SQL Server High Availability

What is new in Availability Group

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Introduction

▪ János Berke
▪ SQL Server consultant
▪ PASS Chapter Co-Lead
▪ MCT/MCITP
▪ Data Platform MVP
▪ Contact:
▪ Email: Janos@iamBerke.com
▪ Blog: http://www.iamBerke.com
▪ Twitter: @JanosBerke
Warning

CODES AND INFORMATION ARE PROVIDED

"AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE!
Agenda
▪ Basic Availability Group
▪ Domainless cluster, distributed AG
▪ Certificate based authentication
▪ Load balancing secondary replica
▪ gMSA
▪ DTC and Cross-Database transaction support
▪ Direct seeding
▪ Database-level failover trigger
▪ Endpoint encryption RC4 to AES
▪ Log transport
▪ Parallel redo
▪ Demo
Basic Availability Group

▪ SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition

• Maximum 2 replicas (1 Primary and 1 Secondary).
• No readable replica
• Cannot make backup at the secondary.
• Only one database in an AG.
• Cannot make edition upgrade (Standard 
Enterprise).
AG be deleted before upgrade and recreate AG in
Enterprise edition.
Distributed Availability Group

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/mt651673.aspx
 Load Balancing Secondary Replica

DR Site READ_ONLY_ROUTING_LIST=
(('COMPUTER2', 'COMPUTER3',
Computer2 Primary Site
'COMPUTER4'), 'COMPUTER5')

Computer5 Computer1
Computer3 (Primary)

Computer4
gMSA support
▪ Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA)
▪ Automatically set domain scope for Managed Service Accounts
▪ Automatic password rotation
▪ Much more secure than regular domain accounts
▪ Enables cross-system security context
▪ Why would I want a gMSA?
▪ No need to manually change passwords on all Always On
instances
▪ How does it work?
▪ Passwords are managed by domain
▪ Supported in SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server 2016
DTC and Cross-Database transaction
support
▪ Cross-database transactions within the same
SQL Server instance *are not* supported for
Always On Availability Groups
▪ Distributed transactions *are supported* with
Always On Availability Groups between
databases hosted by two different SQL
Server instances. It also applies to distributed
transactions between SQL Server and
another DTC-compliant server
▪ DTC_SUPPORT = PER_DB
Other restrictions apply!!!
Database-level failover trigger
▪ In SQL Server 2014, Availability Groups only monitor health of
the instance
▪ Database can be offline or corrupt, but will not trigger failover
as long as instance itself is healthy
▪ SQL Server 2016: Option to also monitor health of databases
in Availability Group
▪ Databases going offline trigger change in health status
▪ You can now configure Availability Groups for failover when
database goes offline
▪ This change requires setting DB_FAILOVER option to ON in
CREATE AVAILABILITY GROUP (Transact-SQL) or ALTER
AVAILABILITY GROUP (Transact-SQL) statements
Log Transport
Parallel Redo1

▪ Up to 100 threads for parallel redo for secondary

replicas.
▪ Each database uses up to one-half of the total
number of CPU cores, but not more than 16
threads per database.
▪ If the total number of required threads for a
single instance exceeds 100, SQL Server uses a
single redo thread for every remaining database.
▪ Redo threads are released after ~15 seconds of
inactivity.
Parallel Redo2

Example:
▪ 48 cores
▪ 40 databases

Max # of Redo Threads: max.16 for the first

6 databases, 34 for the remaining
Demo

▪ Direct Seeding + Certificate Authentication

▪ Load Balancing Secondary Replicas
▪ Surprise ☺
VNext – SQL Server 2017

▪ DTC enhancements
▪ Cross DB transaction
▪ Clusterless AG
▪ Read-Scale vs. HA AAG.
▪ Linux
SQL Server 2017 Launch Event*

▪ Watch for announcement at

http://meetup.com/HUG-MSSQL
▪ Planned date is 20170530 for the event.

*This is not/may not be the release date or day!

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▪ Thank you!

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