AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server) Connecting To #Azure #part3 #AlwaysOn #winserv #SQL #msteched #mvpbuzz

As we did AlwaysOn FCI we make a step into the AlwaysOn AG. The Configuration options are divided with a lot of options. But the methods are the same. Pardon I did already a post https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/windows-server-2012-r2-with-sql-server-2014-failover-clustered-instance-step-by-step-alwayson-availabilitygroups-what-can-go-wrong-part-1/

As there are a lot of extra options to extend your SQL server and give your DB the HA feeling. I hope the next post will give you insight in a how to get there. In a follow up post I will explain the Azure and extra options of SQL Server 2014.

AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server)

The AlwaysOn Availability Groups feature is a high-availability and disaster recovery solution that provides an enterprise level alternative to database mirroring. An availability group supports a failover environment for a discrete set of user databases, known as availability databases, that fail over together. An availability group supports a set of read-write primary databases and one to four sets of corresponding secondary databases.

Deploying AlwaysOn Availability Groups requires a Windows Server Failover Cluster. To be enabled for AlwaysOn Availability Groups, an instance of SQL Server must reside on a Windows Server Failover Cluster node, and the Windows Server Failover Cluster and node must be online. Furthermore, each availability replica of a given availability group must reside on a different node of the same Windows Server Failover Cluster.

AlwaysOn Availability Groups supports cross-cluster migration of availability groups for deployments to a new Windows Server Failover Clustering. A cross-cluster migration moves one availability group or a batch of availability groups to the new, destination WSFC cluster with minimal downtime.

By implementing AlwaysOn SQL Server FCI an availability replica can be hosted by either a standalone instance of SQL Server or an FCI instance. Only one FCI partner can host a replica for a given availability group.

AlwaysOn Availability Groups does not depend on any form of shared storage. However, if you use a SQL Server failover cluster instance (FCI) to host one or more availability replicas, each of those FCIs will require shared storage as per standard SQL Server failover cluster instance installation.

You might need to configure a Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) cluster to include shared disks that are not available on all nodes. For example, consider a WSFC cluster across two data centers with three nodes. Two of the nodes host a SQL Server failover clustering instance (FCI) in the primary data center and have access to the same shared disks. The third node hosts a stand-alone instance of SQL Server in a different data center and does not have access to the shared disks from the primary data center. This WSFC cluster configuration supports the deployment of an availability group if the FCI hosts the primary replica and the stand-alone instance hosts the secondary replica.

AlwaysOn Availability Groups

I already had my cluster in place with the SQL AlwaysOn FCI and I have also installed a Second Cluster and a Second Instance on the cluster and already extended the SQL site to Azure and with several standalone server.

Before we start we need to enable the AlwaysOn HA option in on the server this is only done on the running server and is cluster aware. One setting for all the nodes for the same instance!

When we tried to enable the AG it is grayed out. in the SQL management.

Go to the SQL Server Configuration Manager

When you are connecting to the passive node on the cluster you will see this, on a standalone install you can only connect to the active node.

Go to the other node and Set this setting. You can only change this setting on the running node that hold the SQL server

Now that we enabled the AlwaysOn Availability Groups we can start the wizard in SQL

Pick a name for the AG

I just created a dummy DB just to set this up and I will later Add the real DB.

The dummy DB needs to have a full Backup ! So If your DB is as large as a TB a full backup is needed.

This is a interesting Screen Lots of Options and also Connections To Azure.

First we do a on premise connection and build a Replica to Azure.

and make a choice “ add Replica “ When we select the add replica a SQL login screen will popup.

Remenber you need to connect to the replica SQL server.

This server is my standalone instance but installed on a failover cluster.

and as you can see I connected My Cluster SQL Server with the CSV installation now to a local SQL instance installed on Cluster Node 4

Some basics you need to know when connecting :

All the cluster nodes must be in the same Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) domain.
Each availability replica in an availability group must reside on a different node of the same Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) cluster.
The cluster creator must have the following accounts and permissions:
- Have a domain account in the domain where the cluster will exist.
- Have local administrator permissions on each cluster node.
- Have Create Computer objects and Read All Properties permissions in AD DS. For more information, see Failover Cluster Step-by-Step Guide: Configuring Accounts in Active Directory.

The Chosen Server is selected and added to secondary. In a cluster there is no automatically failover!

Readable secondary: No
In the secondary role, this availability replica will not allow any connections. I’ll use this pure as a backup and no changes will be made in the backup location. If the cluster is failing I have more problems than a not working Application.

All the options can be set but If you have multiple instances (AlwaysOn FCI ) and installed a local standalone Instance You may need to change the Endpoint Port! the default is 5022. I changed the port to 5023 just to make sure that there is no problem on my server.

Changing the port is easy “ SELECT * FROM sys.tcp_endpoints “ will show you the ports.

