With SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups, you can configure read-only routing and to automatically redirect the read-only workloads to a secondary replica after a failover. Can this be done using Windows PowerShell?  Read more...

So I am using this new technology called Availability Groups that was introduced in SQL Server 2012. I have heard I can offload my backups to a secondary replica, but I am not sure how that works or how to configure those backups. Are there any limitations? Check out this tip to learn more.  Read more...

SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups provide a high-availability and disaster-recovery solution for you SQL Server 2012 environments. Replication has been around in SQL Server for quite some time and allows you to scale out your environment. Warwick Rudd explains how to join these technologies together.   Read more...

SQL Server Failover Clustering, which includes support for both local and multisite failover configurations, is part of the SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn implementation suite, designed to provide high availability and disaster recovery for SQL Server. The multisite failover clustering technology has been enhanced significantly in SQL Server 2012. The multisite failover cluster architecture, enhancements in SQL Server 2012 to the technology, and some best practices to help with deployment of the technology are the primary focus of this paper.  Read more...

This article discusses failover cluster instances and AlwaysOn groups  Read more...

SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups provides a unified high availability and disaster recovery (HADR) solution that improves upon legacy functionality previously found across disparate features. Prior to SQL Server 2012, several customers used database mirroring to provide local high availability within a data center, and log shipping for disaster recovery across a remote data center. With SQL Server 2012, this common design pattern can be replaced with an architecture that uses availability groups for both high availability and disaster recovery. This paper details the key topology requirements of this specific design pattern, including quorum configuration considerations, steps required to build the environment, and a workflow that shows how to handle a disaster recovery event in the new topology.  Read more...

This article discusses and demonstrates AlwaysOn Availability groups in SQL Server 2012, a new feature for high availability.  Read more...

If you are trouble-shooting an AlwaysOn Availability Group topology, a study of the wait statistics will give a pointer to many of the causes of problems. Although several wait types are documented, there is nothing like practical experiment to familiarize yourself with new wait stats, and Joe Sack demonstrates a way of testing the sort of waits generated by an availability group under various circumstances.  Read more...

This white paper discusses how to reduce planned and unplanned downtime, maximize application availability, and provide data protection using SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn high availability and disaster recovery solutions.  Read more...

From the previous AlwaysOn Availability Group article, we provided a name for the availability group listener which is simply a unique DNS name as a Virtual Network Name (VNN) to direct read-write requests to the primary replica and read-only requests to the read-only secondary replica.   Read more...

This is the first in a four-part series on the new AlwaysOn feature in SQL Server 2012. In this article, AlwaysOn is introduced and contrasted with previous high-availability solutions in SQL Server. The second part of the series will commence with a detailed walkthrough on preparing the environment for AlwaysOn  Read more...

Today Steve Jones has a poll about the new AlwaysOn feature in SQL Server 2012. Is it worth the upgrade for your company?  Read more...

SQL Server has produced some excellent High Availability options, but I was looking for an option that would allow me to access my secondary database without it being read-only or in restoring mode. I need the ability to see transactions occur and query the secondary database.  Read more...

SQL Server has produced some excellent High Availability options, but I was looking for an option that would allow me to access my secondary database without it being read-only or in restoring mode. I need the ability to see transactions occur and query the secondary database.  Read more...