January 2013

January 28, 2013

Being a Phone Guy in a Smartphone World

As forward and pushing boundaries as I can be with my little laptops of doom and in my job, I am quite the opposite when it comes to my cellular phone usage. I like my phone to be … wait for it … a phone. I do not do e-mail on it. I hate texting. I don’t surf the ‘net with a phone. I have a computer for things like that and e-mail. I need my cellular phone to be a good phone. Period. That means good signal strength and has to have a great speakerphone (I hate bluetooth headsets with a passion, too). A cel phone is essential for me since I’m on the road so much.

Go ahead, call me a luddite. I take a lot of lighthearted ribbing from many – and have for years. I don’t mind. A friend and colleague said this to me recently: “You need to be flash frozen like Han Solo and given to the Smithsonian to memorialize the last geek without a smartphone.” Before anyone chimes in with comments like, “You’ve never used a smartphone! You don’t know what you’re missing”, I have used, own, or owned quite a few. I’ve played with various versions of the iPhone since they’re so ubiquitous and many friends and colleagues have them. I have used data on some of these devices, so I did see if I would like it. I didn’t. Here’s my list of devices over the past few years:

Android – Sony Tablet S [original v1], Sony Xperia Tipo Dual, Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray, Samsung Galaxy Note, Sony Walkman NW-Z1070, Sony Walkman NW-F807
Windows Mobile (the original, not Windows Phone) – Sony Ericsson Xperia X1a

People who know me or work with me know how to get in touch with me, so that really isn’t an issue. I’m not hard to find and electronically, e-mail has always been the easiest and preferred method. If I’m around, I respond. I can keep odd hours as most have realized. It’s really that simple. If it’s an emergency, you probably have my cel number or can get it. I have never felt the need to be connected 24×7. I think it leads to better life balance. There has to be a separation from work life and your personal life. I know too many people who constantly are fidgeting with their phones or checking e-mail long after work when they’re supposed to be out and relaxing. I am a big fan of boundaries when you can have them. Most of my hobbies are low tech. When I play bass, it’s just a bass and cord into an amp. I don’t use any kind of effects. I prefer vintage equipment for the most part. Sometimes keeping it simple is the best way … like dedicated devices (such as a CD/SACD player for listening to discs).

I remember going to London for the first time in 1999 (and quite a lot since). I remember seeing people texting all of the time and thinking that would never take off in the US. I was wrong. When I went to Japan in 2004 for the first time, people were always looking at their phones (1-seg TV and whatever else they do on phones is popular there). Maybe I’m odd, but I prefer talking to people for real in many situations. I have noticed over the years a lack of manners and civility since smartphones have taken over the world. People walking around staring at screens, not paying attention yet it’s your fault if they run into you. I’ve seen parents ignore kids at Disneyland (and that’s an expensive day for a family of 5). I see people at dinner – couples or families – ignoring their companion and staring at screens. I went to a movie with my Dad and four friends (I assume they were – they were sitting next to each other in the row in front of us) were all madly swiping and tapping away but not talking to each other. Why bother going out anywhere and with each other if your form of social is staring at a screen? It makes no sense to me.

For the record, I do like my Android-based Sony Walkmans, and the Tablet S is one of the best universal remotes I’ve ever used. I also like using the Tablet S as a portable sheet music device for rehearsals and gigs. The X1 was a well built phone and nice to look at, that’s for sure. That’s mainly why I bought it. It was my first real encounter with a touch screen. I went back to a regular phone soon thereafter.

Another thing I hate is the disturbing trend towards bigger phones that really started with the Galaxy Note. I bought that device mainly to use as a possible presentation whiteboard device. It didn’t work out for me that way, so here it sits in my unused tech pile. I never thought the phablet as they are now referred to would take off. How wrong I was! Heck, HTC is now making a phone-like remote to control your phablet. How ridiculous. Apparently Sony is working on a 6.44″ screen phablet. Oy vey. Where is the skinny jeans crowd going to put that? This is one of the reasons I bought the Xperia Ray – it’s one of the smallest smartphones made and I doubt we’ll see the likes of it again. It’s as close to a candybar featurephone as you’ll get now. I have basically been using it for the past year as my phone but it frustrates me as a phone. Like the X1, it has shown me that I yearn to have a numeric keypad – not a facsimile on a screen. I got the Tipo Dual before going to Australia last year since I wanted a dual SIM phone. Australia has the same 3G bands as AT&T in the USA, so it made sense. It’s a small device (which I like), but the touchscreen is worse than that on the Ray.