With “ ALTER ENDPOINT [hadr_endpoint] AS TCP (listener_port = 5023) “ you change the port to a better one.

Normally If you run this wizard and doing this steps you are fine, but in my demo site I had already a connection to Azure and therefor my listener want not only a local IP but also an Azure IP as described in the error message.

But this error is not saying he you need to do this again no simple add an IP address to your listener You can Add this by hand or create listener in SQL

As you could see I needed to add a second IP for my listener that is I already setup a failover to azure.

In the fist step we could choose Azure Replica or a replica

And I dis the Azure Replica and If you are not already connected and added the thumbprint to your SQL server then you need to do this.

Just click Download and the Azure Login will popup and you need to login with the Azure Admin account that can create the Azure VM

When check the down the Azure login screen will pop up

a quick connection screen will popup and does fill in your subscriptions. If you have multiple just pick the right one.

So after connecting and downloading you will have the following. Reminder there is only creating NEW VM available ! If you want to use an existing VM then use the add replica just as in a normal situation.

The bad thing is here you can not pick a SQL server that already is build. But in the Screenshots you will see this is much easier. But it would be nice to tweak this a bit. It Would be handy if you could also pick an existing VM.

After filling in my name and version Size We can go to the next step. keep in mind you can always lower the size of the VM but now it is faster and the setup process will be quicker.

As you can see the Azure Replica server is added.

As I connected the Azure SQL with a Azure Gateway to my LAB environment we can share files thru the domain.

The wizard kick in and we have to wait until it is done. I did not create a listener for this, I just want to replicate the data to Azure.

Real Pity that there is no export to script I would like to see the script that created my azure SQL VM

The progress screen an this can take a while. With a quick peek in Azure We can see this.

This is a Critical Point I have done this now several times and sometimes it fails in a time out , and I found out that I used most of the time a small server and then the script will fail with “Error” so a quick tip use the default size and adjust this after the creation.

Checking the VM 4 cores and with an extra disk from 1TB holding my DB

My Lessons learned

As you can see there are multiple disks and the Wizard has run successfully.

My source was clustered and the DB is running on a CSV. Witch s a bad choice for running a Replica. The reason is the Replica wizard want to see the same disk and placing the DB files on C is no problem but a CSV volume placed C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1\MSSQL12.MSSQL001\MSSQL\DATA

and this path is available for every cluster node and therefore also in the Azure cloud. and the “ normal” wizard tells me he the DB is already there. but now this step is skipped.

Second mistake I used a sample DB. there is no way I can add a second DB because of the CSV problem “ Database is already there “ and this is the Source DB Winking smile I think this will be better in the next version. Or not using CSV with AlwaysOn AG

Now that the wizard is done and a lot of scripting is passed the line to azure. But what is changed and does it work ?

no votes and an extra node

The replica is created and as shown in the dashboard replicated.

Note:

The Following Issue can happen when you use CSV and or you want to create a replica from FCI to FCI. The reason is the disk letter need to be the same on source and destination, as the CSV volume is mounted to every node and therefor the DB is already there and the setup will fail.

Right I use CSV but is the CSV replicated to Azure Yes the cluster does this! But there is no disk mounted in azure and all the files will be placed on the c drive! and the replica can not be created on the location because the source DB is there. If you create the replica by hand you can do this but not by default with the wizard. just a reminder when you playing with this.

There are some options when you enable AlwaysOn the easiest way is having standalone SQL server running on a cluster node. More advanced is using AlwaysOn FCI. But all this can be done just test everything before you go in production . So that you know how your configuration is working.

And just because you can will not say this is your best solution or design. There are many options and will grow are products evolve.

SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Group concepts

A SQL Server Availability Group enables you to specify a set of databases that you want to fail over together as a single entity. When an availability group fails over to a target instance or target server, all the databases in the group fail over also. Because SQL Server 2012 can host multiple availability groups on a single server, you can configure AlwaysOn to fail over to SQL Server instances on different servers. This reduces the need to have idle high performance standby servers to handle the full load of the primary server, which is one of the many benefits of using availability groups.

An availability group consists of the following components:

Replicas, which are a discrete set of user databases called availability databases that fail over together as a single unit. Every availability group supports one primary replica and up to four secondary replicas.
A specific instance of SQL Server to host each replica and to maintain a local copy of each database that belongs to the availability group.

Replicas and failover

The primary replica makes the availability databases available for read-write connections from clients and sends transaction log records for each primary database to every secondary replica. Each secondary replica applies transaction log records to its secondary databases.

All replicas can run under asynchronous-commit mode, or up to three of them can run under synchronous-commit mode. For more information about synchronous and asynchronous commit mode, see Availability Modes (AlwaysOn Availability Groups).

