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June 6, 2013

Windows Server 2012 R2 for the DBA: 10 Reasons It Matters

Happy Thursday, everyone. By now, Symon Perriman has given his talk Continuous Availability: Deploying and Managing Clusters Using Windows Server 2012 R2 at TechEd North America 2013. I wasn’t there, but I’m looking forward to seeing the recording. Why do I bring this up? As a Cluster MVP (meaning Windows), I haven’t been able to talk about Windows Server 2012 R2 until things have been made public by Microsoft themselves. The curse of respecting NDAs 🙂

Windows Server 2012 R2 represents a significant step forward in quite a few areas – including Windows Server failover clustering (WSFC). Here’s what I think are some of the killer features and why they matter if you’re deploying SQL Server:

1. Dynamic Witness

When I saw this one last month, I almost stood up and did the happy dance. Quorum is a difficult topic and is going to get at least a chapter in my new book. Windows Server 2012 (no R2) introduced the concept of dynamic quorum where in most cases you could get to last man (nee node) standing with a WSFC. However, you still had to manage the witness as you went from even to odd number of votes. Dynamic witness changes that. Assuming single subnet/site for a moment, what dynamic witness brings to the table is that you designate a witness and the WSFC will bring it in and out depending on your scenario/need. For those deploying more simple SQL Server availability groups scenarios especially, this is really amazing. Dynamic witness isn’t perfect. For example, in the multi-site scenario I wish it let you pick a witness in each site and used whichever one it needed to based on cluster status, but hey, this is a big, big step forward.

2. Shared VHDX

Despite my normal caveats for clustering VMs, I’m pretty excited about shared VHDX – especially for lab scenarios. iSCSI is easy, but I can tell you from doing the labs in my HA class, some struggle with it. This will make things VERY interesting for doing labs as well as test clusters, not to mention production-based WSFCs with SQL Server FCIs. For more information, head on over and watch Jose Barreto and Steven Ekren’s talk from TechEd Application Availability Strategies for the Private Cloud. The VHDX stuff starts around 34:00 (but the whole talk is good).

3. Storage Quality of Service (SQOS)

I have to agree with Aidan Finn on this one. Yes, this is for Hyper-V and I know many of you are using VMware for virtualization (where they have had this for awhile with the Limit IOPS option). But we SQL Server types know I/O is a premium and absolutely necessary for performance. This will give admins some form of control over how many I/Ops a Hyper-V VM can have if needed. If you want to see more information, check out the TechEd presentation Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Storage Performance (the SQOS stuff starts in around 42:55).

4. Hyper-V Usability Improvements

One of the reasons I’ve kept VMware Workstation around is that you can copy and paste both text and files from VMs easily. With Hyper-V, you need to create an ISO and mount it or have a network share. No more! With the new Hyper-V (and I assume it will be in the desktop 8.1 as well), you can now do copy and paste into and out of VMs. This is huge, especially if you need to get demos or test environments up, or if you’re in a Hyper-V prod VM and need to get a T-SQL script in. For a demo, see around 16:30 in Ben Armstrong’s talk Hyper -V – What’s New in Windows Sever 2012 R2. Great, great stuff – and about time. Thank you, Microsoft.

Another cool one is that if your underlying hypervisor is running R2 Datacenter Edition, the VMs will know and use the underlying license to activate. Ben talks about it around 8:10 in that video. This has me VERY excited as someone who creates a lot of VMs for demos and will save me considerable time. (As an aside, Aidan Finn has a great list of all the Hyper-V enhancements here).

5. Generation Two VMs in Hyper-V

While the use case may not be there for everyone and there are some limitations, v2 VMs allows you to do things like secure boot and have more streamlined VMs. For info, see the aforementioned talk from Ben Armstrong starting around 5:50.

6. The Rise of RDMA, CSV, SMB, and “Commodity Storage”

RDMA and SMB are nothing new; SQL Server has supported SMB starting in SQL Server 2012. However, the drive for more I/Ops and cheaper solutions, as well as improvements in Windows, is driving soluions to look at alternate solutions. In the SQL Server world, we see this already with things like Fusion I/O, Violin, etc. Look, I’m not saying fibre channel is dead and your SAN investments should be thrown out. But the world is changing, and it’s possible to get crazy performance with other technologies which are network based and NOT iSCSI. You should read Jose Barreto’s blog on a regular basis if you are at all interested in storage. Also check out his TechEd presentation Understanding the Hyper-V over SMB Scenario, Configurations, and End-to-End Performance. Note that he’s using sqlio to generate performance 🙂 Since SQL Server 2014 will support CSVs for FCI deployments (more on this in a later blog post and in my book), things are going to get very interesting.

