SQL Server 2012 - AlwaysOn

Joo Loureiro
Microsoft

About Joo Loureiro

SQL Server Senior Support Escalation Engineer (3rd tier support level) Bridge between frontline support and SQL product group SQL Server Denali TAP Escalation Engineer (part of SQL Server Beta program) Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/joaol (joaol@microsoft.com) Engaged on Service Packs, hot fixes and new product releases.

SQL Server High Availability Retrospective

SQL Server High Availability Today
Enterprise customers are being successful
Dell, HP, Bwin, ServiceU, CareGroup, BigHammer

but
Solutions fragmented Lack important flexibility points

Initiated holistic review of SQL HA and DR

Looked at customer scenarios (RTO and RPO requirements, Local HA and DR) Enterprise blockers Mission Critical Needs (online ops, patching, planned and unplanned maintenance) Failover requirements and hardware usage Future needs

Mission Critical High Availability Solution

Meets mission critical high availability SLA

Integrated

Flexible

Efficient

AlwaysOn Availability Groups

AlwaysOn Availability Groups is a new feature that enhances and combines database mirroring and log shipping capabilities

Flexible
Multi-database failover Multiple secondaries
Total of 4 secondaries 2 synchronous secondaries 1 automatic failover pair

Integrated
Application failover using virtual name Configuration Wizard Dashboard System Center Integration Rich diagnostic infrastructure File-stream replication Replication publisher failover

Efficient

Active Secondary
Readable
Secondary Backup from Secondary

Synchronous and asynchronous data movement Built in compression and encryption Automatic and manual failover Flexible failover policy Automatic Page Repair

Automation using power-shell

A Flexible Solution AlwaysOn provides the flexibility of different HA configurations

A A A A
A A

Direct attached storage local, regional and geo target

Shared Storage, regional and geo secondaries

Synchronous Data Movement

Asynchcronous Data Movement

Mission Critical Requirements

Zero data loss is critical for the business Fast application recovery during planned and unplanned downtime Redundancy across 3 datacenters Application databases and dependencies failover together

demo
Deploy using AlwaysOn Availability Groups

Application Failover
Availability Groups Listener allow applications to failover seamlessly to any secondary

Application reconnects using a virtual name after a failover to a secondary

ServerA
HR DB HR DB

ServerB
HR DB

ServerC

AG_HR
HR_VNN

Primary

Primary Secondary

Secondary Secondary

Application retry during failover Connect to new primary once -server HR_Listener;failover is complete catalog HRDB and the listener is online

What about Server Objects?

Introducing Contained Databases or CDBs

Unit of application programmability in Denali

A DB which establishes a boundary between application and server

CDB can be part of an availability group and can failover across replicas Authentication information moves with the CDB

CDBs sever the userlogin relationship

Windows users no longer need matching logins Users with passwords replace SQL logins

Limitation Other objects, like jobs are not contained and has to be managed

Availability Group Architecture

Windows Server Failover Cluster

Database Active Log Synchronization

Database Active Log Synchronization

Availability Group uses Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) for

WSFC Common Microsoft Availability Platform

Inter-node health detection, Failover coordination, Primary health detection, Distributed data store for settings and state, Distributed change notifications

AlwaysOn Active Secondary

IT efficiency and cost-effectiveness is critical for businesses Idle hardware is not an option anymore AlwaysOn Active Secondary enables efficient utilization of high availability hardware resources thereby improving overall IT efficiency Active Secondary can be utilized for Balancing read-only workloads Offloading Backup Operations

Active Secondary Making Secondary Readable

SQLservr.exe InstanceA

Primary Secondary

Secondary Primary

SQLservr.exe
InstanceB

DB1

DB2

DB1

DB2

Reports

Reports

Readable secondary allow offloading read queries to secondary Close to real-time data, latency of log synchronization impact data freshness

Read-Only Client Connectivity

Read-Only client connection behavior determined by Availability Replica Option+ ApplicationIntent Property
ApplicationIntent is a connection property Replica option determines whether a replica is enabled for read access when in a secondary role

Read-Only Routing enables redirection of client connection to new secondary on role change
Enable seamless redirection of application connection across replicas without manual intervention

Read Workload Impact

Concurrency and Blocking
REDO can get blocked by reporting workload REDO thread and read workload can deadlock

Solution

Internally map read workload to non blocking isolation levels (no application changes required)
Read Uncommitted Snapshot Isolation Read Committed Snapshot Isolation Repeatable Read Snapshot Isolation Serializable Snapshot Isolation Ignore all locking hints