Note Note:

Database issues, such as a database becoming suspect due to a loss of a data file, deletion of a database, or corruption of a transaction log do not cause failovers.

Read the following articles to learn required and important concepts about SQL Server AlwaysOn technology:

For details about the benefits of AlwaysOn Availability Groups and an overview of AlwaysOn Availability Groups terminology, see AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server).
For detailed information about prerequisites, see Prerequisites, Restrictions, and Recommendations for AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server). This article contains the following information:
- Windows Server system requirements and recommendations
- SQL Server instance prerequisites and restrictions
- Prerequisites and restrictions for using a SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) to host an availability replica
Availability group prerequisites and restrictions
Availability database prerequisites and restrictions

AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances SQL Server 2014 in #part2 #azure #winserv #SQL #msteched

As described in the other post AlwaysOn Options the First AlwaysOn option is the FCI version.

AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances (SQL Server)

Failover cluster instance (FCI) is in short the old active/passive configuration – Protection level SQL Server / instance

As part of the SQL Server AlwaysOn offering, AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances leverages Windows Server Failover Clustering functionality to provide local high availability through redundancy at the server-instance level—a failover cluster instance (FCI).

An FCI is a single instance of SQL Server that is installed across Windows Server Failover Clustering nodes and, possibly, across multiple subnets. On the network, an FCI appears to be an instance of SQL Server running on a single computer, but the FCI provides failover from one Windows Server Failover Clustering node to another if the current node becomes unavailable.

Building the Basic Cluster

The Basic is a Cluster based on Hyper-v with the shared VHDX option. So starting with a PowerShell script that Creates a Two node Cluster and with a file share witness. You can easily change the PowerShell script and use this in your own environment. ( Make sure when you grab the script the “ are correct. )

#Install cluster options
Get-WindowsFeature Failover-Clustering
install-WindowsFeature “Failover-Clustering”,”RSAT-Clustering” -IncludeAllSubFeature
#Create cluster validation report
Test-Cluster -Node mvpsql141,mvpsql142
#Create cluster
New-Cluster -Name MVPSQL1401 -Node mvpsql141,mvpsql142 -NoStorage -StaticAddress “10.255.255.71″
#Add disks to the cluster
Get-ClusterAvailableDisk -Cluster MVPSQL1401
Get-ClusterAvailableDisk -Cluster MVPSQL1401 |Add-ClusterDisk
#Add disk to CSV
Add-ClusterSharedVolume -Cluster MVPSQL1401 -Name “Cluster Disk 1″
#Set Cluster Quorum
Set-ClusterQuorum -Cluster MVPSQL1401 -FileShareWitness \\mvpdc01\cluster
#set network configuration
(Get-ClusterNetwork “Cluster Network 1”). Role =3

(Get-ClusterNetwork “Cluster Network 2”). Role =1

Remember this is a Lab environment

Now that the Cluster is up and running we can start with the next steps.

This Cluster will be the basic of all SQL installations. Speaking off SQL Installations I use only 2014 SQL servers and guess what it has new options that I will show you later.

AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances (SQL Server)

Well now that the cluster is ready we will deploy SQL 2014 ENT to the cluster, everybody can follow a wizard So we do as usual a Command line install based on ini files. This works the best and the result is always the same. But you can use also VMM or SCCM to do this.

First I use My SQL Ini files, If you don’t have the ini files no problem You can easily create them during the SQL setup. But if you install only one SQL server there is no point of doing this. Only just because you can Winking smile

And If you want to install this by Gui Fine just remember, I always install in advanced mode If one step is failing I can rerun the second step without the long wait of installing the whole server. Setups are always failing at the end.

When running these steps at the end there is a location where the ini file is stored. copy the ini and put it on a save spot.

In my case I use c:\SQL

There is only one thing that you need to change UIMODE="Normal" you need to turn it off by placing “ ; “ or delete the line we do not do a UI setup

And if you don’t like the interface is showing what the setup is doing then turn this off also. I like to watch so that my boss is thinking I work hard.

; Parameter that controls the user interface behavior. Valid values are Normal for the full UI,AutoAdvance for a simplied UI, and EnableUIOnServerCore for bypassing Server Core setup GUI block.

;UIMODE="Normal"

; Setup will not display any user interface.

QUIET="False"

When the ini files are in place remember you need 3 ini files

Step 1 : SQL server Advanced Cluster Preparation

Step 2 : SQL server Advanced Cluster Completion

Step 2 : SQL server Join Cluster Node

I mounted the ISO to the Cluster nodes and run this batch file on the first node. As you can see the password is in the file and unencrypted. You can be prompted for this but as this is a how to it is not important right now.

d:\setup.exe /qs /CONFIGURATIONFILE="c:\sql\sql14CSVConfigstep1.ini" /AGTSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /ASSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /SQLSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /ISSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /RSSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS /INDICATEPROGRESS
d:\setup.exe /qs /CONFIGURATIONFILE="c:\sql\sql14CSVConfigstep2.ini" /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS /INDICATEPROGRESS
After this is done you will have a One node SQL instance.

