total time needed to restore an application to usability is equal to the time required to detect that an application is experiencing a problem plus the time required to perform a recovery action:

TRESTORE = TDETECT + TRECOVER

Key Concepts Of High Availability Solutions

The equation introduces the key concepts of high availability (HA): clustering, problem detection, and subsequent recovery. HA solutions monitor the health of business application components; when problems are detected, these solutions act to restore them to service. The objective of deploying high availability solutions is to minimize downtime.

Reducing detection and recovery times are two important tasks of any HA solution that you choose to deploy. Today’s applications are combinations of technologies: servers, storage, network infrastructure, and so on. When reviewing your HA options, be certain that you understand the technologies that each solution uses to detect and recover from all outage types. Each technology has a direct impact on service restoration times.

Local Detection And Recovery

High availability solutions are straightforward. One technology that is crucial to providing the fastest possible restoration time is known as local detection and recovery (aka service-level problem detection and recovery). In a basic clustering solution, servers are connected. They are configured that one or more servers can take over the operations of another in the event of a server failure. The server nodes in the cluster continuously send small data packets, often called heartbeat signals, to each other to indicate that they are “alive”.

In simple clustered environments, when one server stops generating heartbeats, other cluster members assume that this server is down. It will then begin the process of taking over responsibility for that server’s domain of operation. This approach is adequate for detecting failure at the server level. But unless problems cause the interruption or cessation of heartbeat signals, server-level detection is inadequate. More than that, it can actually magnify the extent and impact of an outage.

For example, if Apache processes hang, the server may still send heartbeats. Even though the Web server subsystem has ceased to perform its primary function. Rather than restart the Apache subsystem on the same or a different server, a basic server-level clustering solution would restart the entire software stack of the failed server on a backup server, thereby causing interruption to users and extending recovery time.

How It Works

Using local detection and recovery, advanced clustering solutions deploy health-monitoring agents within individual cluster servers, to monitor individual system components such as a file system, a database, user-level application, IP address, and so on. These agents use heuristics that are specific to the monitored component. Therefore, the agents can predict and detect operational issues and then take the most appropriate recovery action. Often, the most efficient recovery method is to stop and restart the problem subsystem on the same server.

The time to restore an application to user availability can be greatly reduced by enabling recovery within the same physical server. Also, by detecting failures at a more granular level than simply by observing server-level heartbeats. Solutions such as the SteelEye Protection Suite for Linux from SIOS  provides this level of detection and recovery for your environment.  Make certain that whichever HA solution you deploy can also support local detection and recovery.

Would you like to enjoy high availability solutions for your projects? Check in with us. Need more references, here are our success stories.
Reproduced with permission from Linuxclustering

Filed Under: Clustering Simplified, Datakeeper Tagged With: Clustering, high availability solutions

Maximise replication performance for Linux Clustering with Fusion-io

November 27, 2018 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Maximise replication performance for Linux Clustering with Fusion-io

Tips To Maximise Replication Performance For Linux Clustering With Fusion-io

When most people think about setting up a cluster, it usually involves two or more servers, and a SAN – or some other type of shared storage. SAN’s are typically very costly and complex to setup and maintain. Also, they technically represent a potential Single Point of Failure (SPOF) in your cluster architecture. These days, more and more people are turning to companies like Fusion-io, with their lightning fast ioDrives, to accelerate critical applications.  These storage devices sit inside the server (i.e. aren’t “shared disks”). Therefore it can’t be used as cluster disks with many traditional clustering solutions. Fortunately, there are ways to Maximise replication performance for Linux Clustering with Fusion-io. Solutions that allow you to form a failover cluster when there is no shared storage involved – i.e. a “shared nothing” cluster.

