July 2012 - SQLHA

July 31, 2012

So What’s on the Dance Card?

It looks like the next few months are going to be busier than ever. I feel like I should be asking “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?”, but substituting either my name or Ben’s in. Besides our normal docket of customer work, below is a list of where you can find us over the next few months. We may add a few things to the plate, but the list is everything we know of right now. Keep your eye towards our Upcoming Events page for the latest info!

SQL Saturday 158

Both Ben and I will be speaking this weekend at SQL Saturday 158 in New York City. SQLHA is sponsoring the event as well. Ben’s talk (“Surviving Your Peak Database Load”) is at 1:45PM, and my session (“SQL Server Dos and Don’ts: Keys to DBA Nirvana”) is at 4:15. I’m super excited to be doing a non-HA talk which is rare for me.

SQL Server Foundations 2012

Ben and I will be doing a two day eLearning Seminar for Penton and SQL Server Pro on SQL Server basics on September 11 and 13. It will be six sessions over the two days (three per day). This is similar to the event I did for them last year and is in the process of being updated; we’re just not rehashing the same old stuff. Full information on what we’ll be talking about (including pricing and registration) can be found here.

24 Hours of PASS

Ben and I will be doing a session at 24HOP. PASS hasn’t announced any dates or times, but we’ll be there!

PASS SQLRally Nordic 2012

I’ll be heading back to Europe for the second time this year to speak at PASS SQLRally 2012 Nordic. I’ll be doing a pre-conference seminar (“AlwaysOn: Maximizing High Availability with SQL Server 2012”) and most likely a session at some point during the other two days.

PASS Summit

Ben and I will also be at Summit in November. He and I will be doing a pre-conference session on Tuesday, November 6th entitled “Real-World System Design for the DBA: Private Cloud and SQL as a Service”. Ben will be blogging soon with a longer description of what we’re going to cover since we’ve had a few questions (mainly due to the fact we were limited in the number of characters we could use). I’ll also be co-presenting “The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Deploying AlwaysOn Availability Groups” with Mike Steineke and David Smith during the Summit (time and day not scheduled yet).

Training in Australia

In conjunction with Wardy IT Solutions, I’m going Down Under to deliver two weeks of training after PASS Summit. The class is a 4-day mission critical one complete with labs in both Brisbane (November 19 – 22) and Canberra (November 26 – 29). There’s an Early Bird discount until August 30, 2012. Click here to register for Brisbane and here for Canberra. The full course outline and details can be found here in PDF format. I’m very excited about this opportunity – both weeks should be great. I’m starting to talk with some other folks about other deliveries in 2013 of the course with labs outside of Australia, so stay tuned. If you would like to see it in your area or want to host it, contact us.

July 12, 2012

New Offering: Reviewing and Editing Services

Are you an author of a book (be it a chapter or looking to do the whole thing), whitepaper, or other type of publishable document? Are you writing a presentation and looking for a better way to put it together? Having trouble with writing session abstracts for possible speaking engagements – or ones you are being asked to do? Are you looking for an honest review and assessment to make whatever it is you are working on better? If so, SQLHA is announcing a new service for you whether you are a new writer just writing one chapter of a multi-author book or someone who has been around the block more than once.

Since the mid-90s, Allan has written countless numbers of documents from single page marketing slicks to near-1000 page books. He’s reviewed and tech edited most of those things, as well. While every publisher is slightly different in their formatting or templates, you still need to write compelling content for your readers. That is easier said than done. While your publisher (or maybe you are self-publishing) may have an official reviewer, you want someone to give you the straight scoop on your writing to make it sing rather than croak. This is where SQLHA’s new services for reviewing and editing come in.

Whether it’s your first draft no one else has seen and you want to whip it into shape before anyone else sees what it is you’re working on, or it’s later on in the process and you want a more formal review, we can help. Some of the things that we look at include:

Content – Is the content itself complelling and worthy of publishing or do you need to still shape it and mold it into something with more focus?
Phrasing – Whether you use one word too much or have odd phrasing, if your document is hard to read, no one will finish it.
Translatability – Different cultures have different references, and sometimes analogies that work well in one place are not easily understandable elsewhere. You want your document – within reason of course – to appeal to the broadest audience possible.
Grammar – While not looking to change your style, there are many basic mistakes (such as capitalization of the wrong thing, possessives, etc.) that many get wrong and go unchecked until a formal edit when these things become much more magnified. Go into your formal edits with things in much better shape.
Flow – Are things logically laid out or is it a jumbled mess? If you confuse Allan, your readers will be as well.
Goals – Are you delivering what you are intending or being asked to do? Does your document tell the whole story or did you leave out key plot holes?

