Step-By-Step: Configuring A 2-Node Multi-Site Cluster On Windows Server 2008 R2 – Part 3

January 22, 2018 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

In Part 1 of this series, I showed you how to prepare your multi-site cluster, including setting up the Node and File Share Majority Quorum. In Part 2, we saw a video example of how to integrate SteelEye DataKeeper, one of the available cluster replication solutions, with failover clustering to configure a multi-site Hyper-V failover cluster. In Part 3, we will examine how Microsoft SQL Server 2008 can be configured in a multi-site cluster with Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering and SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition.

First, why would you want to deploy a multi-site SQL server cluster? SQL Server comes with a variety of high availability options, including log shipping, replication (transactional, merge, snapshot), database mirroring and failover clusters. There is a great article that talks about the High Availability options in SQL Server 2008, so I won’t re-invent the wheel here. If you want to learn more about all of the options, have a look at this article by Ross Mistry, High Availability Options in SQL Server 2008.

If you read the article, Ross’ summary makes the following statement…

“Clearly, failover clustering is the best choice to reduce system downtime and provide higher application availability for the whole instance of SQL Server within a site; however, a failover cluster does not protect against disk failure and requires a SAN.”

What if you could have all of the benefits that Ross outlines and also protect against disk failure and eliminate the need for a SAN? Well, the good news is that is exactly what you can do by implementing a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 multi-site cluster on Windows Server 2008. SQL Server 2008 multi-site cluster may be a little bit of a misnomer. It does not necessarily need to be deployed across geographically dispersed locations. The servers could be located in the same rack, same room, same building or across continents; it really doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you are eliminating your storage as a single point of failure and if you choose to locate your cluster nodes in different physical locations then you also have built in site resiliency.

One of the most common questions and points of confusion about SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 failover clustering is support for failing across subnets. Yes, Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering does support failing between subnets for most applications, however, SQL Server 2008 is not one of those applications. As far as I know, SQL Server 2008 R2 will also not support failing between subnets when it is released. My understanding is that the SQL team is working on support for cross-subnet failover, but it will be supported sometime after SQL Server 2008 R2 is released. So, for the time being, you will have to span your subnet if you wish to separate your nodes geographically.

Now that you have determined to deploy a multi-node SQL server cluster, here are the steps you will need to follow.

CONFIGURE YOUR BASIC CLUSTER

Follow the steps in Part 1 of this series to configure a basic 2-node cluster with a Node and File Share Majority Quorum.

CONFIGURE YOUR REPLICATION

Deploying a multi-site cluster will require that you work very closely with your replication vendor during this part of the configuration. Each vendor will have very specific instructions on how to set up the replication and create the storage resources to be used in your cluster. For the purposes of this demonstration, I will use SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition to replicate the E drive from the server named PRIMARY to the server named SECONDARY. The E drive on PRIMARY and SECONDARY are just local attached volumes and not part of any SAN. As long as the E drive shows up as a local attached disk, DataKeeper can replicate it from one server to another. You can mix and match SAS, iSCSI, SAN, VHD, or any other storage type as DataKeeper is storage agnostic.

After you have configured your basic cluster as described in Part 1 of my series, run the DataKeeper setup.exe to install SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition on both nodes of the cluster. You will be prompted to enter your license key at the end of the install. Enter your license and reboot your servers when prompted. You are now ready to create your mirror. Launch the DataKeeper GUI and follow the instructions below to create your mirror.

Click on “Connect to Server”.

Figure 1 – Connect to your source and target servers

Enter the name of the first server. Click Connect.

Enter the name of the second server, click Connect

Now click Create Job. That will launch the Create Job wizard.

Give your job a name and description. These can be anything you like.

Figure 3 – Give your Job a name and description

Choose the following:

Source Server – where the data will be replicated from
Network adapter – the network where the replication traffic will travel
Volume – the volume you want to replicate

Click Next to continue.

Figure 4 – Choose you source server and network to use for replication

Choose the following:

Target Server – where the data will be replicated to
Network adapter – the network where the replication traffic will travel
Volume – the volume you want to replicate

Click Next to continue.