Never choose REDO as deadlock victim

Result

Blocking and deadlock between Reporting workload (i.e. Query) and REDO thread is eliminated No issues with DML (INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE) as it is not allowed Will incur additional cost of row versioning.

demo
Readable Secondary

Active Secondary Enabling Backup on Secondary

R/W workload

Secondary

Backups

Primary Secondary

Backups can be done on any replica of a Backups database Backups on primary replica still works Log backups done on all replicas form a single log chain Backups Database Recovery Advisor makes restores simple

Restrictions, cautions, and gotchas

Differential backups are not supported on secondary Only Copy-only full backups are supported on secondary
The only distinction is the differential bitmap clearing

Advisable for backups to be stored centrally

demo
Backup from Secondary

Key Enhancements
Fast instance failover through predictable database recovery time Native support for multi-site clustering across subnets enable DR using failover cluster instances Flexible Failover Policy
Eliminates false failover Configurable failure condition levels Better diagnostics

SMB support enables

consolidation of more than 26 instances

Support TEMPDB on local drive

Introduce Flexible Failover Policy

Flexible Failover Policy provides administrators control over the conditions when an automatic failover should be initiated.

Diagnostics

Configurable options eliminate false failover Improved logging for better diagnostics

Reducing Planned Downtime

Support for Windows Server Core
Reduce OS patching by as much as 50-60%

Support for rolling upgrade and patching of SQL Server for both Availability Groups and Failover Cluster Instance Fast failover time for both Availability Groups and Failover Cluster Instances New online operations supported
LOB Index Adding of column with default

Windows Server Pre-Reqs

KB 976097 - Hotfix to add support for asymmetric storages to the Failover Cluster Management MMC snap-in for a failover cluster that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2
Supports SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances with AlwaysOn Availability Groups

KB 2494036 - A hotfix is available to let you configure a cluster node that does not have quorum votes in Windows Server 2008 and in Windows Server 2008 R2
Supports configuring optimal quorum with non-automatic failover targets

All nodes should be in the same AD domain To create WFSC cluster user running creation must have:
Domain account Administrator on all machines Have Create Computer objects and Read All Properties rights in AD

Detailed Article: http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/library/cc731002(WS.10).aspx

Quorum Configuration
Quorum: need majority of votes to operate and avoid split brain Two-Steps process:
1. Select nodes to vote (KB 2494036)

1 vote if nodes that host a replica that is currently: 0 votes for rest of nodes

Primary (if primary is an FCI include all possible owner nodes for that FCI) An auto failover target if the primary is also configured for auto failover

2.

Odd number of votes, use Node Majority Even number of votes, add a witness by either:

Select the quorum type:

Adding an additional witness node and use Node Majority Using Node and File Share Majority with a protected file share (blog with details)

Re-evaluate and adjust quorum after manual failover outside automatic target

demo
Disaster Recovery

New Topology

A A A
A

Reports Backups
Synchronous Data Movement Asynchcronous Data Movement

Resources Links
Denali AlwaysOn Resource Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/gg490638(enus,MSDN.10)
RCO download (available soon) Documentation MSDN forums Microsoft Connect AlwaysOn Blog

SQL Server 2012 Highlights

High Availability
SQL Server AlwaysOn Reliable, Integrated Failover Detection Application Centric Failover Multiple Secondaries Readable Secondaries Online Operations HA for StreamInsight Windows Server Core Support

Scalability & Performance

Up to 15K Partitions/Table Column Store Index, Apollo Fast FILESTEAM Fast Full-Text Search Fast Spatial Performance DBC & OLTP Appliances/RAs

Security & Manageability

User-Defined Server Roles Contained Database Authentication Distributed Replay Audit Enhancements Management Pack for High Availability Backup Secondaries Default Schema for Windows Group Active Directory w/ SharePoint for SSRS

Beyond Relational
Microsoft Project Juneau Win32 Access to Database files FileTable Semantic Search Platform Full Globe Spatial Support DAC Enhancements ODBC for Linux Hybrid Applications with SQL Azure

Web & Breadth

PHP Driver Local DB Runtime UTF-16 Paging for result sets JDBC 4.0 driver

Business Intelligence
Unified Semantic Model Crescent

EIM
SSIS Server

Data Quality

In-memory BI for corporate Alerting

Enhanced MDS MDS add-in for Excel

Sysprep for AS

Support for ARM processors

PowerPivot Enhancements Reporting as SharePoint Shared Service

Thank You

 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.