Add A second node To the SQL FCI

The Second step will be running the step3 script Adding the Second node to the Cluster.

And Again I do this by Command line But Did you know there is an option in the setup UI that you can use INI files during the setup ?

When using this the setup is not unattended but all the values are used in the ini file. So it is a NEXT NEXT FINISH install this could be handy if you want to change something.

Or run the Command line below the join the node to the SQL Instance.

d:\setup.exe /qs /CONFIGURATIONFILE="C:\sql\step3addnode ConfigurationFile.ini" /AGTSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /ASSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /SQLSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS /INDICATEPROGRESS

After these steps the SQL AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances is ready.

But there are no disks yes that is right in SQL 2014 you can use Cluster shared Volumes (CSV) this is a new feature of SQL server 2014

If you want to see the installation Steps I created a movie with about the same steps. the whole Process creating and install SQL in just 15 Minutes. not fully untended just for showing you what is possible.

https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/windows-server-2012-r2-with-sql-server-2014-cluster-installation-in-less-than-15-minutes-winserv-rocks-movie/

Next part will be AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server) With a connection to Azure

Windows 2012R2 Failover Cluster With SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn Options #part1 #cloud #azure #winserv #SQL #msteched

With the new version of SQL server 2014 there are a lot of options possible for DR or some extra Configuration options.

In the Old days there was only a failover option in SQL active/passive or if you had multiple instances you could run a instance on every node this could be seen as active/active. en yes mirroring was also an option.

But now the naming is different and there are a lot more configuration options. Remember “ my SQL is running on bare metal much faster “ eh this is not that long ago. Configurations with a Scale-out file server is not yet common but more and more configurations are using it. Now that SQL Server 2014 can store on CSV. In the following 3 blog post I will show you how to create all this bottom up. easy playground. A lot of terms will pass along like FCI WSFC Azure CSV, FTW SQL LOL

But the Two main options on SQL for clustering are :

AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances (SQL Server)

AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server)

AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances (SQL Server)

Failover cluster instance (FCI) is in short the old active/passive configuration – Protection level SQL Server / instance

An FCI can leverage AlwaysOn Availability Groups to provide remote disaster recovery at the database level.

As the “SQL Server (MSSQL001)” is installed on two nodes the instances and the DB are fault tolerant but needs shared storage

This is a AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances (SQL Server) FCI solution.

When a SQL Server instance is configured to be an FCI (instead of a standalone instance), the high availability of that SQL Server instance is protected by the presence of redundant nodes in the FCI. Only one of the nodes in the FCI owns the Windows Server Failover Clustering resource group at a time. In case of a failure (hardware failures, operating system failures, application or service failures), or a planned upgrade, the resource group ownership is moved to another Windows Server Failover Clustering node. This process is transparent to the client or application connecting to SQL Server and this minimize the downtime the application or clients experience during a failure.

The following lists some key benefits that SQL Server failover cluster instances provide:

Protection at the instance level through redundancy
Automatic failover in the event of a failure (hardware failures, operating system failures, application or service failures)

Zero reconfiguration of applications and clients during failovers

AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server)

The following lists some key benefits that AlwaysOn Availability Groups provide ( depends on your configuration ):

No shared disk needed
Only Database protection
Zero reconfiguration of applications and clients during failovers

As the screenshot shows it hold a availability group with a listner. The configuration is only visible in the SQL server manager

This sounds great new options more but how to configure them and how about Azure In the next post I will show you how to create all this.

In the following I created a Cluster connected to azure with a Site to Site VPN. And will show you the HA options this will be in several steps else it would be a long post.

But along the choices there are a lot of options that can be a problem with your configuration or maybe not the best option. And maybe you need a 3th party product the get the job done. Like Datakeeper my fellow Cluster MVP David Bermingham is SteelEye’s Director of Product Management.

In the next part I will start with AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances (SQL Server) Followed By AlwaysOn availability group (SQL Server) and Azure Failovers.

Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server 2014 Cluster installation in less than 15 minutes #winserv #Rocks #movie

Just for the fun I recorded a movie on the installation of Windows Server 2012 R2 . I thought just a quick recording and done but as it turns out it took longer than I expected, I made a typo in the script or clicked the wrong script or forgot to clean out my netbios name. then you gona build failsafe items in the scripts and they will be shown as errors because some items are already be set and can’t set twice.

The basic Idea was record a quick movie of an unattended installation of a SQL cluster in a few minutes is this possible yes it cab be done in les than 15 minutes. installation of the OS , Cluster with full Storage validation and a two node SQL cluster based on normal disk and a two node cluster based on CSV.