Choose the following:

Compression Level – If you have a 100 Mbps or faster network for replication, leave it set to none. If you have a WAN that is less that 100 Mbps, you may benefit from enabling compression. Settings somewhere in the middle tend to give you the best performance of compression vs. CPU overhead associated with enabling compression.
Asynchronous vs. Synchronous – Asynchronous replication is generally acceptable in most environments and is definitely required in high-latency WAN environments. I wrote a whole blog post on this topic, so if you have any questions, check out my article on Asynchronous vs. Synchronous replication.
Maximum bandwidth – you can think of this as a “poor man’s” QOS. If you want to ensure that replication never exceeds a certain threshold of your WAN capacity, you can put a limiter on the amount of bandwidth it can consume. Unless you have a good reason to set it, it is better off leaving it set to 0.

Click Done to create your mirror.

Now if you take a look at your DataKeeper GUI, it will look similar to the following.

Once you have created your mirror, you need to make your mirror available in the Microsoft Cluster “Available Storage”. There are a few ways to do this, but the most straight forward way is to use the Windows PowerShell CLI. Below is an example that shows how to take the existing mirror we just created on the E drive and add it to the cluster “Available Storage”, move it to the PRIMARY node and bring it in-service

Import-Module FailoverClusters

Add-ClusterResource -Name “DataKeeper Volume E” -ResourceType “DataKeeper Volume” -Group “Available Storage”

Get-ClusterResource “DataKeeper Volume E” | Set-ClusterParameter VolumeLetter E

Move-ClusterGroup “Available Storage” -Node primary

Start-ClusterResource “DataKeeper Volume E”

For more information on PowerShell and the available commands for use with Failover Clustering, check out this great blog post from Symon Perriman of the Microsoft Failover Clustering Team.

http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/archive/2008/12/20/9243367.aspx

You are now going to repeat the above steps to add any additional mirrors that you will use in your cluster. In our case, we are going to create a mirror of the F drive and use it to cluster the MSDTC. After you have added your additional mirrors and added them to Available Storage, your DataKeeper GUI should look something like this.

Figure 8 – After adding the second Job for the MSDTC resource

And your Failover Cluster Manager GUI should look like this.

Figure 9 – After adding the second DataKeeper resource

CLUSTERING MSDTC

IMPORTANT NOTE – There is a hotfix that is required in order to support DTC with 3rd party disk resources. Please see the following KB article and apply the howfix to all cluster nodes. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978476

SQL 2008 is very dependent upon MSDTC, so it is highly recommended that you cluster the MSDTC resource before you cluster your SQL resource. The following articles are provided for your reference for configuration and management of your MSDTC resource.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770748(WS.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771540(WS.10).aspx

You will start by opening the Failover Cluster Manager GUI and then choose “Configure a Service or Application”.

You will then choose “Distributed Transaction Coordinator” and click Next

Figure 11 – Choose your Service or Application

Give the MSDTC resource a name and unique IP address. These should be unique to MSDTC and not the same as you will use later when you create your SQL resource.

Figure 12 – Choose a name and IP address

Choose the volume where you will store the data for the MSDTC resource. In our case we are choosing the replicated F drive.

Figure 13 – Choose a dedicated volume for the MSDTC resource

Confirm your information and click Next to continue.

Figure 14 – Click Next to configure the DTC resource

Congratulations, you have successfully configured the DTC resource. Click Finish.

Figure 15 – A successfully configured DTC resource

We are just about ready to begin the installation of the first node of the SQL Server Cluster, however, there is one thing we need to do in preparation – Slip Stream SQL 2008 SP1 onto the SQL Server 2008 RTM install media.

SLIP STREAM SQL SP1 ONTO YOUR SQL 2008 INSTALL MEDIA

What I have discovered is that SQL Server 2008 will not install on Windows Server 2008 R2 without first slipstreaming SQL Server 2008 SP1 onto your SQL 2008 install media. Here is a great article that describes how to slipstream SQL Server 2008 RTM and Service Pack 1. After I read that article and successfully slipstream SP1 onto SQL 2008 RTM, I found the following Microsoft KB article that describes the same procedure. You may get an error that looks like the following if you try to install SQL without first slipstreaming SP1 onto the media.