I’ve been doing research on new feature phones, and much to my dismay, there are very few featurephones made today. Most are clamshell (blech). The last real candybar phone made and that I’d probably consider is the Nokia Asha 300, but my two previous experiences with Nokia did not have happy endings (the Nokia 6500 slide and the 8800 were horribly failed experiments) so I probably won’t go there. For the most part, I’ve always had good luck with Sony Ericsson (now just Sony) phones. The T637, W600, K850i (the first 3G phone I ever owned), C510a, Xperia Pureness, and Cedar all served me well over the years. The T637 is one of my favorite phones of all time along with the W600. I only got the K850i just to get 3G. The C510a got passed to a friend (and it died recently). The Xperia Pureness was form over function unfortunately, and Cedar died a premature death. It won’t even charge. One thing I need for any phone I ever use is all (or most of) the relevant world bands to have connectivity. That’s both the beauty and curse of GSM-based phones, especially if you go to places like Japan which are different from Europe, Australia, and North America.

This weekend, I made the decision to revive and bring back into service my old K850i and stop using the Ray. I had enough of fiddling with it despite liking its overall size and form factor. The K850i is all set up now/again, so it’ll be interesting to see how it fares again with daily use. It definitely shows its battle scars, but it still works nearly 6 years later. That says a lot. The only downside is that it comes from a time when charger ends were proprietary so no universal USB charging for all of my devices. I do have a WM-Port to USB adapter for my Android Walkmans, ironically enough.

The thing I am probably looking forward to is outside of talking a lot (which sadly doesn’t happen since most people don’t use cel phones to talk), I will be able to go lengthy amounts of time without having to charge the K850i. The screens and power consumption of most smartphones forces us to have power at the ready, like that stupid Duracell Powermat commercial with Jay-Z.

Don’t worry, Ben happily uses a smartphone (currently the HTC 8X I believe) to its fullest extent, so my ways don’t permeate all of SQLHA.

January 24, 2013

Mission Critical SQL Server 2012: A Book Update

Can you believe it’s been almost four years since the publication of Pro SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering (Apress; Print | Kindle | PDF) and six since Pro SQL Server 2005 High Availability (Apress; Print | Kindle | PDF)? I can’t. I want to thank everyone who has purchased it and contacted me (coming up to me at a conferecec, e-mailing, etc.) or written a positive review of them, especially the 2008 book. It’s very humbling as well as gratifying to know that all that time spent is worth it. Technical books are not vanity projects nor do you get rich – these are not New York Times bestsellers, which makes them hard propositions for publishers to begin with.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d write follow up. With all of the changes in SQL Server 2012, doing just a book based on FCIs wouldn’t do, so it would need to be bigger. If it was going to be bigger, I wanted to do it more like the 2005 book and tell the whole story but that would be even bigger than just covering features. I first visited possibly writing a book in 2011 when I took a stab at an outline and submitted it to Apress. We went through 6 revisions and at the end of the day, it was just not what they wanted (which was something smaller like my 2008 book). I didn’t want to compromise the vision and integrity of the book. Don’t send them hate mail; they are in the business of making money and my books as noted are not NYT bestsellers. Over time they sell well. It was then I started looking into self publishing. I also would love to be able to be agile and correct things (like some stuff I either dislike or now is wrong – like the DTC thing which I blog about here).

I have been on the fence but did utilmately commit to doing something. My inner writer couldn’t not (I know, double negative) do a book. But it would be a lot of work, especially on my own and with the scope I was looking at, a printed book was no guarantee mainly for cost and size reasons. Timing is everything, and with a topic like mission critical, you need lessons learned so having something out by RTM of SQL Server 2012 wasn’t necessary. The perfect time is usually 12 – 18 months after RTM (which is where we are now). Fast forward to fall. SQL Server 2012 SP1 is released and Windows Server 2012 RTMs, which means that I can write one book and cover everything including all supported OSes (and their variants like Server Core) as well as the patching story. RTM-based book wouldn’t have that. Because I was busy and on the road most of last fall, I shelved things for a bit.

