Worried and nervous about meeting deadlines on deploying your SQL Server Always On solution? Struggling with lack of confidence on your design? Are outages taking over your personal life that you can no longer focus on the things that really matter?
I've got you covered.
You need to deploy or manage a SQL Server Always On Availability Group but do not have a clue about where to start. The Microsoft documentation isn’t helping and you are wasting a lot of time figuring things out on your own.
You lack the confidence to deal with it because you feel like you have inadequate knowledge. What’s worse is that unexpected Always On Availability Group outages are taking over your personal life, causing too much stress and anxiety. And you’re worried that the next outage could cost the company loss of revenue and, potentially, your job.
This is specifically for you. This online course is designed for senior database administrators and systems engineers responsible for designing, deploying, and managing a SQL Server Always On Availability Group.
Course Outline
- What is a high availability cluster? (6:46)
- High Availability: Hardware-level, Operating System-level and Application-level (6:04)
- 3 Common Types of Microsoft® High Availability Clusters for SQL Server Workloads (12:27)
- Assessment
- The Traffic Light Analogy: How Windows Server Failover Clustering Works (7:01)
- Windows Server Failover Clustering Components: Nodes (3:19)
- Windows Server Failover Clustering Components: Cluster Resources (9:35)
- Windows Server Failover Clustering Components: Resource Groups (5:12)
- Failover and Failback (7:14)
- Dependencies (5:50)
- Windows Server Failover Clustering Components: Quorum (10:52)
- Windows Server Failover Clustering Components: Heartbeat (3:30)
- The “split brain” Phenomenon (6:34)
- Hardware Requirements for Installation
- Active Directory and DNS Requirements for Installation
- Planning: Asking The Right Questions
- Cluster Preparation Checklist
- Preparing The Servers: Adding the Failover Cluster Feature and Failover Cluster Validation
- Creating the Windows Server Failover Cluster
- Granting Permissions in Active Directory
- Pre-staging the Virtual Computer Objects in Active Directory
- Using Windows PowerShell to Validate and Create a WSFC
- Quick Recap on Quorum
- Requirements for a Disk Witness
- Requirements for a File Share Witness
- Requirements for a Cloud Witness
- Difference Between Disk Witness and File Share Witness
- Partition In Time
- Typical Events Leading Up To Quorum Issues
- Dynamic Quorum Feature
- Quorum Behavior with Dynamic Quorum
- Dynamic Witness Feature
- Quorum Behavior with Both Dynamic Quorum and Dynamic Witness
- Dynamic Quorum and Dynamic Witness In Action with a File Share Witness
- When the Dynamic Quorum and Dynamic Witness Features Might Not Appear To Work
- Single Data Center versus Multi-Data Center Considerations: Choosing Between Automatic or Manual Failover
- Single Data Center versus Multi-Data Center Considerations: Choosing a Witness Type
- How the Create Cluster Wizard Chooses Quorum Configuration
- Verifying and Modifying Quorum Configuration
- Configuring Cloud Witness using Azure Blob Storage
- Understanding Windows Server Failover Cluster Networking
- Configuring Windows Server Failover Cluster Networking
- Testing Failover
- Understanding Active Directory and DNS Registration Behavior and How It Affects Multi-subnet Windows Server Failover Clusters
- Configuring DNS Registration Behavior for Multi-subnet Windows Server Failover Clusters
- Understanding Cluster Heartbeat Settings
- Configuring Cluster Heartbeat Settings
- Applying the Concepts of Site-awareness for Multi-Subnet/Site Configuration
- Running Windows Server Failover Clusters on VMWare
- Summary & Assignments
- SQL Server Always On Availability Groups: Basic Architecture
- How SQL Server Always On Availability Groups Work
- Components and Definitions: Availability Group
- Components and Definitions: Replicas
- Components and Definitions: Availability Group Listener
- Components and Definitions: Availability (Replication) Modes
- Components and Definitions: Availability Group Endpoint
- How Always On Availability Group Failover Works
- Automatic Failover Without Data Loss
- Planned Manual Failover Without Data Loss
- Forced Manual Failover With Possible Data Loss
- How Is Data Loss Possible with Forced Manual Failover?