There was an error setting private property ‘RequireKerberos’ to value ‘1’

I followed the instructions detailed in the first article and copied my SQL 2008 with SP1 install to the C:\ drive of both nodes in my cluster. In the instructions below, I will do the installation from the local disk of each cluster node.

INSTALLING YOUR FIRST CLUSTER NODE

Now that you have your SQL Server 2008 SP1 installation media ready to go, you are ready to install your first SQL node. There is one major “gotcha” when it comes to installing SQL on a multi-node cluster. In order for you to install SQL on a multi-node cluster, you must first pass the Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster validate process. Unfortunately, a multi-site cluster is exempt from passing the storage related test, so you never are able to actually “pass” the validation as far as SQL is concerned. It took a little investigation on my part, but what I have come to find is that there is a command line parameter that allows you to skip the validation test on the SQL 2008 installation. Here is the command line.

Setup /SkipRules=Cluster_VerifyForErrors /Action=InstallFailoverCluster

To launch the SQL setup, open a Command window, browse to your SQL 2008 with SP1 install directory and type the command as shown below.

If everything goes as planned, you should see the screen below. Click OK to continue.

Enter your product key and click Next

Accept the license agreement and click Next

Click Install to install the Setup Support Files

At the end of the Setup for the Support Files you will receive a warning. Click on Show details and you will see the message below. You can click Next, ignoring this message since it is expected in a multi-site or non-shared storage cluster.

Figure 18 – The warning is expected in a multi-site or non-shared storage cluster

Choose the features you would like to install and click Next. Leave the “Shared Feature” directory set to the C drive as the SQL binaries should not be installed on the replicated volume.

On the next screen, you will choose a network name for your SQL Server. This will be the name that all of the clients will connect to. Assuming this is the default instance, leave the Instance ID and Instance root directory set to the defaults. Do not move the instance root directory to the replicated volume.

Figure 20 – Choose your SQL Network Name

It is recommended that you have separate domain accounts for SQLServer and SQLAgent. You can take the time to create these accounts now if you have not already done so. These accounts require no special permissions, as this install process will give them the permissions that they require.

Confirm you have enough disk space and click Next to continue.

Choose the default settings to allow a new cluster resource group named “SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)” to be created.

Figure 21 – Allow the wizard to create a new cluster resource group for you

Choose a replicated volume that is still available, in our case the E:\ drive. Click Next to continue.

Figure 22 – Choose your replicated volume

Now you will choose the IP address you want associated with the SQL cluster resource. You could leave it set to use DHCP if you wish.

Figure 23 – Choose your SQL cluster IP address

Choose your security settings and click Next

Add any SQL Server administrators and choose your authentication mode and then click Next

Choose your Error and Usage Reporting options and click Next

You will once again see some warnings related to the validation process. You can ignore those messages as they are to be expected in a multi-site SQL Server cluster.

Click Install to begin the installation process

If everything installs as expected, you should see the following screens. Click Next then Close to finish the installation.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed the first node of your multi-site SQL Server Cluster. Now we will install the second node of the cluster.

INSTALL THE SECOND CLUSTER NODE

Installing the second cluster node is similar to installing the first node. We need to run SQL Setup once again from the command line so that we can skip the Validate process. So, from the 2^nd node, open up your command prompt and run the following command.

Install SQL 2008 SP1 (merged setup) on the 2^nd node using the following command:

Setup /SkipRules=Cluster_VerifyForErrors /Action=AddNode /INSTANCENAME=”MSSQLSERVER”

*Note: This assumes you installed the default instance on the 1^st node

That will launch the install wizard as shown below. Click OK to continue.

Enter your product key and click next.

Accept the license terms and click Next

Click install to install the Setup Support files.

You can once again ignore the warning that some cluster validation tests have been skipped. This is to be expected in a multi-site cluster and non-shared storage clusters.

Verify you are adding the node to the right instance and click Next.

Add the passwords to the service accounts and click Next

Choose your Error and Usage Reporting options and click Next

Once again, ignore the warning about the skipped operations.

Click Install to begin the installation process.

If everything goes as expected, you should see the following screen.