Over the past few weeks I have finally felt inspired again to pick this project back up. I put together a revised outline. I had some people look it over and boy was I over ambitious. Apress was right in a way; that book would not only NOT be digestible, but it’d never get done. I want to tell the whole story, but I’m also not stupid. Here’s where I am:

Based on the outline comments, I have enough content for three (or four) books. That is the approach I am going to take: split things up into chunks. Right now I’m only committing to the first book, which is the HA technologies and related topics (let’s call that Volume I). Volumes II and II may get written, but let me get through I first!
Breaking this up allows more agility to get content out quicker and be more focused. As a reader, you will arguably be less overwhelmed, too!
It will definitely be available as ePub and mobi (for Kindle).
I may be able to offer a print version (even if on demand) if the size is manageable and cost isn’t bad. Or, if any tech book publishers are interested in picking the book up, contact me.
I have no formal ETA on Volume I, II, or III. I would like to get Volume I out by TechEd in North America which is about 6 months from now, but no promises.
I will not announce a release date or give anything like pre-order information until I am at a point where I know I can give a real date.

That is the update. It’s all good news. I hope you’re as excited as I am and the final product will live up to my previous efforts which have been well received.

<PSA>

I appreciate people who have e-mailed me that my 2008 book is out there on sites which shall not be named. Sigh. As you may guess, I do not get rich off of writing. If I calculated the time spent in getting it out the door, I’d lose money. You can’t keep people from doing what they do, but all I ask is that you should try to support authors by buying books. I know times are tough out there and whether it is $29.99 or $69.99, that can be a lot of money to some. That doesn’t make downloading it for free right. It just inhibits people like me from writing future books.

</PSA>

January 18, 2013

Patching Windows Server 2012 – The New Wild West

A week or so ago, I was excited to find out that Microsoft finally published a KB article that listed the recommended hotfixes and updates for Windows Server 2012 failover clusters (KB 2784261). Microsoft has done this for the major versions of Windows for the past few years (example: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 [KB 2545685]). These are great articles because they are very focused on WSFC. However, my excitement for the Windows Server 2012 article is severely dampered. Why?

If you compare the two, notice that W2K8 R2 SP1’s article lists all hotfixes. Look at what W2012 shows in Figure 1:

Figure 1. Cumulative Update for Windows Server 2012

Cumulative Updates? Oy! Let me preface this comment: I’m a Cluster MVP so inherently as much as I’m a SQL guy, I’m a Windows guy, too. I’m not about biting the hands that feed me but this scares the bejeezus out of me. Cumulative updates are a new concept for Windows, and I’m not sure what cumulative means in Windows. I know what it means in SQL Server. And if you click on the link in that article, you get no information (zero, nada, zilch, nil) about what is in that package. Compare that to a SQL Server CU such as SQL Server 2012 CU5. Even if Microsoft decided to have a hidden fix or two for whatever reason (and I have no reason to believe they have), you’re still getting a list of everything in there. That Windows update? You have no idea. Microsoft is basically asking for blind trust here.

WSFCs (as well as clustered instances of SQL Server [FCIs] and availability groups [AGs]) are usually put in because someone has a need to be up and running – hence mission critical. Something like a cumulative update sends off warning bells for me because instead of directed fixes like the W2K8 R2 SP1 KB which lists some individual hotfixes, you’re getting a ton more fixes that you will eventually get in, say, a service pack. Yes, you will consume them in a service pack, but that is a different beast than something like a CU. For example, on Windows, certain things you don’t want to touch if you don’t have to or until you need to – like TCP/IP. The stability of the networking stack is somewhat important, wouldn’t you say? This is why you don’t apply hotfixes willy nilly, and you certainly don’t apply a metric ton of them (we don’t even know how many fixes are in that CU) “just because”.

And let’s not even get into things like GDR branching (which I wrote about a little here). With a hotfix, you’ll only blow a few things off of the GDR branch. With a CU, you may blow many things off the GDR branch – some of which you didn’t intend to. That is not a good thing in my opinion, and when I have no clue what is in the update – that’s why this new patching method scares me. I don’t know why Microsoft does not list what’s in the CU for Windows, but right now, I would be wary of applying it unless you do your due diligence and test fully in a non-production environment.