The point here is to deal with problems earlier. When you’re writing a paper or chapter (or even a PPT for a presentation) that will be reviewed or seen by multiple people, much like doing sanity checks on your servers before you install SQL Server, you want to make sure things are correct and on the right path because having to do large scale revisions is much more costly as time goes on. You don’t want to have to fix flow and content issues when you’re already supposed to be published. The reviews can be simple or a more formal tech review. The document doesn’t even need to be about SQL Server, Windows, clustering, etc. – we can help you on any topic.

In addition to reviewing, SQLHA can provide editing services for your document to take it that extra step further. It allows us to be much more interactive and hands on with you to shape your end result into something everyone will like.

If you’re not an individual author but a corporation or publisher looking to have your document (of any kind) reviewed or edited, we can help you out as well.

Put Allan’s years of experience to work for you. Contact us for pricing and availability.

July 11, 2012

Anti-Virus + Windows Failover Clustering + SQL FCIs = Bad

Recently, I helped a customer plan and configure a three node multiple instance failover cluster. The Windows failover cluster (WSFC) had four instances of SQL Server (3 x 2008 R2 with SP1 and 1 x 2012 with CU2). However, when they went to go enable their anti-virus on the cluster nodes (Symantec if you must know) and set the exclusions I document in my book, things went south. Pretty much everything went offline. They were able to get pretty much everything up but SQL Server Agent for one instance just wasn’t working. I just got off a troubleshooting call with them and I think we fixed that (I’ll know for sure later once they do a few other things). If you think this is an uncommon event, it’s not as evidenced by this quick Twitter exchange I had:

With most customers, anti-virus is a standard piece of kit to install on all servers no matter what. The base rationale makes sense. I mean, who wouldn’t want to protect your servers from potentially bad stuff, right? Here’s where I lose the plot a little bit. First and foremost, your production servers are not desktops. Joe and Jane Administrator should not be surfing the ‘net from there. Assuming that is the case, the risk of getting things like malware is probably really small. If they’re doing that, you’ve got to fix your processes and lock things down. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it shouldn’t. If you’re on the server and need to use the Internet to go read a support KB, that’s perfectly acceptable usage. But to check their Hotmail/gmail/match.com/watch porn/personal stuff? Hell no. Most admin work should be done from workstations with remote tools – you shouldn’t have to log onto or RDP into the server for most tasks. That drives the risk up of something going wrong.

The other aspect of this is really file-based. Think about it – we get documents and download files from various places. That’s arguably how a lot of the whole malware thing started. A production SQL Server server (that always looks weird to me) should not be a file repository whether it is clustered or not. I will always say that in most cases, a production boxes with SQL Server on it should be dedicated for that purpose only. I know people want to maximize usage and you can create a clustered file share, but I’m assuming here that in most cases where you deploy FCIs, it’s on dedicated WSFCs just for SQL Server. If that is the case, why would you need anti-virus especially if you’re monitoring to ensure people are not doing rogue thins on the cluster. Again, it’s easy to minimize your risk exposure with having good processes. Imagine that.

If your company is still not convinced by these rational arguments, have a quick gander at these KB articles from Microsoft:

Pay particular attention to this bit in 250355:

You can run antivirus software on a SQL Server cluster. However, you must make sure that the antivirus software is cluster-aware. Contact your antivirus software vendor about cluster-aware versions and interoperability.

Not all anti-virus programs are created equal. So make sure if you need to install anti-virus, you get the right thing. If what you have is not cluster-aware, caveat emptor.

Let me add to this cautionary tale: back in the SQL Server 2000/2005 days on Windows Server 2003, I was working with another company. We got things up and running on the cluster with no issue. I told the team responsible for anti-virus how to configure it for the clustered instances of SQL; not much more I could do. Right after we went into production, a day or two in, my databases were marked as Suspect. I did a bit of digging and the smoking gun wasn’t hard to find: right in the Event Log, it was clear as day – a virus scan kicked off at about 11AM and minutes later my databases decided to take a dirt nap from which I had to restore them from backup. They were permanently corrupted due to the scan kicking off. The admins swore up and down it wasn’t them (even though I had the proof). Things were fine for one day and I bet you can guess what happened the next day at the same time. I was livid and took this up the chain. The problem eventually got fixed, but it should have never happened to begin with. That was largely a political issue at the end of the day, but it also speaks to the fact not everyone knows about clusters and SQL Server.

