SQL Server 2008 Archives - SIOS SANless clusters

Webinar: Availability Options and Requirements for SQL Server 2008 in Azure

May 25, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Availability Options and Requirements for SQL Server 2008 in Azure

Webinar: Availability Options and Requirements for SQL Server 2008 in Azure

Time is running out for your SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 instances. On July 9th the extended support date for SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 officially runs out. This means no more security updates will be issued. But wait, there is an option. By moving your SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 Instances to Azure, Microsoft will provide an additional three years of Extended Security Updates at no additional charge Running. Before taking the plunge on moving your SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 instances to Azure, you need to understand the availability options and requirements to ensure that your high availability and disaster recovery concerns are addressed.

Learn how to deploy SQL Server 2008 /2008 R2 Failover Cluster Instances in Azure properly. This includes addressing the lack of a shared storage option as well as networking requirements including the Internal Load Balancing requirements. Azure Site Recovery will be introduced as a viable alternative as a disaster recovery option which allows for a robust RPO/RTO in an entirely different Azure region.

Free SQL Server 2008 Security Updates!?!

May 14, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Free SQL Server 2008 Security Updates!?!

FREE! Did I get your attention? Free what though…?

Everyone uses the word “free” as a way to get our attention. But typically the free offering is pretty much worthless. That, or the cost is simply being wrapped into whatever is being sold. Rarely is something of actual VALUE given for free. But THIS “free” offer has real value, especially if you are still running SQL Server 2008/2008 R2. Microsoft is offering FREE security updates for SQL Server 2008 when it reaches end-of-support (EOS) on July 9, 2019.

From all accounts, there is a massive install base of SQL Server 2008. Some have indicated more than half of all SQL Server deployments are 2008. This would mean a lot of very concerned DBAs who will be losing security updates in a few months. So what? Once a vulnerability is identified, all the bad guys that want to steal your critical data will exploit it. Without security updates, these systems will be wide open for them to help themselves.

Microsoft is Offering 3 Years of Security Updates to Move SQL Server to Azure

So, what’s free that will actually help? Microsoft is offering 3 years of security updates at no cost IF you move those SQL workloads to their Azure cloud. Sure, there is a cost to hosting these systems in Azure, but that cost will be offset by the reduced cost of hosting and managing them on-premises and all the other benefits cloud offers. And let’s face it, you’ve probably been considering moving to the cloud anyway, and this may be just the right opportunity to make that leap.

Something to consider when planning your move to Azure is your clustering solution. Like most SQL Server deployments, you probably have your systems protected against downtime using a shared-storage clustering solution, like Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC), or they are running in VMs protected by VMware HA. The issue that you will face is that the shared-storage subsystem WSFC requires isn’t available in Azure and there is no hypervisor failover option like VMware HA either.

SIOS Provides High Availability for SQL Server 2008 in Azure

That’s where SIOS can help. SIOS solutions alleviate the need for shared storage. We provide block-level data replication between two nodes that happens transparently to Windows Server Failover Clusters. Thereby, allowing you to continue to provide high availability for your SQL Server 2008 instance by deploying a SQL Server SANless Failover Cluster Instance (FCI).

Together, SIOS and Microsoft enable you to confidently deploy your SQL Server instances in Azure, maintaining availability and security SLAs. Speaking of free, check out our free offer to assist you with maintaining support for SQL Server 2008 by moving it to Microsoft Azure in a highly-available cluster configuration. We will assist you in designing, deploying, configuring, and validating your SQL Server environments in Microsoft Azure.

Reproduced from SIOS

Move SQL Server 2008 And 2008 R2 Clusters To Azure For Extended Support

November 16, 2018 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Move SQL Server 2008 And 2008 R2 Clusters To Azure For Extended Support

Earlier this year Microsoft announced extended support if you move SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 Clusters to Azure. For all the details, check out https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-2008. If you choose not to move, your extended support ends on July 9th, 2019.

If you are still running SQL Server 2008 R2, it’s probably because you never upgraded your application. Hence newer versions of SQL are not supported. Or perhaps, you decided not to fix what isn’t broken. Regardless of these reasons, you have just bought yourself another three years of support if you migrate to Azure.

Now migrating workloads to Azure is a pretty well documented procedure, using Azure Site Recovery. That process should be pretty seamless for you for your standalone instances of SQL Server.

But what about those clustered instances of SQL Server? You certainly don’t want to give up availability when you move to the Azure. Part of the beauty of Azure is that they have infrastructure that you can only dream of. However, it is incumbent upon the user to configure their applications to take full advantage of the infrastructure to ensure that your deployments are highly available.

With SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2, high availability commonly means SQL Server Failover Clustering on either Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 R2. If you are new to Azure, you will quickly discover that there is no native option that supports shared storage clusters. Instead, you will need to look at a SANLess cluster solution such as SIOS DataKeeper. Microsoft list SIOS DataKeeper as the HA solution for SQL Server Failover Clustering in their documentation.

Getting Started

Let’s begin the move SQL Server 2008 And 2008 R2 Clusters To Azure For Extended Support. Here are the high level steps you will need to take.

Replace the Physical Disk Resource in your existing on premise SQL Server cluster with a DataKeeper Volume Resource. Do the same for MSDTC resources if you use MSDTC.
Remove your Disk Witness and replace it with a File Share Witness.
Use Azure Site Recovery to replicate your cluster nodes into Azure, making sure each replicated node resides in a different Fault Domain or in different Availability Zones in Azure
Recovery your replicate cluster nodes in Azure
Replace the File Share Witness with a File Share hosted in Azure
Configure the Internal Load Balancer in Azure for client redirection. This includes running the Powershell script on the local nodes to update the SQL Cluster IP resource to listen for the ILB probe
Assuming the IP addresses and subnet of the SQL Server cluster instances changed as part of this migration, you will also need to do some cleanup of the cluster IP address and the DataKeeper job endpoints to reflect the new IP addresses

I know I left out a lot of the details. But if you find yourself in the position of having to do a lift and shift of SQL Server to Azure, or any cloud for that matter, I’d be glad to get on the phone with you to answer any questions you may have. Keep in mind, the same steps apply for any version of SQL that you plan to migrate to Azure.

If you need to move SQL Server 2008 And 2008 R2 Clusters To Azure, get in touch with us.
Reproduced with permission from Clusteringformeremortals.com

Sacrifice High Availability For High Performance?

January 31, 2018 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Mosey on over to the Fusion-io website and read my guest post in their blog, Do You Have to Sacrifice High Availability for High Performance?

Invitation to join our Webinar

After you are done there, view the joint SIOS and Fusion-io webinar “SQL Server 2008 – High Performance and High Availability Through Fusion-io and SIOS”. Part of this webinar includes some VERY interesting benchmark information…you won’t want to miss it!

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2011/08/23/do-you-have-to-sacrifice-high-availability-for-high-performance/