7. Improved Troubleshooting/Diagnosability with WSFC

Another thing I’ll address more later, but glad to see there are more things to look at if things aren’t going right.

8. New Force Quorum Resiliency

If you manually force quorum in Windows Server 2012 R2, there are some new protections that will help prevent split brain scenarios. This is huge and solves some problems with multi-site WSFCs which are common with AGs. This isn’t a panacea for all scenarios but a major improvement.

9. Support for Simultaneous Loss of 50% in the WSFC

Prior to Windows Server 2012 R2, if you hit 50% of your voters/nodes/whatever lost, your WSFC would go down. However, with R2, you can lose 50% and still be up. This is essentially controlled by a parameter, but man, for availbility of FCIs and AGs, this is amazing.

10. Partially Removing Reliance on AD for AG and FCI Deployments

I saved one of the best for last. This is absolutely HUGE. One of the biggest problems that I see is that whether deploying an FCI or an AG with a Listener, the VCO creation process fails because of AD permissions. Clusters are very tied into AD and have been moreso since Windows Server 2008. However, with Windows Server 2012 R2, the reliance on AD is now ending if you want it to. This means that we’re going back to a Windows Server 2003-like deployment where there are no computer objects associated with cluster object names. There are some caveats, the big one being if you need Kerberos authentication you still need a VCO. This is great for those who are using SQL Server authentication mainly and no real AD stuff in SQL and not using Kerberos. This will remove a lot of complexity from some SQL Server-based WSFC deployments.

June 5, 2013

My Problem With Intel’s Haswell Processors

This week, Intel formally announced its Haswell processors. In the mobile world, this is a big deal because unlike the previous generation of processors (Ivy Bridge), this new one promises things like better battery life and better graphics. I’m all for better battery life. Part of that is they had to redesign the ultra low voltage (ULV) chips that go in many computers. They have a lower power consumption than Ivy Bridge. By the numbers I’ve seen in preliminary tests, Intel really did improve battery life.

My excitement, however, is short lived. As usual, I’m enticed by new and shiny laptops – most notably the upcoming Vaio Pro 11 or Vaio Pro 13. The Pro 11 reminds me of a cross between my old Vaio G, the older Vaio T (not the new cheapie one), and maybe a bit of the X505 thrown in for good measure. Why is my enthusiasm dampered? Virtualization.

Here’s why: one of the things I love being able to do is run Hyper-V (and sometimes ESX) under VMware Workstation. I use Hyper-V for most of my demos, but it’s easier to show some things Hyper-V related under VMware since I can virtualize the hypervisor and have nested virtual machines. Besides the standard virtualization (VT-x in the Intel world), what allows you to run a hypervisor and nested 64-bit guests is the Intel VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT) feature of the processor. EPT = second level address translation (SLAT) for you geeky types. This requirement is documented by VMware here.

Cue the sad trombone. According to Intel’s whiz-bang Virtualization Technology web page, with the new Haswell chips, only some of the desktop processors got SLAT support; no mobile processor did. Don’t believe me? Click here.

This is a real setback for those of us who do complex demos from time to time like nested VMs. Remoting back home is not always an option. I’m going to have to seriously consider getting another backup Ivy Bridge machine (even if it’s a small form backup like the NUC) because outside of video, I won’t easily be able to demo some things anymore starting with Haswell.

I’m also bemoaning the fate of things like ethernet ports and VGA, but those can be solved with adapters. You can’t add a feature to a processor.

My woes here really fall into 1% of the user base for a mobile processor. I realize this. But if you’re like me, this is a pause before you get all giddy over Haswell.

EDIT: See my follow up post http://www.sqlha.com/2013/06/13/haswell-and-ept-update/. Intel posted the wrong info initially.

June 3, 2013

Announcement Day: Windows Server 2012 R2, SQL Server 2014, and My Mission Critical Book

Unless you were hiding in a witness protection plan today, you may have heard two of the biggest splashes so far from Microsoft’s TechEd North America conference – the official announcements of both Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014. I’m pretty excited about both releases, and will be saying more in the upcoming weeks as more information becomes official. This is the problem

Having said that, you also may have noticed Microsoft’s release cadence is changing. This will not only affect how we think about deploying, upgrading, and patching, but for people like myself who write books, it may get near impossible to keep up, especially since I need to cover two products – Windows and SQL Server. It’s not like a book on mission critical SQL Server can only touch one. SQL Server and Windows are on different cycles, making it even more challenging.

