Availability groups can no longer be considered new. The feature was released in SQL Server 2012 but I often notice that SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances (FCIs) are much better understood. For a very long time, when people thought about…
I have enjoyed working with Availability Groups ever since they were released with SQL Server 2012. Each major version since, the feature has improved and along the way so has my knowledge of them. Knowledge born from mistakes and lessons…
In this post, I am going to demonstrate how to configure virtual network gateways in Azure using Resource Manager. This is important for connecting two Azure regions together, enabling you to setup high-availability and/or disaster recovery systems. 1. Resource Groups…
With all of the high-availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) features, the database administrator must understand how much data loss and downtime is possible under the worst case scenarios. Data loss affects your ability to meet recovery point objectives (RPO)…
Last time, I discussed how to limit data duplication between data centers as a cost-effective option with an Availability Group. In this post I will take cost reduction one step further by short-changing the disaster recovery site. Disaster recovery on the…
Last time, I discussed how to meet high-availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) using four stand-alone SQL Server instances in an Availability Group. In this post, I will add SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances to the mix and cut the…
Last time, I discussed the simplest Availability Group architecture, with only a single site. In this post I will expand upon the same architecture, adding in a second site to achieve more than just high-availability. Cross sub-net availability group In…
Availability groups offer us a variety of features. They offer high-availability (HA), they can give disaster recovery (DR), and they have connectivity and off-loading features but we have to decide how to use them. This is the first of a four-part…
The standard backup strategy seems to always include backups running at midnight, hoping that they complete before anyone starts using the applications. There is value in performing maintenance on off-hours. However, many applications do not have off-hours or our databases grow…
Updated: 9/8/2017 In addition to the release based method demonstrated below. I created a SQL Agent job based method using dbatools here. This method was created in response to a lot of feedback from DBAs like you. Original After we…