Now that you have a fully functional two node cluster, you probably should testing things out by doing some manual switchovers. Right click on the resource and choose “Move to node SECONDARY”.

If everything is configured properly, your Failover Cluster GUI should look as follows.

CONCLUSION

I believe that SQL clusters with replicated storage make a lot of sense. Storage has always been a single point of failure of traditional clusters. You can eliminate that single point of failure by deploying a SQL Server cluster with replicated storage from SteelEye or any other Microsoft Multi-Site Cluster replication partner. I hope you found this article informative. If you have any questions or suggestions, please add your comments!

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2009/10/07/step-by-step-configuring-a-2-node-multi-site-cluster-on-windows-server-2008-r2-%E2%80%93-part-3/

Deploy 2-node File Server Failover Cluster in Azure using ARM

July 19, 2017 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Deploy 2-node File Server Failover Cluster In Azure Using ARM

In this post we will detail the specific steps required to deploy a 2-node File Server Failover Cluster in a single region of Azure using Azure Resource Manager. I will assume you are familiar with basic Azure concepts as well as basic Failover Cluster concepts and will focus this article on what is unique about deploying a File Server Failover Cluster in Azure.

With DataKeeper Cluster Edition you are able to take the locally attached storage, whether it is Premium or Standard Disks, and replicate those disks either synchronously, asynchronously or a mix or both, between two or more cluster nodes. In addition, a DataKeeper Volume resource is registered in Windows Server Failover Clustering which takes the place of a Physical Disk resource. Instead of controlling SCSI-3 reservations like a Physical Disk Resource, the DataKeeper Volume controls the mirror direction, ensuring the active node is always the source of the mirror. As far as Failover Clustering is concerned, it looks, feels and smells like a Physical Disk and is used the same way Physical Disk Resource would be used.

Pre-Requisites

You have used the Azure Portal before and are comfortable deploying virtual machines in Azure IaaS.
Have obtained a license or eval license of SIOS DataKeeper

Deploying A File Server Failover Cluster Instance Using The Azure Portal

To build a 2-node File Server Failover Cluster Instance in Azure, we are going to assume you have a basic Virtual Network based on Azure Resource Manager and you have at least one virtual machine up and running and configured as a Domain Controller. Once you have a Virtual Network and a Domain configured, you are going to provision two new virtual machines which will act as the two nodes in our cluster.

Our environment will look like this:

DC1 – Our Domain Controller and File Share Witness
SQL1 and SQL2 – The two nodes of our File Server Cluster

Provisioning The Two Cluster Nodes (SQL1 And SQL2)

Using the Azure Portal, we will provision both SQL1 and SQL2 exactly the same way. There are numerous options to choose from including instance size, storage options, etc. This guide is not meant to be an exhaustive guide to deploying Servers in Azure as there are some really good resources out there and more published every day. However, there are a few key things to keep in mind when creating your instances, especially in a clustered environment.

Availability Set – It is important that both SQL1, SQL2 AND DC1 reside in the same availability set. By putting them in the same Availability Set we are ensuring that each cluster node and the file share witness reside in a different Fault Domain and Update Domain. This helps guarantee that during both planned maintenance and unplanned maintenance the cluster will continue to be able to maintain quorum and avoid downtime.

Figure 3 – Be sure to add both cluster nodes and the file share witness to the same Availability Set

STATIC IP ADDRESS

Once each VM is provisioned, you will want to go into the setting and change the settings so that the IP address is Static. We do not want the IP address of our cluster nodes to change.

Figure 4 – Make sure each cluster node uses a static IP

Storage

As far as Storage is concerned, you will want to consult Performance best practices for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines. In any case, you will minimally need to add at least one additional disk to each of your cluster nodes. DataKeeper can use Basic Disk, Premium Storage or even Storage Pools consisting of multiple disks in a storage pool. Just be sure to add the same amount of storage to each cluster node and configure it identically. Also, be sure to use a different storage account for each virtual machine to ensure that a problem with one Storage Account does not impact both virtual machines at the same time.