This is one reason I’ve been a bit slower with the book – I’ve been sorting a lot of these issues out. I know the content is needed and people want it; that’s not my problem. The problem is finding a way to make it work where traditional publishing won’t work so you guys get updated stuff when you need it. By the time you write about one thing and get it out in the world, it may be too late. I need to be more agile than that. A little while ago I think I solved the problem. With the announcement of the platforms, now is a good a time as any to let you know what’s going to happen.

The content will cover SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014, most likely SQL Server 2008 R2 (to a degree … still TBD) as well as Windows Server 20008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2. That’s a lot of ground to cover. Now you see why I’ve been hedging a bit. I need a content delivery model that can be updated.

What will this delivery mechanism be? There will be different things. For those who just want a more traditional “book” so-to-speak, I will be making that available and will ultimtately have it for sale in multiple places (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.). That is what I would deem more “static’ and won’t be updated nearly as frequently. What I’m really excited about is how I will be updating the content and making it available.

It’s no secret that a topic such as mission critical didn’t want to be picked up by most of the publishers I talked to because they didn’t want a big book – and I understand that. But I also know the topic needs the space to breathe. Just a clustering book wouldn’t cut it now or in the future since everything is so intertwined; clustering by itself is not a solution. Having control over content and the publishing model, I can try new approaches. And what that new thing is will be a content subscription model. For that to work, I need a solid base to work from – hence me taking my time on the v1 content so I can build and update it when necessary.

What you also have to realize in all this is that self publication, while very liberating, is also very challenging. I’m figuring this all out as I go and trying to write and sort out the financials is not easy. Editing will not be cheap. Getting the content converted potentially to ePub and .mobi formats with as many graphics as I have may cost me an arm and a leg, and I’m not looking to charge you a ton, so I’m reconciling all of that. This is why I haven’t said too much but things are finally coming together.

How will it work? Well, some people may just want the “book” and no updates. I can accomodate them just fine. They can purchase the big thing when they feel there’s an update they need. However, for those who want access to the latest and greatest, there will be a yearly subscription only available exclusively via SQLHA.com that will provide any updates to chapters (or new chapters, for that matter) and such as part of that. No more waiting years in between book releases; once Windows Server 2012 R2 is out, I can finalize content and make it part of the book and you get that content as it relates to SQL Server right then and there. SQL Server 2014? Same thing.

I’ll also make beta content available prior to the v1 publication for a slight charge for those who buy direct on SQLHA.com.

I’m finalizing the pricing model but I promise it will all be reasonable and worth it. There will also be some early bird discounts, so the earlier you sign up, the cheaper it will be. I know some have been waiting for the updated SQL Server 2012 book, but what will be released is going to be much more than that. I plan on having pricing information and preorders up within a few weeks, and for those who sign up for it, beta content available soon thereafter.

I’m excited, and I hope you are too. This has been a long haul figuring all of this out, but I want the content out there just as much as you want to consume it. I mean, who else is going to be nuts enough to spend too much time talking about fun topics like quorum in depth? 🙂

May 8, 2013

Allan’s Adventures with Windows Phone 8

Some of you may have read how I feel about smartphones. For the past few months, I went back and have been using my old Sony K850i which on one level has been great. I went through my stash of phones and that 2007 model got the best reception – you know, like they remembered it was a phone. I then remembered why sometimes a feature phone – or at least an older one – can be annoying. You start carrying around additional chargers for proprietary ports (imagine yay in 1pt font) and the battery life on 3G was/is terrible. Standby is great, but if you talk, you’re lucky to get 4ish hours. For the past few months I’ve been honestly looking for a good, normal phone with great reception. Sadly, nothing – and I literally mean that – has fit the bill.

Regardless of form factor, I just want a good phone. The old Xperia X1 was a good phone even though it ran Windows Mobile. In the past, I had two bad Nokia devices and swore off them but I heard so many good things about the Lumia 620 and it’s in the size I kinda like as a phone, so I figured I’d give it a whirl. Its selling point to me: loud speakerphone. It’s true. The 620 arrived this afternoon and a few hours in, I want to smash it against the wall. Why?