 

Traditional Cluster

 “Shared Nothing” Cluster

When leveraging data replication as part of a cluster configuration, it’s critical that you have enough bandwidth so that data can be replicated across the network just as fast as it’s written to disk.  The following are tuning tips that will allow you to get the most out of your “shared nothing” cluster configuration, when high-speed storage is involved:

Network

  • Use a 10Gbps NIC: Flash-based storage devices from Fusion-io (or other similar products from OCZ, LSI, etc) are capable of writing data at speeds in the HUNDREDS (750 ) of MB/sec or more.  A 1Gbps NIC can only push a theoretical maximum of ~125 MB/sec, so anyone taking advantage of an ioDrive’s potential can easily write data much faster than could be pushed through a 1 Gbps network connection.  To ensure that you have sufficient bandwidth between servers to facilitate real-time data replication, a 10 Gbps NIC should always be used to carry replication traffic
  • Enable Jumbo Frames: Assuming that your Network Cards and Switches support it, enabling jumbo frames can greatly increase your network’s throughput while at the same time reducing CPU cycles.  To enable jumbo frames, perform the following configuration (example from a RedHat/CentOS/OEL linux server)
    • ifconfig <interface_name> mtu 9000
    • Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<interface_name> file and add “MTU=9000” so that the change persists across reboots
    • To verify end-to-end jumbo frame operation, run this command: ping -s 8900 -M do <IP-of-other-server>
  • Change the NIC’s transmit queue length:
    • /sbin/ifconfig <interface_name> txqueuelen 10000
    • Add this to /etc/rc.local to preserve the setting across reboots

TCP/IP Tuning

  • Change the NIC’s netdev_max_backlog:
    • Set “net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 100000” in /etc/sysctl.conf
  • Other TCP/IP tuning that has shown to increase replication performance:
    • Note: these are example values and some might need to be adjusted based on your hardware configuration
    • Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add the following parameters:
      • net.core.rmem_default = 16777216
      • net.core.wmem_default = 16777216
      • net.core.rmem_max = 16777216
      • net.core.wmem_max = 16777216
      • net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 16777216
      • net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 65536 16777216
      • net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0
      • net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 0
      • net.core.optmem_max = 16777216
      • net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=htcp

Adjustments

Typically you will also need to make adjustments to your cluster configuration, which will vary based on the clustering and replication technology you decide to implement.  In this example, I’m using the SteelEye Protection Suite for Linux (aka SPS, aka LifeKeeper), from SIOS Technologies. It allows users to form failover clusters leveraging just about any back-end storage type: Fiber Channel SAN, iSCSI, NAS, or, most relevant to this article, local disks that need to be synchronized/replicated in real time between cluster nodes.  SPS for Linux includes integrated, block level data replication functionality that makes it very easy to setup a cluster when there is no shared storage involved.

Recommendations

In order to Maximise replication performance for Linux Clustering with Fusion-io, let’s try this. SteelEye Protection Suite (SPS) for Linux configuration recommendations:

  • Allocate a small (~100 MB) disk partition, located on the Fusion-io drive to place the bitmap file.  Create a filesystem on this partition and mount it, for example, at /bitmap:
    • # mount | grep /bitmap
    • /dev/fioa1 on /bitmap type ext3 (rw)
  • Prior to creating your mirror, adjust the following parameters in /etc/default/LifeKeeper
    • Insert: LKDR_CHUNK_SIZE=4096
      • Default value is 64
    • Edit: LKDR_SPEED_LIMIT=1500000
      • (Default value is 50000)
      • LKDR_SPEED_LIMIT specifies the maximum bandwidth that a resync will ever take — this should be set high enough to allow resyncs to go at the maximum speed possible
    • Edit: LKDR_SPEED_LIMIT_MIN=200000
      • (Default value is 20000)
      • LKDR_SPEED_LIMIT_MIN specifies how fast the resync should be allowed to go when there is other I/O going on at the same time — as a rule of thumb, this should be set to half or less of the drive’s maximum write throughput in order to avoid starving out normal I/O activity when a resync occurs

From here, go ahead and create your mirrors and configure the cluster as you normally would.

Interested to Maximise Replication Performance For Linux Clustering With Fusion-io, see what else SIOS can offer.
Reproduced with permission from LinuxClustering

Filed Under: Clustering Simplified, Datakeeper Tagged With: Clustering, Fusion-io, Linux, maximise replication performance for linux clustering with fusion io, replication

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