Figure 5 – make sure to add additional storage to each cluster node

Create The Cluster

Assuming both cluster nodes (SQL1 and SQL2) have been provisioned as described above and added to your existing domain, we are ready to create the cluster. Before we create the cluster, there are a few Features that need to be enabled. These features are .Net Framework 3.5 and Failover Clustering. These features need to be enabled on both cluster nodes. You will also need to enable the FIle Server Role.

Figure 6 – enable both .Net Framework 3.5 and Failover Clustering features and the File Server on both cluster nodes

Once that role and those features have been enabled, you are ready to build your cluster. Most of the steps I’m about to show you can be performed both via PowerShell and the GUI. However, I’m going to recommend that for this very first step you use PowerShell to create your cluster. If you choose to use the Failover Cluster Manager GUI to create the cluster you will find that you wind up with the cluster being issues a duplicate IP address.

Without going into great detail, what you will find is that Azure VMs have to use DHCP. By specifying a “Static IP” when we create the VM in the Azure portal all we did was create sort of a DHCP reservation. It is not exactly a DHCP reservation because a true DHCP reservation would remove that IP address from the DHCP pool. Instead, this specifying a Static IP in the Azure portal simply means that if that IP address is still available when the VM requests it, Azure will issue that IP to it. However, if your VM is offline and another host comes online in that same subnet it very well could be issued that same IP address.

There is another strange side effect to the way Azure has implemented DHCP. When creating a cluster with the Windows Server Failover Cluster GUI when hosts use DHCP (which they have to), there is not option to specify a cluster IP address. Instead it relies on DHCP to obtain an address. The strange thing is, DHCP will issue a duplicate IP address, usually the same IP address as the host requesting a new IP address. The cluster will usually complete, but you may have some strange errors and you may need to run the Windows Server Failover Cluster GUI from a different node in order to get it to run. Once you get it to run you will want to change the cluster IP address to an address that is not currently in use on the network.

You can avoid that whole mess by simply creating the cluster via Powershell and specifying the cluster IP address as part of the PowerShell command to create the cluster.

You can create the cluster using the New-Cluster command as follows:

New-Cluster -Name cluster1 -Node sql1,sql2 -StaticAddress 10.0.0.101 -NoStorage

After the cluster creation completes, you will also want to run the cluster validation by running the following command:

Test-Cluster

Figure 7 – The output of the cluster creation and the cluster validation commands

Create The File Share Witness

Because there is no shared storage, you will need to create a file share witness on another server in the same Availability Set as the two cluster nodes. By putting it in the same availability set you can be sure that you only lose one vote from your quorum at any given time. If you are unsure how to create a File Share Witness you can review this article http://www.howtonetworking.com/server/cluster12.htm. In my demo I put the file share witness on domain controller. I have published an exhaustive explanation of cluster quorums at https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/microsoft_press/2014/04/28/from-the-mvps-understanding-the-windows-server-failover-cluster-quorum-in-windows-server-2012-r2/

Install DataKeeper

After the cluster is created it is time to install DataKeeper. It is important to install DataKeeper after the initial cluster is created so the custom cluster resource type can be registered with the cluster. If you installed DataKeeper before the cluster is created you will simply need to run the install again and do a repair installation.

Figure 8 – Install DataKeeper after the cluster is created

During the installation you can take all of the default options. The service account you use must be a domain account and be in the local administrators group on each node in the cluster.

Figure 9 – the service account must be a domain account that is in the Local Admins group on each node

Once DataKeeper is installed and licensed on each node you will need to reboot the servers.

Create The DataKeeper Volume Resource

To create the DataKeeper Volume Resource you will need to start the DataKeeper UI and connect to both of the servers.
Connect to SQL1

Connect to SQL2

Once you are connected to each server, you are ready to create your DataKeeper Volume. Right click on Jobs and choose “Create Job”

Give the Job a name and description.

Choose your source server, IP and volume. The IP address is whether the replication traffic will travel.
15 - File Server Failover Cluster

Choose your target server.

Choose your options. For our purposes where the two VMs are in the same geographic region we will choose synchronous replication. For longer distance replication you will want to use asynchronous and enable some compression.

By clicking yes at the last pop-up you will register a new DataKeeper Volume Resource in Available Storage in Failover Clustering.