Annoying Factor One: No Battery Indicator Unless You Are On the Lock Screen

So you’re probably saying, “But Allan, if you had done your homework on WP8, you would have known that.” Fair point. But it’s asinine. Every mobile OS at a minimum shows the battery icon at the top all the time by default. I know iOS does it, and all of my Android devices have. This piece of junk? Nope. There’s an app for that which you can download to put on your Start screen to show you. I”ll get to the app process in a bit.

How can Microsoft ship a mobile OS with such a core fundamental piece “missing”? Well, technically It’s there … just not when you want it. Jorge Segarra (blog | Twitter) pointed out to me that you can swipe down to make the battery indicator appear but it disappears. How hard would it be to make an option to display it 24×7? Not very I would think. Fail.

I think my old Motorola StarTac just called and laughed at the Lumia 620.

Annoying Factor Two: Changing Your Regional Info

The unlocked Lumia 620 I got was from Hong Kong apparently. This is not a big deal. On Android if I want to change language settings, you just do it and it takes. The punchline on WP8? You need to reboot for it to take effect if you want to go from Hong Kong to US English for how you display date, time, etc. Unbelievable. What year is this?

Annoying Factor Three: Apps, Accounts, Contacts, and Synchronization Choice

To solve said battery indicator issue, I figured I would download an app which needed a Live/Microsoft account. I’ve got one of those I’ve had for years and years. Since my data is off, I used WiFi to connect to the store. So far, so good. Here’s where we go off the rails. Now, I’m not an app guy. I could largely care less. These are phones for making calls. The only app I used for like 5 minutes when I was on WiFi was Draw Something. I had the American Airlines one, but meh – I’ll stick to regular boarding passes. I’ll kill a tree or 10 in my lifetime.

Anyway, so I was trying to find something to show my battery life and needed to use my Live account. I enter my info, find an app, and download it. Little did I know behind the scenes it took anyone in that IM list and added it to my contacts. WTF? Apparently, all new mobile OSes do this silly sync thing without asking you if you want to. On the Android phones I never had that issue because I don’t use gmail.

The story gets better. I had imported contacts from my SIM card already. That’s all I wanted. There was a filter button, but you click that and all of the contacts went away. In WP8 there is NO WAY TO JUST HAVE SIM/PHONE CONTACTS. Another WTF here. Even Android can do that. But we’re not even at the best part.

The only way to fix this? Remove the Live/MS account. Only way to do it? Reset the phone and lose everything. Yup. Epic fail here. On the Android devices I’ve owned and used, I could remove that account used for apps and go all native and totally disconnected without basically wiping the phone. Terrible, terrible experience. One of the worst I’ve had with any piece of tech in recent memory.

I don’t want to sync jack with the cloud or accounts. I want to use my SIM contacts and have this be a phone. I should be able to have that experience but apparently not.

Annoying Factor Four: MMS Messages

I hate texting but people sometimes feel the need to send me a text with a picture (another 1pt font yay). I don’t have a text plan so I’m already annoyed as is. Android and WP8 devices function the same – to get these infernal things, I have to turn data on. With a feature phone, they just show up with nothing special. I was wondering if WP8 would be the same as Android, and sure enough, it is.

Annoying Factor Five: The Start Screen

I’ve been running Windows 8 (the OS, not the mobile WP8) forever. I even have a touchscreen device (the Sony Vaio Duo). I like it. So the Metro/Modern thing isn’t a nemesis to me. But the Start screen on WP8 leaves a bit to be desired. I can’t put my finger on exactly why the OS works but the mobile OS doesn’t here. And no, I’m not looking for a desktop or file explorer on my phone.

So Where Does This Leave Me?

I don’t know. I’m only a few hours into the WP8 experience and I want to bash my head against a wall. Sadly, as dysfunctional and fragmented as Android is, it just kinda works and makes more sense to me. I’m far from a power user of phones, but WP8 is supremely dumbed down. You’d think WP8 – which is, let’s face it – targeted at people more like me who hate smartphones but can’t really get a feature phone would work for me but I’ve had such a negative reaction to it. The whole sync/contacts/reset thing really bothers me.

With WP8, many settings seem to be obscured. Android tries to obscure some stuff (for example, if you had to manually set up AT&T info), but you can ultimately get there. I’m not sure you can do that in WP8, nor am I sure I want to find out. I’m not getting an iPhone, the Android devices are better in terms of OS for my tastes but the smaller devices are not great phones and I don’t want a device above 4″ in screen (sadly, the Galaxy Note had great signal strength and could be a good phone; I don’t want a phablet attached to my head). Nokia’s non-WP Asha devices? I’ll pass.