- What Happens if a Synchronous Secondary Replica Goes Offline?
- What Happens if an Asynchronous Secondary Replica Goes Offline?
- Summary
- Planning Always On Availability Group Deployments: Asking The Right Questions
- SQL Server Availability Group Requirements
- This Will Happen If You Don’t Design Your Architecture Properly
- 4 Important Questions You Need To Ask For Implementation
- Common Design Patterns
- Licensing Changes in SQL Server 2019 (and higher) That Will Influence Your Design
- Time to Update the Cluster Preparation Checklist
- Building a 4-replica SQL Server Availability Group
- Assignment #1
- Combining SQL Server Failover Clustered Instances with Availability Groups
- Viewing Availability Group Properties
- Testing Application Connectivity and Availability Group Failover
- Configuring Dedicated Network for Availability Group Replication Traffic
- What is a Distributed Availability Group?
- Configuring a Distributed Availability Group
- Deploying Basic Availability Groups
- Deploying SQL Server Availability Group without Active Directory
- My Favourite Tool for Network Connectivity Testing
- Assignment #2
- Replicating SQL Server Logins
- Replicating SQL Server Agent Jobs
- Availability Groups as Failover Cluster Resource Groups
- Understanding Cluster Resource Dependency Behavior
- Viewing Cluster Resource Dependencies
- Configuring Resource Group-level Policies
- Configuring Resource-level Policies
- Configuring Availability Groups Listener Name DNS settings for Multi-subnet Failover Clusters
- How Readable Secondary Replicas Work
- Configuring Readable Secondary Replicas
- The extra 14-bytes that Microsoft probably didn’t tell you about
- How Read-only Routing Works
- Configuring Read-Only Routing
- How Load Balancing of Read-Only Workloads Works
- Configuring Load Balancing of Read-Only Workloads
- Summary
- Running Integrity Checks: DBCC CHECKDB
- Configuring Backup Preferences
- Adding or Removing a Database in the Availability Group
- Adding or Removing a Secondary Replica
- Modifying Availability/Replication Modes
- Temporarily Suspending and Resuming Data Synchronization
- Dealing With Different Database File Paths Between Replicas
- Performing Planned Manual Failover of Availability Groups
- Performing Forced Manual Failover of Availability Groups
- How the Flexible Failover Policy Affects High Availability
- Configuring Flexible Failover Policy
- Modifying Session Timeout Period
- Performing Index Maintenance
- Managing Statistics
- Installing Service Packs and Cumulative Updates
- Installing Service Packs and Cumulative Updates – Part 2
- Summary & Assignment
- What the Availability Group Dashboard is Telling You
- Relevant Performance Counters and Wait Statistics to Watch Out For
- Windows Server Failover Clustering Internals
- Understanding sp_server_diagnostics in the context of WSFC Health Detection
- Windows Server Failover Clustering Internals in Action
- R.A.P. Monitoring
- The AlwaysOn_health Extended Events Session
- The suspect_pages table and Automatic Page Repair
- Summary & Assignment
- Workflow Process for Troubleshooting Availability Issues
- Troubleshooting Availability Group Outages: Step 1
- Troubleshooting Availability Group Outages: Step 2
- Troubleshooting Availability Group Outages: Step 3
- Troubleshooting Availability Group Outages: Step 4
- Troubleshooting Availability Group Outages: Step 5
- Force Start a Failover Cluster Without Quorum
- Most Common Deployment and Configuration Issues
- Dealing with 35250 Errors
- Troubleshooting Availability Group Listener Creation Failure
- Troubleshooting Read-only Routing Issues
- Most Common Operational Issues
- Dealing with Listener Connection Failures
- Handling Uncontrollable Log File Growth
- Database and/or Replica Synchronization Issues
- Why Did Failover Take A Long Time?
- When Automatic Failover Does Not Appear To Work
- Troubleshooting Exercise #1
- Troubleshooting Exercise #2
- Troubleshooting Exercise #3
- Summary