HA/DR Overview of options and discussion points for SQL Server

1. Too Many Choices!
HA/DR:
Mike Walsh, Founder, Straight Path
Solutions

2. Please silence
cell phones

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3 W A Y S T O A C C E S S

5. Welcome!

6. Let’s Talk About A few Customers…
“You had one
job”
OOPS!
Enterprise
budget, SE needs.
“But you need
Enterprise Edition
to run this way”
How many DBs
are too many?
…. If you have to
ask….

7. That’s Why We’re Here Today
There ARE
choices.
SE? EE? Cloud?
Hybrid? VM based
HA? Log
Shipping? AG?
FCI? Third Party
tools?!?!?
There are
ANSWERS.
But I won’t sit
here and say one
is always right.
Leave exploring
the options.
We have 75 mins.
We’ll have
Questions. This is
101.

8. Our Goals Today -
Challenge
assumptions
SE? EE? Cloud?
Hybrid? VM based
HA? Log
Shipping? AG?
FCI? Third Party
tools?!?!?
Realize there are
ANSWERS.
But I won’t sit
here and say one
is always right.
Leave exploring
the options.
We have 75 mins.
We’ll have
Questions. This is
101.

9. Mike Walsh
Founder/Consultant
Straight Path Solutions
Straightpathsql.com/hadr
That Link has the
slides/notes/etc.
SQL Server MVP

10. Our Plan
1. HA/DR From 30,000ft
2. Talk to the Business!
3. Licensing Implications (and a big
change announced late last week)
4. Put it all together

11. HA/DR from
30,000 Feet:
Options in SQL Server, Options out of
SQL, HA vs DR.

12. Some Terms
• RPO – Recovery POINT Objective – “Are we up yet?”
• RTO – Recovery TIME Objective – “Is all my data there?”
• SLA – Service Level Agreement – “
• HA – High Availability (See next slide…)
• DR – Disaster Recovery (See next slide…)

13. High Availability Disaster Recovery
HA is not DR
• Oh No!
• Local/Isolated Failure
• Data Center/SAN ok
• Most folks expect up <
15 minutes
• Oh ^&(#!!!
• The Big One
• Switching Regions
• Most folks understand
longer RPO/RTO

14. SQL Server Availability Technologies
Technology Notes
Failover Cluster Instances Table data here
Always On Availability Groups (EE) Table data here
Always On Availability Groups (SE) Table data here
Log Shipping Table data here
Replication (yeah I went there) Table data here

15. Outside of SQL Server HA/DR Ideas
Technology Notes
VMWare/Hyper-V HA Table data here
VMWare Replication & Snapshot
Technologies for Site Recovery
Table data here
SIOS DataKeeper like tech to combine
with FCI
Table data here

16. Don’t Forget to Dance
• So MANY ways to combine tech
• Let RPO/RTO/Business guide to right areas
• Ask the right questions of business and technology
• Mix and match to suit your needs and budget
• Some of my favorite dance cards:

17. AG Only
• You can achieve HA or DR with this.
• One common approach is 2 synchronous in main data
center/1 asynchronous in secondary
• (I prefer MANUAL failover to DR anyway..)
• Requires EE. But with licensing changes, that’s big $$
saved.

18. FCI – but with more..
• The Internet: “You can’t span a SQL Failover Cluster across
data centers”
• Also the Internet: “That guy? He would never win, what a
joke candidacy!”
• I LOVE these. I even drew a picture on the next slide.
• DR potential here (need a good pipe)
• FCIs are a little easier than AGs (2019 fixed some of these!)

19. FCI + Replication
• No.. I’m not crazy.
• Standard
• Three nodes.
• FCI for AG (even if on a VM or no SAN)
• Replication for Read only reporting (but with indexes)

20. Other Assorted
• FCI + AG – Can get in trouble if not careful. Feels
complicated.
• Log Shipping – FINE DR approach based on RPO/RTO
• Inside of VM/Cloud Based/Etc – something had to be cut!

21. Talk to the
Business!!

22. Be A Consultant
• What’s the Desired Future State?
• Where are we today?
• What’s the gap and how do we close it?
• What do we do first?
• Document it. Get Buy In.
• Do it.

23. Listen…
But that means you have to … talk …. to the business.
Remember:
• They’ll want some weird stuff.
• They’ll get mad when you give them the price tag.
• They’ll think it’s a bit easier than it is.

24. Give the People What they Want
People like choices. Maybe something like this –
Name RPO HA
RTO
DR? Approach Notes Cost
Super <5 <5 Yes,
same
RPO/
RTO
SQL AG 3 node,
synchronous
To get same RTO in
DR situation means
$$$ on pipe and
latency/etc
$$$$$$
Std. <5 <5 Yes
<1hr
RPO/
RTO
SQL AG 3 node Sync
+ Async? Maybe Log
shipping?
Zerto/SRM/etc?
Lots of options. Point
here is you have to
make your own list!
$$ -
$$$
No 24hrs 24hrs
+
One full backup a
day.
Not really HA/DR $

25. Questions to Ask
Put this all together and drive home the important questions.
• What about patching downtime?
• Do we really need EE? Especially now?
• Read only workload offloading? Or is RCSI/best practices
sufficient?
• What else?

26. But Wait!
There’s More!

27. There’s a Change in the Weather
• Go thank Microsoft.
• Lots of reasons to love SQL Server 2019
• A few license changes/clarifications related to HA/DR:
• CHECKDB/Backup/Monitoring of Secondaries
• More Nodes (.. Well one)

28. Moving Pictures…
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2019/10/30/new-high-availability-and-disaster-recovery-benefits-for-sql-server/

29. Before We Go!

30. Add It Up
• Ask the right questions to assess your needs.
• Evaluate your licensing needs and performance needs.
• Plan your approach (can you squeeze an upgrade in?)
• Get On It – Achieve HA and/or DR.
Right now – With the licensing changes, and tech available.
There’s no excuse not to.

31. A Face In The Crowd
• What’s keeping you up right now? (related to SQL Server
HA/DR)
• Anyone going to go and implement something we
discussed today?

32. Thank You
Mike Walsh
@mike_walsh
mike@straightpathsql.com
www.straightpathsql.com/hadr
for resources/links