Maybe I’ll just move to a cave and not have to worry about any of this. Or not. Time will tell. In the meantime, Ben will happily use his WP8 phone (he doesn’t like Android, BTW). Short of buying a Vertu Ascent, I’m proabably screwed. I shouldn’t have to spend stupid money to get a basic phone that is newer than 2008, works, and has a good signal. Oh, and isn’t a flip phone. Hate them, too.

April 29, 2013

AlwaysOn Is the New Active/Passive and Active/Active

Congratulations, folks! It’s official – as I predicted with in my Availability Groups FAQ just over a year ago, the term AlwaysOn has now become the new active/passive and active/active and annoys me just as much if not more. Every time I see it misused I want to proverbially stab myself in the eyes. I really tried to avoid writing this post. I truly did. But people have forced my hand because it’s become like using ur for your, witch for which, etc. – in other words, it’s just wrong and people need to start using the right words.

I swear people should be given a test: if you can’t use the right terminology, you can’t use the feature or speak on it. It’s ignorant otherwise and you’re perpetuating problems. This even goes for people I truly admire and respect – like Bob Ward (one of the best and most knowledgable people about SQL Server around PERIOD) who recently wrote what is an otherwise great blog on availablity groups, but is marred by literally using the wrong term (and see next paragraph for spelling of it; there is no space) the ENTIRE post. MS doing it (be it CSS or a PM) is especially egregious since it helps perpetuate the bad. ARG!

So what is AlwaysOn (one word, no space between Always and On – another common mistake)? It is a marketing term that covers two features in SQL Server: availablity groups (AGs) and failover clustering instances (FCIs). So their official names are technically AlwaysOn availability groups and AlwaysOn failover cluster instances (or failover clustering instances). Don’t believe me? Click here. A few of us had a spirited debate on Twitter awhile back, which I think prompted Jonathan Kehayias’ (blog | Twitter) blog post which predates this one. Part of the reason we had a friendly debate is that depending on who you ask over in SQL Server, AlwaysOn is either just AGs and FCIs, or to some, it covers all features that remotely have to do with availablity. Either way, it still does not equate to AlwaysOn = the availability groups feature.

As with the A/P and A/A, let me give you a bit of history. The availability groups feature in SQL Server 2012 went through a few name changes over the development of the product. It had a total of four (not necessarily in this order):

HADR
HADRON
AlwaysOn (yes, your eyes do not fail you)
Availability groups

Let’s start with the first two. If memory serves me correctly, HADR was the first name for the feature which then morphed into HADRON. HADR was around for a long time. HADR was around so long that there are still remnants of it in SQL Server (such as the AG DMVs) that are not being renamed. Truth be told, I liked HADRON. It is easy to remember (a key hallmark for anything marketing) and it rolls of the tongue easily. However, switch two letters and you have a disaster waiting to happen. For those with delicate sensibilities, I apologize but let’s face facts. I can see why they probably didn’t go down that road. To add to the comment about Bob Ward, take a look at the titles of some of the CSS blog posts. (As an aside, you should bookmark that CSS blog site. They always post interesting stuff.) Many still use HADRON. They’re not helping any here.

That brings me to the dreaded term: AlwaysOn. Yes, it was the feature name for AGs for what seemed like five minutes, but it’s the one for some reason that most of the SQL dev PMs stuck on and started using in things like presentations, so I think that’s why it stuck. I don’t remember when marketing co-opted the term and made it cover the features of availability groups and FCIs, but it happened. I think that was much later in the dev cycle, which is also I think why the damage was done and somewhat irreversible.

The the term AlwaysOn (with or without space) has a long history with SQL Server going back nearly 10 years which adds to the confusion. The term Always On (with space) was introduced in SQL Server 2005 to brand a program to certify storage vendors with SQL Server (example: Dell’s whitepaper; EMC and Hitachi also have similar ones). In SQL Server 2008, Always On (with space) was used to cover availability in general – much like how it’s SUPPOSED to be used in SQL Server 2012. Don’t believe me? Here’s proof.

I leave you with this: STOP USING ALWAYSON IF YOU ARE REFERRING TO AVAILABILITY GROUPS. Please use the right terminology. Just as active/passive and active/active are incorrect for FCIs, AlwaysOn is wrong for AGs.

In the immortal words of Bartles and James, thank you for your support.

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