Well, Part 7 has completed and we're on the home stretch... focusing on part of the new Always On technologies of SQL Server 2005. We've made our way through quite a few discussions and my main point for the sequence - as defined - was to make clear that keeping a system available takes a myriad of choices, features, configurations - and more. In fact, even once you think you've done it you still need to monitor, manage and re-evaluate your configuration if unexpected events occur and bring your system offline and/or unavailable in any way. And - well, that's also a big part of my focus... what does "availability" mean to you? Do you believe that only unplanned downtime counts or that *any* impact to the system's availability counts as "downtime"? (btw - I'd really like to know!)

Regardless, that's been our primary focus for the series... I believe that the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2005 can keep your system available through a very wide number of system hiccups, damage and even more catastrophic disasters. In the previosu sessions we looked at migration and installation (ensuring a proper configuration - right from the start), we covered creating a secure environment (which also impacts availability), we looked at "finding the right tool for the job" and then we started looking into alternative designs that may help to improve availability by scaling out our design. If you missed any of the sessions you might want to go back and see what's what! Here's the list of sessions at a quick glance:

Session 1: A Fast-Paced Feature Overview and Series Introduction (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 2: Security (Level 200)
   Presenter: Bob Beauchemin, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 3: Understanding Installation Options and Initial Configuration (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 4: Upgrade Considerations and Migration Paths (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 5: Effective Use of the New Management Tools (Level 200)
   Presenter: Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 6: New Application Design Patterns for Scalability and Availability and the Operational Implications of Service Broker (Level 200)   
   Presenter: Bob Beauchemin, SQLskills.com, 
   Session's corresponding blog entry, here. 

Session 7: Technologies and Features to Improve Availability (Level 200)

Session 7 was a great deal of fun - we covered 11 different technologies (12 if you count partitioning) and discussed the architectural reasons to choose each teachnology - as well as the barriers it provides protection against. We talked about a lot of technologies and a lot of resources:

• Remote Mirroring - Always consult your hardware vendor and make sure they support block size preservation and write-order preservation. Ideally, RM should be combined with Failover Clustering - when that's the case you have a "Geographically dispersed failover cluster" which removes the single point of failure in Failover Clustering. See the Windows Server Catalog, specifically for the Geographically Dispersed Cluster Solution category.
• Failover Clustering - A combination of hardware and software to provide protection against server failure. Only solutions from the Windows Server Catalog, specifically for the Cluster Solution category for supported solutions in failover technologies.
• Database Mirroring - See the homework references below as well as come back for the next two upcoming sessions where we cover DBM for two weeks.
• Log Shipping - While this is still supported *and* while there are still some excellent uses for Log Shipping, this is not a "favorite" solely for failover. If you're looking for a "warm" failover solution (warm = no automatic detection, no automatic failover) with less potential for data loss - you should consider the "High Performance" configuration of Database Mirroring. If you would like to continue using Log Shipping for a more latent secondary (a log load delay) for managing disasters (either investigation or recovery) of data from an older "version" of the database then LS is an option but Database Snapshots can also help in *some* cases. This technology is well documented as well as written about.
• Peer to Peer Replication - I demo'ed and discussed this in session 1 as well as referenced a few helpful links for TechNet sessions, etc. See the session and "blog" links as listed above.
• RAID - Redundant Array of Independant Disk
• Partial Database Availability, Online Piecemeal Restore and Database Snapshots - come back for Session 10 where I'll cover these and demo these!
• Raid.edu - a short - but interesting overview of all the different raid types.
• MSPress title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 High Availability, Chapter 9: Database Environment Basics for Recovery
• SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 support for mounted volumes
• MSDN "Developer/Design" Webcast Series: Blog entry with all of the links
  • Online Index Operations, Part 5
  • Snapshot Isolation, Part 6
  • Partitioning, Part 8
• Scalable shared databases are supported by SQL Server 2005
• Oracle Real Application Clusters and Industry Trends in Cluster Parallelism and Availability

Finally, be ready to watch Mark's session on Friday, April 28. Here's your homework for Session 7:

1. Review: Release notes and information for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 
2. Watch: TechNet Webcast: How to Increase Availability Using Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2005 (Level 200) 
3. Read: Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2005 

And the details for Session 8:

TechNet Webcast: SQL Server 2005 for the IT Professional (Part 8 of 11): Implementing Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2005 (Part 1 of 2) (Level 200)
Presenter: Mark Wistrom, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Database mirroring was released for testing when Microsoft SQL Server 2005 shipped in November. As the first service pack has shipped, it's time to get prepared for database mirroring in production! In this session, understand the barriers of what database mirroring will protect against, what constitutes a "failover", what the performance criteria are and how the monitoring has been brought together for release. Attend this first part of two - as the eighth webcast in the SQL Server 2005 for the IT Professional series to obtain better insight for when database mirroring should be implemented as well as what to expect moving forward in service pack 1 (SP1). Part 9 will cover implementation from start to finish - as an end to end demo.