Eh in 15 minutes two full SQL nodes. just for fun.

when I was building this lab and thought recording in one piece is no fun I can never use the items in one piece and the movie size is bigger.

So I created every step in a single movie file, with sound and created one big movie with some speeding steps in it.

First the Windows Installation movie. ( did you know the Cluster validation process with full Storage testing took longer than the Complete installation from OS and SQL server Winking smile

So the OS installation the Windows version choice can be avoided by pre-staging the VM’s and I like to choose my disk size not very disk in my OS is the same. nor do I set a name ,IP and domain join the VM in one pass. I like to be flexible and do this step by step. and for demo’s is is nicer to show.

Watch this new video I made http://youtu.be/UyqNY5JyE9k

Windows Server 2012 R2 unattended SQL Server 2014 Cluster installation On Clustered Shared Volumes

Windows Server 2012 R2 unattended SQL Server 2014 Cluster installation On Clustered Shared Volumes – YouTube

The SQL installation on CSV and adding the node to the normal SQL on disk took 7 minutes. The installation on the Disk was about 4 minutes slower.

Who said that clustering was hard Winking smile

The scripts what I used are all available I already posted this on my blog. See my blog post on the SQL Server 2014 installation.

https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/tag/sql-server-2014/

Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server 2014 Failover Clustered Instance #Step-By-Step #AlwaysOn AvailabilityGroups What can go Wrong! Part 1

There are a lot of good blog post about how to setup your Availability group, in two blog post I will try to break the basic setup and will show you what you should not do in your production environment. Just because you can does not mean I should do this.

This blog post will also show you most common errors and how to fix them and where to find the errors, but in the end you will have a working two node cluster and one Availability group

First how to setup an Availability group to make things more complex there are multiple instances, see how they look Naming convention is really important when you do complex configurations. an typo is quickly made!

Deploying AlwaysOn Availability Groups requires a Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) cluster. To be enabled for AlwaysOn Availability Groups, an instance of SQL Server must reside on a WSFC node, and the WSFC cluster and node must be online. Furthermore, each availability replica of a given availability group must reside on a different node of the same WSFC cluster. The only exception is that while being migrated to another WSFC cluster, an availability group can temporarily straddle two clusters.

AlwaysOn Availability Groups relies on the Windows Failover Clustering (WSFC) cluster to monitor and manage the current roles of the availability replicas that belong to a given availability group and to determine how a failover event affects the availability replicas. A WSFC resource group is created for every availability group that you create. The WSFC cluster monitors this resource group to evaluate the health of the primary replica.

The quorum for AlwaysOn Availability Groups is based on all nodes in the WSFC cluster regardless of whether a given cluster node hosts any availability replicas. In contrast to database mirroring, there is no witness role in AlwaysOn Availability Groups.

The overall health of a WSFC cluster is determined by the votes of quorum of nodes in the cluster. If the WSFC cluster goes offline because of an unplanned disaster, or due to a persistent hardware or communications failure, manual administrative intervention is required. A Windows Server or WSFC cluster administrator will need to force a quorum and then bring the surviving cluster nodes back online in a non-fault-tolerant configuration.

Primary on an FCI with a replica on a different FCI

I have a lot of SQL instances and this all runs on a two node Cluster and not all instances are installed on both nodes to trick the installation and to show you the errors you can expect.

Enabling the AlwaysOn and you can see the Difference the new AG Wizard is not grayed out any more .

Starting the Wizard and on system Databases it wil not work AG will only work on your own DB !

You must make a full backup of your DB before you start ( this is always handy )

Now we can add a new replica Check the Server and as it is a Cluster you can not set it to automatic failover.

We do setup a Data share for the replication

Now that we have completed the wizard we do the validation and go for the finish.

An Error ? checking the location ?? eh what should the DB be on the same location ?? not all my SQL server Cluster are the same and are not using all the drive letters. and as I choose to do this on the same cluster ( not supported ) I can not give the other instance the same drive letter. but hat if I had an other cluster and even then I did not have the same Drive letter. Is there a wizard bypass some where. Wizards are nice If you have a default installation. If not Plan B.

TITLE: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
——————————

Checking for compatibility of the database file location on the secondary replica resulted in an error. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.HadrTasks)

——————————
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The following folder locations do not exist on the server instance that hosts secondary replica MVPSQL201402\SQL2:
i:\MSSQL11.SQL001\MSSQL\DATA;
(Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.HadrTasks)

So placing this on a CSV SQL server 2014

Well if drive letters is an issue SQL Server 2014 can store the DB on a CSV so no more drive letters.

And It passed the Validation that is Great.

Great thinking but.. the CSV is connected to all SQL servers So the next error is logical.

Yes the DB is already there.. what now ?

