The other day I had the occasion where I wanted to add back the Windows Server 2012 R2 GUI to a server core installation. This was a test environment, and for what I was testing I felt the GUI provided a more streamlined experience. Server core certainly has its places,...
Now that we have our SQL AAG up and running, there's still some configuration left to do. In this installment I cover SQL 2014 file share witness confiugration. In my example I'm doing a 2-node AAG, which means that we need a file share witness to help establish quorum. If...
After a brief pause in this SQL 2014 AlwaysOn Availability Group series, we are resuming with the server configuration. In this installment we will configure the Windows firewall to allow the two SQL servers to communicate to each other, configure a shared folder for the SQL replication, and finally configure...
In very exciting news Nutanix announced the industry's first hyperconverged all flash appliance, the NX-9240.  What makes this puppy special? Well it's a 2U appliance which contains two compute nodes, each with 6 SSDs. The SSDs can be either 800GB or the 1.6TB models. This means up to 19.2TB of RAW...
Sometimes Nutanix customers or prospective customers will want to perform IOmeter testing to ensure the block is performing up to par. Or maybe they are upgrading to a new NOS release or doing a POC and want to ballpark performance. Performing benchmarks on a Hypeconvered platform like Nutanix is a bit different than the...
This post covers my approach to writing my VCDX-DCV Architecture Guide. I've been debating in my mind for a while whether I should write this post or not. I hesitated for a few reasons. First, I'm just a regular guy that happened to jump through the VCDX hoops and have no "insider"...
In this blog installment we configure some critical SQL maintenance checks and run a configuration check script to see how well our SQL server is configured. A big shout out to Brent Ozar and Ola Hallengren for their outstanding SQL Server scripts and blog resources. These scripts are must-haves for all SQL...
In this installment of the SQL 2014 Always-on Availability how-to we are configuring two very important parameters: SQL server max memory and email alert notifications. Both settings are often overlooked, yet are critical to a properly performing and healthy SQL server cluster. Even if you are using a tool like SCOM or...
One of the most important aspects of SQL performance is TempDB. Applications can use TempDB as a scratch space, and in most cases you should not rely on just a single TempDB file. If the number of vCPUs is less than 8, then configure an equal number of TempDB files...
 We've now come to the point where we need to install and configure the Windows cluster role. Even though SQL AAGs don't use shared disks like a traditional failover cluster, AAGs do rely on the Windows cluster service. We will also be implementing the Cluster Aware updating feature. This is...
In this fifth installment of the SQL 2015 AAG series, we do an unattended installation of Node B, using a modified INI file produced from our Node A installation. This streamlines the installation process, reduces human error, and makes your installation repeatable. This will probably be the shortest installment, since...
VMware has just published a KB article (KB 2086946) Â on using Microsoft failover clustering services to support high availability of vCenter 5.5 U2. My assumption for this support is the demise of the vCenter Heartbeat product. I appreciate VMware giving customers a new choice for vCenter high availability. Slightly buried...