My sincere hope is that Microsoft goes full disclosure with these new CUs for Windows and tells us what’s in them just like the SQL Server CUs show (and also link to the individual KBs). If not, even I will have a hard time recommending them to my customers unless I absolutely, 100% with no question know it fixes a specific problem of theirs. This to me is a step in the wrong direction in how we will patch our Windows Server 2012 boxes.

January 14, 2013

SQL Server FCI Setup Problems 2: Windows Server 2012 and VCOs Part 2

When I last left you in Part 1, I showed you the new functionality in Windows Server 2012 where the CNO and VCO does not have to be put in the default Computers OU automatically if you do not pre-stage things. The examples I showed were all using a Windows Server 2012 DC. This time around, I’m going to try the same thing but with a Windows Server 2008 R2-based DC with a functional level of W2K8 R2.

First, what I did was force the DC to put the computer objects into the W2012 Servers OU using the command shown in Figure 1. I also gave the cluster administration account the CCO right on that OU.

Figure 1. Creating a default OU

I then added DENNIS and TOMMY to the MHZ domain, and as expected, they automatically were placed in the proper OU as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. DENNIS and TOMMY after being added ot MHZ

I created a WSFC with the same name, STYX. Just as with the Windows Server 2012 DC, the CNO got created in the proper OU. You can see it in Figure 3, but if you look at Figure 4 which is the output of the WSFC creation, I did not have to go to AD to look – it told me right there it happened. To this point, everything is working as expected.

Figure 3. OU after creating the WSFC named STYX

Figure 4. Cluster creation report showing the proper OU

Up next was creating the FCI. Remember that in the previous post, I showed you with a Windows Server 2012 DC at a Windows Server 2012 functional level, I needed to give the CNO computer object CCO rights on the OU. I’m happy to report that no such thing needed to be done with the W2K8 R2 DC. Just having the cluster administration account with those rights created the VCO for the SQL Server FCI just fine. See Figures 5 and 6.

Figure 5. Successfull starting of the EQUINOX FCI

Figure 6. The Equinox VCO in W2K8 R2 AD

This is all good news. While there are clearly slight differences in your OS choice for AD as to how to go about this, the bottom line is that you do not need to have a completely new infrastructure to take advantage of this feature. You should be able to leverage your existing AD infrastructure with no problem. If your AD admin has complained to you in the past about extra work he or she has had to do to create and move AD objects for clusters, this may go away if you start using Windows Server 2012 for your nodes.

I’m just getting warmed up with Setup-related weirdnesses, oddities, and problems. See you next time!

January 11, 2013

SQL Server FCI Setup Problems 1: Windows Server 2012 and VCOs Part 1

Happy New Year everyone! I hope the holiday season treated you well, but like everyone else, it’s time for me to roll up my sleeves and get back to things – including blogging.

This is the first of a few SQL Server failover clustering instance blog posts centered around Setup. I’ve been noticing a few things as of late and as I’m writing the new Mission Critical SQL Server 2012 book, I wanted to share some of what I found (and there will be much more detail in the book around some of these).

There’s a great new feature associated with deploying a Windows Server 2012 failover cluster (WSFC). When a WSFC is created, a corresponding Cluster Name Object (CNO) also gets created in Active Directory (AD). Similarly, when SQL Server (or any other clustered application requiring a name) gets created, it also gets an AD object called a Virtual Computer Object (VCO). These require certain rights to happen automatically, or these objects can be known as what is “pre-staged” – meaning they can be created ahead of time. I’m oversimplifying a bit just to present the general concepts to understand what I will be showing later.

The problem for AD admins is that many of them have a customized structure to place objects – like computers – into. For example, all of the SQL Servers may go in an organizational unit (OU) – think of a folder – called SQL Servers. By default, a Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 WSFC would stick the CNO and VCO in the Computers OU. The only way to have it placed elsewhere would be to pre-stage it. In Windows Server 2012, this behavior is different. There’s a bit more intelligence behind where CNOs and VCOs get created. If you have another default OU, it will try to use that. However, even if you don’t change the default OU but you move, say, the cluster nodes into another one, it will try to create the CNO where the nodes are, and the subsequent VCOs there as well because the CNO will now be there as well. It may not be optimal for everyone but it sure is light years from where we were with Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2.

So in theory, SQL Server’s Setup – 2008 R2 or 2012 – when installing a clustered instance of SQL Server (FCI) should be able to use this properly, right? It can, but there are some slight differences to the way you did things in the past which I discovered through testing. The domain controller I used in this testing is Windows Server 2012 at a W2012 functionality level.

