Tag: AlwaysOn

SQL

Improving Performance When Querying Multiple DMVs

A couple of days ago I posted a stored procedure (sp_GetAGInformation) which queried multiple DMVs to pull together a bunch of AvailabilityGroup information. If you took a look at the code you would see that it used a couple of CTEs (Common Table Expressions).

CTEs are a great way to do recursive work, and they can also greatly simplify reading code. A CTE without recursion is really nothing more than a subquery that is nicely wrapped.

For example:

Basic+CTE

Basic CTE

Is the same thing as:

Basic+Subquery

Basic Subquery

This can easily lead you down the path towards poor performance. It is quite easy to define a CTE once and use it multiple times, not realizing that every time you use the CTE then you are performing that subquery, meaning is has to be evaluated and executed.

For smaller queries this is not usually a problem, but for larger queries and more importantly when working with DMVs this can be a serious performance problem.

Continue reading “Improving Performance When Querying Multiple DMVs” →

AlwaysOn, SQL, SQL 2012

Traffic Flow With Read-Intent Routing

One of the big advantages to using SQL Server Availability Groups is the ability to automatically push read traffic over to a secondary server. This is particularly useful for larger queries that would take a few seconds to run and consume large amounts of resources. It’s not something recommended for short, fast queries, just because the additional latency of connecting to the secondary could slow down the overall response time for the query.

The Microsoft documentation on setting up Read-Only Routing in SQL AGs is pretty solid and explains how to get this up and running.

 

Firewall and traffic routing

In secure environments there is usually a firewall that resides between the front end web, application or mid-tier servers and the backend database server. This firewall would block all traffic to the backend except for specific ports to specific IP addresses. This is one of the defense in depth items that helps to keep your databases secure.

When using a firewall in conjunction with SQL Server Availability Groups (AGs) it is common to just open up the firewall to the AG Listener. That way there is a single IP open for all the database servers that reside in the AG and any machine that is not acting as the AG primary is not available through the firewall (reducing attack vectors again, a nice side effect).

Given this you might well expect that when routing traffic off to a readable secondary in the AG that it would follow the flow of:

download (5)

Here the client (either directly or through a web, app, or mid-tier) performs an action that does a read query against the AG Listener. The expected traffic flow would be (from what we would see IP address wise, the AG Listener would actually connect to the primary, in this case SQL1):

Client – AG Listener – Readable Secondary – AG Listener – Client
so
Client – SQLAG01 – SQL2 – SQLAG01 – Client

This way the primary server (in this case SQL1) would arbitrate all the traffic for the query that comes in. In fact read routing does not function this way.

In order to perform the expected task of reducing the load on the primary the primary actually tells the client to redirect to the secondary server, and so the process goes:

download (6)

The correct communication is

Client – AG Listener – Secondary – AG Listener – Client – Secondary – Client
or
Client – SQLAGL01 – SQL2 – SQLAGL01 – Client – SQL2 – Client

When the client request comes in SQL has to check that the readable secondary is available to accept the query (otherwise it will go to the next server in the routing list, which is why you should always have the primary as the last server in the routing list, just in case every other server is out of service).

This means the query will take a little longer to execute as the arbitration and network changes will take additional milliseconds to complete (why it is not ideal for small, fast selects).

 

Where does the firewall come in?

Using a firewall and only opening up the IP of the Listener is the best way to handle security, but if you want to use readable secondary server and read-intent routing that’s not going to work. Due to the way that the traffic is routed you would need to open up the firewall to each individual server and port that would be a secondary.

So in our above example the firewall would need to be opened to SQLAGL01, SQL1 & SQL2 in order to support client requests. If those rules aren’t opened then you’re client traffic will be blocked and you’ll get the dreaded “Named Pipes Provider: Error 40” error, which isn’t much of a help.

 

Testing your read-intent connections

A really useful way of testing your read-intent connections is to use a quick PowerShell script from your front end server (if running Windows) prior to putting it into rotation. Download Check-ReadRouting.PS1 and enter the AG Listener name, or IP Address and the name of a database in the AG. If things are working correctly it will return the name of the primary and first server in your read-only routing list.

If you get a timeout then you have either not set the read-intent URL correctly for your secondary, or you are having firewall issues connecting, and so should investigate further.

 

Read-routing can be really powerful and useful, you just have to be careful of the gotchas in getting it working correctly.

 

AlwaysOn, Installation, SQL 2012

Rolling Upgrades With Availability Groups – A Warning

One of the great options provided by Availability Groups, in SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition and newer, is the ability to perform rolling upgrades to new Service Packs or Cumulative Updates.