This is a major reason you set filters for things like the the .mdf, .ndf, and .ldf files even on standalone SQL Servers. This is magnified on clusters where if you have an instance that fails over to another node that now takes ownership of the disks associated with that instance, the anti-virus program is going to now see them and say, “Awesome! New files to scan.” That will not only hold up your instance starting, but see my previous paragraph – you may get more than you bargained for. Not only may you blow SLAs, you have the potential of hosing databases. Just what every DBA needs.

UPDATE: Also check out Allen Kinsel’s (Twitter) blog post SQL Server 2008 & IPV6 vs Symantec. It shows where Symantec does something even more fun: endpoint protection. As my friend Nic Cain (blog | Twitter) pointed out to me, endpoint protection can be even worse than anti-virus on a clustered configuration – especially since IPv6 is enabled by default on Windows Server 2008 (and up) and you shouldn’t disable it. Allen’s post is probably why my customer’s cluster went south to begin with, and SQL Server Agent for the one instance was just a casualty.

My recommendation to you: DON’T PUT ANTI-VIRUS ON SERVERS WITH SQL SERVER INSTALLED ON THEM AND ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE CLUSTERS. You’ll be much, much happier.

July 10, 2012

Diversity is Challenging

We live in a global economy with more diversity and touch than ever before. Time zones and locations mean virtually nothing. The old Bell (then AT&T) slogan “reach out and touch someone” has a whole new meaning with things like conference calls and video chats. I even see it on the technical side when trying to help customers architect highly available systems where downtime may affect some part of the world.

There are some challenges that have always been universal in a diverse workforce, and it never gets easier the more inclusive you get. The reality is that someone, somewhere is going to be affected (and it may upset them, too). I think sometimes people are too sensitive to certain issues, but other times, completely justified at their reaction. Having said that, what things always boil down to in some scenarios is this: do you possibly offend a few people – the minority – and the group at large will be OK, or do you try to accommodate everyone? The answer to that is difficult and in my opinion, not straightforward. It’d be nice to say you can accommodate everyone all the time, but we all know that’s not possible.

Let me give you a practical example. The Jewish calendar has many holidays (and holiday is always a relative term for a day like Yom Kippur), and some are definitely “bigger” than others (at least to most Jews; to others, all are equally important including the Sabbath which happens every Friday and Saturday – not looking to turn this into a religious debate). The three holidays that are off limits for me no matter what are Rosh Hashanah (2 days, not 1), Yom Kippur, and Passover. RH and YK – especially YK – are really important days (New Year and Day of Atonement respectively). Passover due to the food scenario is really hard. I always take the days of the two seders off, but avoid work travel the rest of the week. To my fellow Jews who are more observant than me, I’m not saying Sukkot, Purim, Chanukkah (insert your own spelling), Lag B’Omer, Shavuot, et al. are not important. I know they are.

Where am I going with this? I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve been asked to do things on Jewish holidays, and especially RH and YK. On YK I don’t generally answer the phone, watch TV, etc. It’s that important to me, even today. Modern conveniences don’t rule that day and it adds to the reflective mood to be quite honest. So clearly my answer to being asked is always no. What I do hope is that they understand. 9/10 times they are, and I’ve done things like postpone starting dates for engagements.

But what happens if people aren’t understanding, don’t care, or can’t change a date even if they want to? That’s tough. My answer is still going to be no, even if it would mean me losing out on a good opportunity (personally, professionally, financially … or all of ’em). That’s just the way it is. Minority rarely rules. Things can sometimes change if the conflicting date is brought to someone’s attention early enough, but if for a larger event, it may just not be possible. When you’re coordinating tens, hundreds, or possibly thousands of people, it’s hard to figure out one or a set of dates that works for everyone. Invariably there’s a conflict somewhere.

In my experience, when this happens, it’s not malicious or intentional. People make honest oversights – especially when scheduling events. In my case, I don’t expect everyone to carry a Jewish calendar and know when they happen since the dates change every year (but they are always around the same general timeframe ever year …). But I would hope a major organization with months of heads up could do something about it. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can’t. That’s life. You can’t be all things to all people, nor can I.

