SIOS SANless clusters High-availability Machine Learning monitoring
Question: William asks “I have a SQL Server which needs both high availability and high-speed storage. Even SAN storage with SSD based hard drives isn’t providing the performance levels that we are looking for, while still getting the failover cluster HA solution that we need for our SQL Server 2008 R2 database?”
Author: Denny Cherry (@MrDenny)
Source: SQL Server Pro / SQLMag.com
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and SIOS Technology Corp, an AWS Partner Network (APN) Technology Partner, invite you to attend this live webinar to learn how to optimize mission critical SQL Server deployments on Amazon EC2.
Learn how to take advantage of the cost benefits and flexibility of Amazon EC2 while maintaining protection with native Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering – all without shared storage.
Solution Architects, Developer, Development Leads and other SQL Professionals
DataKeeper Cluster Edition maintains real-time replication of data files and storage metadata. This information is synchronized across multiple nodes within and across Amazon EC2 Availability Zones. This host-based solution minimizes performance impact on application servers and networks. Even encrypted or open files are no problem for the solution, which uses block-level replication to maximize data protection and availability.
The solution enables SQL Server failover clustering by removing the need for shared storage. And the solution integrates smoothly into your Windows environment. There’s no need for expensive, energy-hungry SAN storage, allowing your organization to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and take full advantage of cloud solutions.
The solution runs asynchronous replication for better data consistency. And block-level replication reduces overhead by updating only changed data. In a cloud environment, where costs rise as more data is transferred, this type of precision is especially important. Sergey notes, “It is important not to discount the ‘Cloud Economics’ aspect of the solution. The amount of data transferred in a cloud environment between Availability Zones costs money. With DataKeeper Cluster Edition, we enable Microsoft SQL Server failover clustering in the Amazon EC2 environment and increase performance while reducing cost, leveraging the precision of block-level replication.”
Of course, the solution isn’t limited to SQL Server implementations. DataKeeper Cluster Edition can also help to protect mission-critical workloads for RedHat, CentOS, and SuSE Linux variances. In combination with Amazon EC2 environments, the solution works especially well for organizations that want to simplify their environments and reduce costs without sacrificing availability or data protection.
Consult the experts at SIOS for answers to your questions about SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition and what it can do for you.
Experience matters, especially when administering database systems. The lessons we learn early in our careers, particularly the painful ones, stick with us a long time. This is mostly a good thing, but sometimes we apply the wrong lesson to the task in front of us. In database administration, it’s easy to head in the wrong direction, especially when we’re trying to balance the need for both efficiency and performance.
New lesson, different day
Most database administrators did not begin their careers as DBAs. Most of us started in development or system administration and eventually specialized in database systems. Unfortunately, some of the lessons learned along the way in those other fields are the exact wrong ones for a database system.
For example, system admins have to manage storage as efficiently as possible. Many central storage systems are sold to reduce storage use through consolidation. System and storage virtualization also seek to efficiently use technical resources by assigning the minimum resources possible to a particular workload.
DBAs also have to manage storage resources. The problem comes when DBAs manage storage the same way they did as general IT system administrators.
As DBAs, our primary goal is to make data usable for the business. While we don’t want to waste our platform resources, we also don’t want to cause problems through false efficiency.
Managing for best resource efficiency often leads to performance problems. This is especially true when trying to minimize the storage footprint of a Microsoft SQL Server database system.
5 Database Practices That Are Hurting Your Performance
Several common practices actually trade performance for space efficiency:
The last practice in the list is particularly frustrating. All businesses should have adequate backup storage to meet their recovery targets. Saving a small amount on the cheapest resource available (second- and third-tier storage) while wasting the most expensive resource available (skilled DBA time) is mismanagement at its worst.
Business management emphasizes cost savings, mainly because that is easily measured. But what business executives and users really want is a zero-problem IT infrastructure, including a database platform that performs quickly and consistently. Saving a few hundred dollars worth of storage space probably won’t even get you an “attaboy” from your boss. A slow database system or a missing critical backup will get noticed — just not the way you want.
When you are looking at your database management practices and processes, ask yourself, “What goal does this process enable?” Are you managing for performance or managing for space?
Consult the experts at SIOS to discuss solutions for your particular environment. Experienced technicians at SIOS can provide helpful insight to customers who are implementing high-performance, highly available SQL Server systems.