The basic idea is that you apply the update to one of the AG secondary servers and then perform a failover of SQL to that server which then does the necessary things on the user databases to bring them up to the level of the update. The big advantage to this is that it minimizes the outage required to get the SP/CU applied, so that you are down for a few seconds instead of 40 minutes.

 

This is works really well for your regular user databases, however there is a problem when applying a CU or SP to a secondary server where a Integration Services (typically called SSISDB) is a member of an Availability Group. If you attempt to apply the CU/SP then it can fail and the SSISDB be left in an offline state. 

In order to apply the CU/SP you would first have to remove SSISDB from the Availability Group and recover it on each server you want to patch. Once you have completed patching all the servers you can add SSISDB back to the AG. But for that period of time you will be at risk, so get through and patch a couple of the machines and get the AG working for those as soon as possible.

Interestingly this does not apply for all CU/SP releases. Some do not make changes to SSISDB and this isn’t required. You can only find this out by patching, so be sure to get it going in your test environments first.

AlwaysOn, Rant, SQL 2012

You Can’t Meet Your RPO/RTO With AlwaysOn

“That title may have caught your attention. AlwaysOn is the future of HA/DR for SQL Server, and has been since the release of SQL 2012.  

AlwaysOn is actually a marketing term which covers Failover Cluster Instances (FCIs) and Availability Groups (AGs). Allan Hirt (@sqlha | blog) is a strong proponent of ensuring that people understand what this actually means. So much so that he even ranted about it a little. 

I’ve used FCIs for years, going back to the active/passive clustering days of old, and I’ve used Availability Groups in the last few months. They are both great, and both have limitations: FCIs with their shared storage and AGs with some network and quorum oddities. 

Both of them will do a fine job for you if you have the time, patience, and in the case of AGs, money to get them up and running. They still will not allow you to meet your RPO/RTO though. 

Critical to your business and your users is your up time, and that’s where the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)  come into play. They reflect amount of time it will take to get your services back up and running, as well as the level of data loss that you are willing to accept.

 

 

Where FCI/AG win

The key problem with FCI/AG is that they do everything that they can to ensure that transactions are kept as up to date as possible. With FCI you move an entire instance over to another node, everything committed goes with it. With AGs the log records are shipped to the secondaries and applied in a synchronous or asynchronous fashion. The asynchronous setting is designed to get transactions there as soon as possible, and great for longer distances or where low commit times are ultra-critical. Both of these solutions solve two problems…a hardware issue or a software issue.

What does that mean? If your server goes down, then you can failover and lose next to nothing and be back up and running quickly. If Windows goes out to lunch on one of the machines then you can failover and keep ticking along.

So where do they fall down? 

 

 

What FCI/AG cannot do

Let’s say there’s a code release and a table accidentally has an update run against it with no where clause. All of a sudden you have a table in a 500GB database which contains 3 million rows and all of the information is wrong. Your users cannot use the application, your help desk is getting call after call and you are stuck. 

Your only option here is to restore your backup and roll up your transaction logs to the point right before the update happened. You’ve done tests on this and know that it will take 120 minutes to get back to that point. Now you have a 2 hour outage and users are screaming, the CIO is at your desk wondering how this happened, and demanding you get the database back up sooner.

FCIs and AGs are not going to help you in this situation. That update is already committed and so failing over the instance won’t help. The transaction logs were hardened immediately on your synchronous partner and applied within 5 seconds on your asynchronous target.

So how has AlwaysOn helped you in this situation? It hasn’t. And while you can sit there cussing out Microsoft for pushing this solution that has this massive failing it’s not going to solve your problem. That’s why you need something more than AlwaysOn. 

 

 

You can pry Log Shipping from my cold dead hands

 

 “Log Shipping?” I hear you ask, “but that’s so old.”

It sure is. It’s old, it’s clunky, and it is perfect for the scenario I just mentioned.  

You can configure log shipping to delay writing transaction logs to remote servers. Let’s say you delay logs for 1 hour. That accidental mass update was performed, you realize that you are in trouble. You quickly apply the logs on the secondary to the point in time before the update, bring the database online and repoint your clients. You are back up again in 5 minutes. It’s a momentary issue. Sure, you have an outage, but that outage lasts a fraction of the time. Your help desk is not inundated with calls, your users aren’t left out in the cold for hours. 

There’s nothing to say that you have to delay applying those logs for an hour. It could be 2 hours, or even 24. It really all depends on how you want to handle things. 

Sure, you have to do manual failover, and you don’t have the ability for automatic page level restores from one of the synchronous AG secondaries, but you have a level of data resiliency that AlwaysOn does not provide you. 

 

So while AlwaysOn technologies are great, and you should absolutely use them to enhance HA/DR in your business, but you have to be aware of their limitations, and be sure to use other parts of SQL Server to ensure that you can keep your business running.