Start Time:   Friday, April 28, 2006 9:30 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) 
End Time:   Friday, April 28, 2006 11:00 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) 

See you in Part 9: TechNet Webcast: SQL Server 2005 for the IT Professional (Part 9 of 11): Implementing Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2005 (Part 2 of 2) (Level 200) on May 5th.
kt

In doing my final preparations for part 7 of my TechNet webcast series on Building Robust, Reliable and Recoverable Systems, I decided to (once again) review my abstract. I do this as a last step to make sure I cover everything I said I would cover. Here's the abstract:

TechNet Webcast: SQL Server 2005 for the IT Professional (Part 7 of 11): Technologies and Features to Improve Availability

Find the right technology for the job in this seventh webcast of the SQL Server 2005 for the IT Professional series. Join us to learn which technologies provide the right solution for a specific problem, as well as the pros and cons of each technology. Designing a system to protect you against the faults most likely to occur is the first and most important strategy, but finding the right combination to minimize both downtime and data loss is critical. This webcast covers many of the “AlwaysOn” technologies at a glance: remote mirroring, failover clustering, database mirroring, log shipping, [peer to peer] replication, RAID, partial database availability, piecemeal online restore, database snapshots, snapshot isolation, and online index operations.

Start Time: Friday, April 21, 2006 9:30 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) 
End Time: Friday, April 21, 2006 11:00 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)  

So, in re-reading this it certainly sounds like a lot to cover. But - rest assured, this session is what we're going to use to lead into the rest of the series. Parts 8-11 go into more detail on some of the new and more complex topics covered in that list. For example, parts 8 and 9 cover Database Mirroring and part 10 covers Partial Database Availability, Online Piecemeal Restore and Database Snapshots. Also, for a few topics, I'll point you to some great resources to keep you going in learning these other technologies. In the end, my goal for Friday is make sure you understand the best use case for each of these technologies. Once you know when it's best to use them, you can really begin to architect the *right* solution for your system! Parts 8-11 will focus more on implementation and demos!

If you're wondering what your options are and how to get better direction on the architecture to implement, join us on Friday: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032290562&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Oh, and in the actual abstract, there's a typo...not sure if we'll have time to cover log hipping. ;) ;)

Talk to you on Friday!
kt

Well, Friday brought another flood of great questions from everyone as we moved our way through many of the new 2005 tools. The one thing that I really wanted to stress was that *many* SQL Server 2005 tools (SQLCMD, SSMS and SQL Profiler) offer important features that can be leveraged today, even if your primary production servers are still SQL Server 2000. I did move through the tools quickly and showed quite a few new features; there are a lot of excellent resources to help you dive in deeper now that you're interested, ready and know some of the rewards of starting now. Here are a few of those resources:

• My Blog entry: SQL Server 2005 Tools - Resources to Effectively use SQLCMD this includes a few additional links but most importantly, links to the TechNet webcast: Scripting in SQL Server 2005, by Michiel Wories.
• TechNet webcast: Manage SQL Server 2005 Using Command Line Tools and the SQLCMD Utility by Ramesh Singh. 
• TechNet Webcast: Administration Tools
• TechNet Webcsat: Monitoring Tools
• And - checkout the large number of related "on-demand" webcasts here: http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetsqlserver2005.mspx

For deleting old database backup history, there are a couple of stored procedures in msdb that can be used:

• sp_delete_backup_and_restore_history
• sp_delete_backuphistory
• sp_delete_database_backuphistory

For cycling errorlogs, use: sp_cycle_errorlog.

And - lots of other questions that I primarily answered online in the last 40+ minutes. We had a great group and I hope everyone had fun. For the second half+ of the series we're going to focus on architectures and solutions - mostly related to disaster recovery and avoidance. However, the next part of the series is going to branch into a new (and *very* interesting) area of SQL Server 2005 - Service Broker. There are many impacts of Service Broker on the SQL Server system AND you might find a few applications of the technology within your own application as well. Have a great time with Bob for part 6 and I'll be back for part 7 next Friday.

See you soon!
kt