You will see the new DataKeeper Volume Resource in Available Storage.

Create The File Server Cluster Resource

To create the File Server Cluster Resource, we will use Powershell once again rather than the Failover Cluster interface. This is when the virtual machines are configured to use DHCP, the GUI based wizard will not prompt us to enter a cluster IP address. Instead, it will issue a duplicate IP address. To avoid this, we will use a simple powershell command to create the FIle Server Cluster Resource and specify the IP Address

Add-ClusterFileServerRole -Storage "DataKeeper Volume E" -Name FS2 -StaticAddress 10.0.0.201

Make note of the IP address you specify here. It must be a unique IP address on your network. We will use this same IP address later when we create our Internal Load Balancer.

Create The Internal Load Balancer

Here is where failover clustering in Azure is different than traditional infrastructures. The Azure network stack does not support gratuitous ARPS, so clients cannot connect directly to the cluster IP address. Instead, clients connect to an internal load balancer and are redirected to the active cluster node. What we need to do is create an internal load balancer. This can all be done through the Azure Portal as shown below.

First, create a new Load Balancer

You can use an Public Load Balancer if your client connects over the public internet. But assuming your clients reside in the same vNet, we will create an Internal Load Balancer. The important thing to take note of here is that the Virtual Network is the same as the network where your cluster nodes reside. Also, the Private IP address that you specify will be EXACTLY the same as the address you used to create the SQL Cluster Resource.

After the Internal Load Balancer (ILB) is created, you will need to edit it. The first thing we will do is to add a backend pool. Through this process you will choose the Availability Set where your SQL Cluster VMs reside. However, when you choose the actual VMs to add to the Backend Pool, be sure you do not choose your file share witness. We do not want to redirect SQL traffic to your file share witness.

The next thing we will do is add a Probe. The probe we add will probe Port 59999. This probe determines which node is active in our cluster.

And then finally, we need a load balancing rule to redirect the SMB traffic, TCP port 445 The important thing to notice in the screenshot below is the Direct Server Return is Enabled. Make sure you make that change.

445_ilb

Fix The File Server IP Resource

The final step in the configuration is to run the following PowerShell script on one of your cluster nodes. This will allow the Cluster IP Address to respond to the ILB probes and ensure that there is no IP address conflict between the Cluster IP Address and the ILB. Please take note; you will need to edit this script to fit your environment. The subnet mask is set to 255.255.255.255, this is not a mistake, leave it as is. This creates a host specific route to avoid IP address conflicts with the ILB.

# Define variables
$ClusterNetworkName = “” 
# the cluster network name 
(Use Get-ClusterNetwork on Windows Server 2012 of higher to find the name)
$IPResourceName = “” 
# the IP Address resource name 
$ILBIP = “” 
# the IP Address of the Internal Load Balancer (ILB)
Import-Module FailoverClusters
# If you are using Windows Server 2012 or higher:
Get-ClusterResource $IPResourceName | Set-ClusterParameter 
-Multiple @{Address=$ILBIP;ProbePort=59999;SubnetMask="255.255.255.255";
Network=$ClusterNetworkName;EnableDhcp=0}
# If you are using Windows Server 2008 R2 use this: 
#cluster res $IPResourceName /priv enabledhcp=0 address=$ILBIP probeport=59999  
subnetmask=255.255.255.255

Creating File Shares

You will find that using the File Share Wizard in Failover Cluster Manager does not work. Instead, you will simply create the file shares in Windows Explorer on the active node. Failover clustering automatically picks up those shares and puts them in the cluster.

Note that the”Continuous Availability” option of a file share is not supported in this configuration.

Conclusion

You should now have a functioning File Server Failover Cluster. If you have ANY problems, please reach out to me on Twitter @daveberm. Need a DataKeeper evaluation key fill out the form at http://us.sios.com/clustersyourway/cta/14-day-trial and SIOS will send an evaluation key sent out to you.