Manually Creating an Availability group for a SQL Server 2014 FCI

This sounds great but where to start ? should I bing It ? Let Me Bing That For You!

Well I Create it with a SQL script ( I’m no SQL master ) So things can be different.

However you can run this in a SQL CMD but here I do this step by Step.

I have My SQL Availibility group name, My DB name,IP, Servers

CREATE AVAILABILITY GROUP SQL001AG04
WITH (AUTOMATED_BACKUP_PREFERENCE = SECONDARY)
FOR DATABASE AG04 –, …
REPLICA ON — primary:
N’MVPSQL201401\sql001′ WITH (ENDPOINT_URL = N’TCP://MVPSQL201401.mvp.local:5023′,
FAILOVER_MODE = MANUAL, AVAILABILITY_MODE = ASYNCHRONOUS_COMMIT,
BACKUP_PRIORITY = 50, SECONDARY_ROLE(ALLOW_CONNECTIONS = NO)),
— secondary:
N’MVPSQL201402\SQL2′ WITH (ENDPOINT_URL = N’TCP://MVPSQL201402.mvp.local:5022′,
FAILOVER_MODE = MANUAL, AVAILABILITY_MODE = ASYNCHRONOUS_COMMIT,
BACKUP_PRIORITY = 50, SECONDARY_ROLE(ALLOW_CONNECTIONS = NO));

ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP SQL001AG04
ADD LISTENER N’MVPLST01′
(WITH IP ((N’10.255.255.69′, N’255.255.255.0′)), PORT=1433);

BACKUP DATABASE AG04 TO DISK = ‘\\mvpfsw01\SQLAG04\AG04.bak’
WITH INIT, COPY_ONLY, COMPRESSION;

BACKUP LOG AG04 TO DISK = ‘\\mvpfsw01\SQLAG04\AG04.trn’
WITH INIT, COMPRESSION;

Now we go to the replica server and run the script below.

—————- Run this on The Replica Server!!!!!!!

ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP SQL001AG04 JOIN;

RESTORE DATABASE AG04 FROM DISK = ‘\\mvpfsw01\SQLAG04\AG04.bak’
WITH REPLACE, NORECOVERY, NOUNLOAD,
MOVE ‘AG04’ TO ‘E:\MSSQL11.SQL001\AG04.mdf’,
MOVE ‘AG04_log’ TO ‘E:\MSSQL11.SQL001\AG04_log.ldf’;

RESTORE LOG AG04 FROM DISK = ‘\\mvpfsw01\SQLAG04\AG04.trn’
WITH NORECOVERY, NOUNLOAD;

ALTER DATABASE AG04 SET HADR AVAILABILITY GROUP = SQL001AG04

But as You can see in the screen shot it is not working the secondary server is down.

the following error is showing : The connection to the primary replica is not active. The command cannot be processed.

Message
A connection timeout has occurred while attempting to establish a connection to availability replica ‘MVPSQL201401\sql001′ with id [F82BBD94-4F04-4B0A-8B75-28A0899F240C]. Either a networking or firewall issue exists, or the endpoint address provided for the replica is not the database mirroring endpoint of the host server instance.

Ok I did turnoff all the Firewall, checked the network set permissions now what.

Think : I have two cluster nodes both are using SQL in the script what do they have in common.

ENDPOINT_URL = N’TCP://MVPSQL201401.mvp.local:5022’

So changed it from 5022 to 5023 and it work like a charm

In the next post I will explain how to check this and how to change this Winking smile

SO basically it is better to use the script that the wizard well it depends For now in the demo environment running on two different disks it is better and It would be better if the wizard ask you about drive letters or storage locations.

But manually you have more control about the setup and if something fails you can fixit before you go further. But also you have to think about a lot of issues Winking smile

Next will be Part 2

More Errors and more fixes on SQL Server 2014 Failover Clustered Instance (FCI) with Step-By-Step #AlwaysOn Availability Groups #winserv #FCI

Specifications for SQL Server failover cluster instance #FCI #SQL #Server #winServ #CSV

Lately I see a lot of questions about SQL Server failover cluster instance FCI and I have only a two node cluster can I use the multiple instances ?

Well sure you can you don’t need a 64 node cluster to run 50 instances.

With just two nodes running 4 or more instances!

But there is a Limit on what you can use it sounds odd but think about the drive letters.. yeh somebody thought he I need only 26 letters. and yes do we still need the drive letter this is so 2000 eh no we don’t need it. with SQL 2014 you can use CSV

Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs) is a feature of Windows Server Failover Cluster. A CSV is a shared disk that is made accessible to all nodes in a Windows Server Failover Cluster. CSVs build a common global namespace across the cluster (accessible under the %SystemDrive%\ClusterStorage root directory). This allows creating as many shared volumes as desired in the shared storage, removing the 24 drive letter limitation. For SQL Server failover cluster instance FCI this means that you can create as many SQL Server failover cluster instance FCI as desired, without having to manage mount points.

