​In this installment we will perform several tasks needed to successfully configure a SQL 2017 Always-On Availability Group (AAG). Tasks include Windows firewall rules (if you use the Windows firewall), configuring a replication folder, creating a small sample database, and finally configuring the SQL AAG.​We will need to create two...
​Now that we have the Windows failover cluster service installed and configured with a management point, we need to configure a witness. A witness is a 'third party' that enables monitoring of the cluster node status and assist with failing over SQL services. The witness can live either in the...
Now that SQL 2017 is installed on both nodes, we need to configure the Windows Cluster service. Although SQL AAGs don't use the 'traditional' clustering technology of shared SCSI disks and a quorum disk, the clustering service is required to manage the state and failover the AAG instances.For this procedure...
​This is the fifth installment of the SQL 2017 AAG series, where we do an unattended install of SQL on node B. We will use a modified configuration INI file that was generated from the node A installation. This reduces human error and makes your installs repeatable. With the use...
​This is Part 4 of the SQL 2017 Always-On Availability Group installation series. In this post we will manually install SQL 2017 on the first node of the cluster. We will then capture an answer file for SQL, which will be used ​for an unattended SQL installation on Node B...
This is Part 3 of the SQL 2017 Always-On Availability group series where we setup two service accounts and a security group. One account is for the database engine and the other is for the SQL agent. In order for Kerberos to work properly the database engine account must be...
First up in this series is deploying your two Windows Server 2016 VMs, which will be the SQL 2017 Always-on availability group nodes. Each VM should be configured with the same VM hardware properties. Selecting the right virtual hardware configuration is important, regardless of which hypervisor you are using. Memory,...
​In this series of posts I will show you how to configure SQL 2017 on Windows Server 2016 with Always-on Availability Groups. I will also be pointing out Nutanix AHV and VMware vSphere configuration best practices along the way. As you will see, 98% of the configuration is hypervisor independent.​SQL...
Session INF4945 Why is vCenter HA important? Primary administrative console Critical component in end-to-end cloud provisioning Foundation for VDI Backup and DR solutions rely on vCenter vCenter target availability is 99.99% from VMware's design perspective (5 min a month) Make every layer of the vCenter stack HA vCenter DB...
Session: INF4535 Duncan Epping, Frank Denneman Introduction to SDA (Software defined availability): VM, server, storage, data center, networking, management. Business only cares about the application, not the underlying infrastructure. vSphere HA Configured through vCenter but not dependent on it Each host has an agent (FDM) will be installed for monitoring...
Session BCO2701. This was very fast paced, and I missed jotting down a lot of the slide content. If you attended VMworld then I recommend you listen to the recording to get all of the good bits of information. vSphere HA - what's new in 5.5 VSAN Support AppHA integration...