So as you continue to celebrate diversity and being inclusive, remember that you’re going to eventually run into a bump somewhere. It’s a matter of when, not if, and you just have to decide if it’s a major gaffe you need to deal with, or let majority rule and realize some people just can’t take part.

July 9, 2012

Windows Server 2012 Release Date, Book Update, and Other News

Hopefully some of you caught the news today, but if you didn’t, Microsoft announced at their Worldwide Partner Conference that Windows Server 2012 is going to RTM in August with availability starting in September. This is exciting news, and something I’ve been looking forward to. I’ve seen Windows Server 2012 (nee Windows 8 Server) for a few years now, and I think that it will be a great platform for SQL Server 2012.

Speaking of that, the announcement of a release date also impacts my upcoming book Mission Critical SQL Server 2012. I appreciate all of the pings I’ve been getting from people about it. I’m writing it now and it’s going to be a little while, but my hope is to have it done this fall – and by PASS if possible. A big part of the book for me was to be able to include Windows Server 2012 and since its RTM is playing nicely with my release dates, I will have RTM information in there. Book timing is always an odd thing to gauge. Some are of the opinion you have to get it out as close as possible to the release date for a product (in this case, SQL Server 2012). Because adoption happens at some point after RTM, over the years I’ve noticed the sweet spot for books like mine is in the 8 – 16 month timeframe after RTM. Why? Some of it is straightforward: you can have real world information in there. Other parts of it are market factors – good example, Windows Server 2012. I didn’t want to rewrite large portions of Windows stuff so soon after finishing the book. The book will also cover Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 as well, which not surprisingly, will also beef things up a bit. This is one case where I can say that the book will be very comprehensive in all things – not just SQL Server. At TechEd I met with a friend who is also going to help edit the book and we went over the proposed Table of Contents – it’s daunting, but I’m up for the challenge. Look for a few other writers who will be contributing content as well along with me.

In other news, it looks like it’s going to be a really busy second half of 2012. I’m doing some private training and customer work (naturally), but there are quite a few public things as well.

I was just renewed for another year as a Cluster MVP by Microsoft.
I’m expanding my 3-day HA class to have a day’s worth of labs (spread out over the course) to make it a 4-day. I’m toying with the idea of more basic as well as advanced labs in some cases to cater to an individual’s skill level. Not sure it will be possible, but I have an idea on how to make it work.
Ben and I will be at SQL Saturday 158 in New York City. That should be fun – those guys always put on a good SQL Saturday and NYC is one of my favorite cities to visit. Believe it or not, I’m actually NOT talking about high availability specifically (but it will be in the talk). My session topic is “SQL Server Dos and Don’ts: Keys to DBA Nirvana” at 4:15 PM to close out the day. Ben is on at 1:15 PM and will be discussing “Surviving Your Peak Database Load”.
I’ll be doing another SQL Server Foundations 2-day online training event with Ben for Penton in September. I’m revamping the material from last year – it’s not going to be the same. Stay tuned for details.
Ben and I are each doing another 1-hour webinar (me on high availability and Ben on performance) in September for Penton as well.
I’ll be heading back to Europe and speaking at SQLRally 2012 Nordic in Copenhagen, Denmark. I’m doing a pre-conference session (“AlwaysOn: Maximizing High Availability with SQL Server 2012”). I’m very honored and hope to see you there.
I’ll be at PASS Summit 2012. Ben and I are doing a pre-conference on Tuesday, November 6th (“Real-World System Design for the DBA: Private Cloud and SQL as a Service“) that will be a lot of fun. It is based on our experience working with customers and certainly a hotbed topic. I’ll also be delivering a session “The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Deploying AlwaysOn Availability Groups” along with Mike Steineke and David Smith. Both guys also participated in the availability groups TAP with me and you’ll hear the straight stuff from us on what you really need to do to be successful.
I’ve got one thing I’m currently working on for post-Summit and if it comes to fruition, will be very exciting. You’ll hear it here first.
I still hope to finish my album in 2012, but given this schedule … probably not. I’m scrapping a few tunes, adding a few new ones, and re-arranging one that is already mostly finished to make it better.

Whew! And I’m sure more may happen …

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