Now with all the new stuff in the line Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL server 2014 this is a great combo

Placing the SQL Database files on shares or CSV volumes removes the drive letters and increases the flexibility and scalability which can result in more uptime.

So the NEW SQL admin need to know about Windows clustering also and what is new!

So the limit is here In the SQL 2012 version these are gone in SQL server 2014 IF you use CSV !

50 instances on a stand-alone server.

25 instances on a failover cluster when using a shared cluster disk as the stored option for you cluster installation SQL Server supports 50 instances on a failover cluster if you choose SMB file shares as the storage option for your cluster installation For more information, see Storage Types for Data Files.

Instances are not the same as availability Groups !

Support for Cluster Shared Volumes

Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs) is a feature of Windows Server Failover Cluster. A CSV is a shared disk that is made accessible to all nodes in a Windows Server Failover Cluster. CSVs build a common global namespace across the cluster (accessible under the %SystemDrive%\ClusterStorage root directory). This allows creating as many shared volumes as desired in the shared storage, removing the 24 drive letter limitation. For FCI this means that you can create as many FCIs as desired, without having to manage mount points.

CSVs also increase the resiliency of the cluster by having I/O fault detection and recovery over alternate communication paths between the nodes in the cluster. This is built on top of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. For FCI this means that, if the active server is not able to read/write directly to the shared storage, the CSV will automatically re-route the request through another node that has access. In addition, if the shared storage has any transient issues, CSV will transparently cache and re-try the operation.

Finally, CSVs increase the reliability of failovers, as disks don’t need to be unmounted and mounted as with traditional cluster disks. On failover, the new primary SQL Server instance can simply access the CSV.

CSVs are supported on Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

SQL Server 2014 Setup is failing using #CSV #SQL14 #WFC #ws2012r2js

If you want to create a SQL Server 2014 cluster and place the Databases on a Cluster shared volume just make sure that you have one disk left that is not a CSV volume else your SQL setup will fail. but why the requirements are SQL server 2014 is supported with CSV. And this is not a bug, this time it is your fault ! yes you are the problem Winking smile

Read on I show you the problem !

The cluster disk ‘Cluster Disk 4’ can not be used as a cluster disk. Analysis Services on WFC cluster cannot have files on Clustered Shared Volume (CSV) locations.

the error in the setup will be “ cluster shared disk available check “ Failed.

just add a disk to the cluster iscsi or FC just as place holder. or do we need this disk, I did try a full install of the SQL Cluster

The CSV is only for the Database and not for a Analysis Services or any other SQL part!

The cluster disk ‘Cluster Disk 4’ can not be used as a cluster disk. Analysis Services on WFC cluster cannot have files on Clustered Shared Volume (CSV) locations.

Unselect the Analysis Services and restart the setup.

As you can see now you can select both CSV volumes. and one normal disk for the Analysis Services Winking smile

I’m placing the Logfiles on the storage pool my storage pool is build up of less fast disk and will save costs here. unless you will see slow performance !

and if we are looking to the ini files it should be OK

; The Database Engine root data directory.

INSTALLSQLDATADIR="C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1"

; Default directory for the Database Engine user database logs.

SQLUSERDBLOGDIR="C:\ClusterStorage\Volume2\MSSQL11.SQL002\MSSQL\Data"

; Directory for the Database Engine TempDB log files.

SQLTEMPDBLOGDIR="C:\ClusterStorage\Volume2\MSSQL11.SQL002\MSSQL\Data"

and after the SQL Server setup you can do the Analysis Services setup

Now you will have the Databases and the Log files on a different CSV and the Analysis Services on a own clustered disk.!

So remember the CSV volumes are not showing in the Cluster Resource , as you know the CSV is connected to every Cluster node and is always there!

Keep this in mind when you do some troubleshooting and you can’t find the disks Winking smile

Follow me on twitter : https://twitter.com/clustermvp

Use Cluster Shared Volumes / StoragePools in a Windows Server 2012 For #SQL 2014 DB Storage. #TEE13 #WPC13

In my previous Blog in SQL Server 2014 Create a New #SQL Server Failover #Cluster (Setup) in 5 minutes #SQL2014 #Windows2012R2 http://tinyurl.com/l7oe8sa

I created an unattended installation of a SQL server 2014 cluster but one of the new features is that you can also use CSV.

A new feature in SQL Server 2014 is that you can now use a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) in addition to the other methods you already could use for database and backup storage (drive letter, mount point, SMB share, local tempdb – the last two were introduced in SQL Server 2012). The big benefit here is that if one node of the SQL Server cluster loses connectivity to the storage, it can still read and write data over the network to a different node’s SAN connection. If you are using Ini files just replacing the value in the ini file with the cluster storage volume or storage pool.

