Continuing my 2017 series on unattended Microsoft SQL installs, this post will cover SQL 2014 on Windows Server 2012 R2. If you want the unattended install for SQL 2012, check out my post here. I'm using the same drive configuration for SQL 2014, as I did for 2012. These drives...
As we near the end of this installation series, there are a couple of final areas to cover. Up in this installment is configuring SSL. Now you may be thinking, SQL and SSL, really? Yes, for a good number of years SQL has supported the use of SSL for database...
We are nearing the end of the SQL 2014 AlwaysOn Availability Group series, with just Kerberos and SSL left to configure. In this installment we tackle Kerberos. Depending on your environment, you may or may not need Kerberos configured. Kerberos is only effective when using Windows authentication to your SQL server, not...
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 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...