I have an OU named W2012 Servers (see Figure 1; for all figures in this post, click on them to make them larger). It has two computer objects in it – my nodes DENNIS and TOMMY. The WSFC administration account I will use to create the WSFC also has the requisite Create Computer Objects (CCO) right on the W2012 Servers OU – basically the same as if I would have added it to the Computers OU.

Figure 1. AD OU with the two nodes

Then I created a WSFC named STYX as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Newly created WSFC

As expected, the CNO got added in that OU because it saw the two nodes in there. The OU now looks like Figure 3. So far, so good.

Figure 3. AD OU with the newly created WSFC in it

I then tried to install a SQL Server 2012 FCI named Equinox. Everything was great until Setup tried to bring the network name resource online. Cue sad trombone, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Equinox cannot come online.

So what’s wrong? Setup barfed before it could complete (no SQL Server Agent was created) because it couldn’t configure SQL Server itself due to not being able to come online. Remember that there are dependencies when it comes to clustered resources, and in the case of SQL Server, if the name isn’t up, neither is SQL. This can be seen in the SQL Server Setup log as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Error in Detail.txt

Now I need to figure out why this happened. Because of what I know about WSFC, I already had a suspicion it had to do with permissions or something related to the VCO. The first place I look is at the errors in Failover Cluster Manager (FCM), which is a good place to start. It aggregates the cluster related events for you. The one in Figure 6 stuck out at me like a sore thumb as root cause or close to it.

Figure 6. The error in Failover Cluster Manager

This error confirmed my suspicions. What was notable is the wording. Now, I know I had the account used to create the WSFC set up with CCO. In the past, that’s all I’ve ever needed unless I was pre-staging. That first bullet is the telling one. Remember that the STYX object was created just fine, so I had no issues. But after I created the WSFC, I did not explicitly give the CNO any additional rights on the W2012 Servers OU. Since I didn’t need to do anything like that in the past, I decided to try an experiment. Before trying to reinstall SQL Server and waste time there, I would try to cluster something as a generic applicatioon and see if I could reproduce the error. What I was trying to do was rule out SQL Server’s Setup as having a bug. Before going any further, I ran the Remove Node functionality of Setup to clean up the failed install of Equinox.

I then tried to create Notepad (yes, that Notepad) as a generic application as shown in Figure 7. The same issue happened – the network name could not come online. The error was the same. So at this point – for now anyway – I was ruling out SQL Server’s Setup. But I had to get it working. Note that in Figure 7, the Wizard calls out the fact that the WSFC detected where te VCO should probably be placed based on the location of the CNO. I did not input that. Pretty cool.

Figure 7. Creating Notepad as a "clustered" application

Based on this, I granted the CNO the CCO right on the OU to see if that would fix my issue. I then tried to create Notepad again in the WSFC. This time, it worked as shown in Figure 8. Notepad was created properly in the cluster and its associated VCO was created in the W2012 Servers OU as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 8. Successfully clustered Notepad

Figure 9. Notepad in the OU

Now that I know Notepad worked, I was going to try SQL Server. I was fairly confident I solved my issue by granting the CNO the proper rights on the OU. If it didn’t work, there was a problem with Setup itself that was probably trying to put it in the Computers OU and bypass whatever Windows behavior is. I was hoping this was not the case. Before installing SQL Server, I deleted Notepad (not from the node, just the WSFC). Fingers crossed, I reinstalled the Equinox FCI. Figures 10 and 11 tell the story.

Figure 10. Equinox FCI

Figure 11. Equinox as a VCO in the OU

Whether you are installing SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2012 on a Windows Server 2012 node, as long as the permissions are right, the new VCO functionality of Windows Server 2012 works like a charm. No more Computers OU by default if Windows detects things elsewhere. Yay.

So how does this new VCO behavior work with a non-Windows Server 2012 DC? Stay tuned for a future installment of this series.

Before I wrap up this post, I wanted to point out something else I observed. After creating the FCI, FCM was showing the following in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Name resolution message

Name resolution not yet available? What? This is something I had never seen before that did go away. I’m going to do some digging into this, but what I am assuming is that DNS had not been propagated so while the object was in AD, something still wasn’t resolving. This was non fatal because it went away, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

That’s it for today, kids. Class dismissed!

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