; The Database Engine root data directory.

INSTALLSQLDATADIR="C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1"

In the next setup that is based on clusters I have two CSV volumes one is a normal CSV and one is a storage pool CSV.

Storage pools give you extra redundancy and if used by a scale out file server more IOPS or at least better iops than when you use only one server.

As you can see no disk in the Cluster Resource if you are using CSV!

What is a CSV ? Well, it’s a way to configure a single shared disk that is presented to and can be used by all nodes of a Windows Server failover cluster.CSVs have been used with Hyper-V and virtual machines (VMs) in windows server 2008/2012.

Looking at the setup the advanced cluster preparation is the same as on any other installation. The cluster completion is also the same but on the disks

just replacing the value in the ini file with the cluster storage volume or storage pool

FOR CSV

; The Database Engine root data directory.

INSTALLSQLDATADIR="C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1"

FOR Shared Disks

; The Database Engine root data directory.

INSTALLSQLDATADIR="E:"

The big benefit here is that if one node of the SQL Server cluster loses connectivity to the storage, it can still read and write data over the network to a different node’s SAN connection.

Greater scalability of compute, networking and storage with Windows Server 2012 R2 – SQL Server 2014 CTP1 supports Windows Server 2012 R2 CTP, so you can start to test the scalability gains Windows Server 2012 R2 provides for SQL Server:
- Increased compute scale – Continue to benefit from scale for up to 640 logical processors and 4TB of memory in a physical environment and up to 64 virtual processors and 1TB of memory per VM.
- Network virtualization and NIC teaming – Abstracts networking layer so you can easily migrate SQL Server from one datacenter to another. Increase network throughput for your mission critical SQL Server workloads by allowing those workloads to access more than one network card.
- Storage virtualization with storage spaces – Create pools of storage and storage tiers allowing your hot data to access the premium storage and cold data to access standard storage improving resilience, performance and predictability.

But the best part is SQL is now supporting Clustered shared Volumes

SQL Server 2014 is that you can now use a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) in addition to the other methods you already could use for database and backup storage (drive letter, mount point, SMB share, local tempdb – the last two were introduced in SQL Server 2012). The big benefit here is that if one node of the SQL Server cluster loses connectivity to the storage, it can still read and write data over the network to a different node’s SAN connection.

just replacing the value in the ini file with the cluster storage volume or storage pool

; The Database Engine root data directory.

INSTALLSQLDATADIR="C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1"

; The Database Engine root data directory.

INSTALLSQLDATADIR="E:"

More about this in my next blogs.

http://tinyurl.com/l7oe8sa

SQL Server 2014 Create a New #SQL Server Failover #Cluster (Setup) in 5 minutes #SQL2014 #Windows2012R2 #WPC13

Clustering Is getting to easy more and more is clustering needed and yes sometimes it is hard. Like the SQL 2014 installation build a cluster in less than 5 minutes Winking smile

Let me describe the easy steps and get a full blown classic SQL server 2014 on windows server 2012R2

I use always the advance option this is much easier than you think and if something goes wrong you have to do just one step to renew not the whole setup.

This will do only Step 1 Advanced Cluster Preparation ( this will take about 3 minutes to install )

d:\setup.exe /qs /CONFIGURATIONFILE="SQL2014-cluster-step1.ini" /AGTSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /ASSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /SQLSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /ISSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /RSSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS /INDICATEPROGRESS

next step Advanced Cluster Completion ( this will take about 3 minutes to install )
d:\setup.exe /qs /CONFIGURATIONFILE="SQL2014-cluster-step2.ini" /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS /INDICATEPROGRESS

I See you thinking how to get the INI files, easy just do once the Setup and follow the wizard and just before starting the installation “ready to install” there is the ini line

If you installed it in the default path on the C drive and the number can be different !

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Setup Bootstrap\Log\

If you use my line then quote out the ;UIMODE="Normal" can’t use silent and Gui in normal mode Winking smile

; Parameter that controls the user interface behavior. Valid values are Normal for the full UI,AutoAdvance for a simplied UI, and EnableUIOnServerCore for bypassing Server Core setup GUI block.

;UIMODE="Normal"

Adding the Cluster

d:\setup.exe /qs /CONFIGURATIONFILE="SQL2014-addcluster-step3.ini" /AGTSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /ASSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /SQLSVCPASSWORD="Password01" /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS /INDICATEPROGRESS
Pause

But the best part is here SQL now support CVS

just replacing the value in the ini file with the cluster storage volume or storage pool

; The Database Engine root data directory.

INSTALLSQLDATADIR="C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1"

; The Database Engine root data directory.

INSTALLSQLDATADIR="E:"

More about this in my next blogs.

Get the ini files here http://sdrv.ms/12dqaya