Reproduced with permission from Clusteringformeremortals

July 21, 2015: SIOS Is Proud To Sponsor IndyPASS — Indianapolis SQL Server User Group

June 26, 2015 by Margaret Hoagland Leave a Comment

SIOS is proud to sponsor IndyPASS’ July 21st SQL Server User Group Meetup in Indianapolis. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend joining. Production Support DBA, David Maxwell will be presenting “Turbo-Charged Transaction Logs.”

Register Now

July 21, 2015 at 5:30 PM

Location: Apparatus (Map) | 1401 North Meridian Street | Indianapolis, IN, 46202
Cost: This is a free event – Food and Drinks will also be provided at no cost.

Topic of the Evening: Turbo-Charged Transaction Logs
Presented by: David Maxwell (@dmmaxwell)

The transaction log is one of the most critical, yet often misunderstood components of SQL Server. From out of control log growth to very long startup times, problems with the transaction log can cause a lot of pain. In this session, we’ll look at how the transaction log works and how to optimize it’s performance. You’ll learn how to determine the right settings for maximum throughput, and what to do when things get out of control.

This groups meeting registration is managed through meetup.com. If you are not a member of the group, just click the join group button. This group is open and everyone is welcome. You will need to be a member of the group to see additional meeting and group details.

July 16, 2015: SIOS is Proud to Sponsor the Denver SQL Server User Group

June 22, 2015 by Margaret Hoagland Leave a Comment

SIOS is proud to sponsor the Denver SQL Server User Group’s July 16th meeting in Denver. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend joining. The topic and and speaker are currently being confirmed. That information will be posted as soon as it is made available.

Registration/More Info:
DenverSQL Meetup Group | Denver.SQLPASS.org

July 16, 2015 at 5:30 PM
Location:
Microsoft (Map)
7595 Technology Way, Suite 400
Denver, CO 80237
Cost:
This is a free event – Food and Drinks will also be provided at no cost.

Press Release: SIOS Technical Evangelist to Discuss Protecting Business Critical Applications in Cloud Environments at Cloud Expo

June 4, 2015 by sios2017

SAN MATEO, CA – June 4, 2015 – SIOS Technology Corp. (www.us.sios.com), maker of SAN and #SANLess clustering software products, today announced that SIOS Senior Technical Evangelist and Microsoft Clustering MVP, David Bermingham will present a session about protecting business critical applications in cloud environments at Cloud Expo taking place next week in New York, NY.

Titled, “Protecting mission critical applications in cloud environments,” David’s session is scheduled for Thursday, June 11 at 4:50 pm at the Javits Center, New York, NY. For more information about the Cloud Expo or to register, visit here.

Gartner predicts that the bulk of new IT spending by 2016 will be for cloud platforms and applications and that nearly half of large enterprises will have cloud deployments by the end of 2017. The benefits of the cloud may be clear for applications that can tolerate brief periods of downtime, but for critical applications like SQL Server, Oracle and SAP, companies need a strategy for HA and DR protection. By adding SANLess clustering software as an ingredient to Windows Server Failover Clustering, companies can provide HA and DR protection in a cloud where traditional shared-storage clusters may be impractical or impossible. Attendees at David’s session will learn the truths and myths of HA and DR in cloud deployments that can dramatically reduce data center costs and risks.

About the Speaker

David Bermingham is recognized as a high availability expert and has been honored by his peers by being elected to be a Microsoft MVP in Clustering since 2010. David’s work as Senior Technical Evangelist at SIOS Technology Corp. has him focused on helping enterprise companies provide high availability and disaster recovery solutions for their business critical applications.

About SIOS Technology Corp.

SIOS Technology Corp. makes SAN and #SANLess software solutions that make clusters easy to use and easy to own. An essential part of any cluster solution, SIOS SAN and #SANLess software provides the flexibility to build Clusters Your Way™ to protect your choice of Windows or Linux environment in any configuration (or combination) of physical, virtual and cloud (public, private, and hybrid) without sacrificing performance or availability. The unique SIOS #SANLess clustering solution allows you to configure clusters with local storage, eliminating both the cost and the single-point-of-failure risk of traditional shared (SAN) storage.

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

# # #

SIOS, SIOS Technology, SIOS DataKeeper, SIOS Protection Suite, Clusters Your Way, and associated logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of SIOS Technology Corp. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.