High Availability with Log Shipping Log Shipping is a long standing technique for High Availability. It is not unique to SQL Server. SQL Server does have Log Shipping built into the Enterprise and higher editions of SQL Server as a failover technique. Log shipping uses database backups as a technique to failover to another database server. A backup server has […]

High Availability Wrap Up Today we wrap up the topic of SQL Server high availability. One of the things you may wish to research that we have not covered is the new High Availability technique called “Always On” only available in the Enterprise or greater version of SQL Server 2012. The Always On capability of SQL Server 2012 is based […]

High Availability – What is the real cost? Today a lot of people have responded with real world experiences moving to HA, and some doing that on a budget. Many have also written including some non-Microsoft solutions as well as SQL Azure. One reader brought out a great point about how true High Availability cannot be implimented in a single […]

The Cost of Failover We were talking about two mainstream High Availability techniques you can consider to keep your database system online. Today we want to talk about the cost of High Availability in order to help you decide if HA is the correct solution for your implementation. Rather than providing exact costs, I think it will be helpful to […]

Happy New Year From all the folks here at SSWUG! High Availability What is the big difference between a SQL Server Cluster and Database mirroring? Why would you use one over the other? Can you mix and match them? These questions, along with many others, are common from individuals considering High Availability techniques with SQL Server. Throw SQL Azure and […]

Happy New Years! I’d like to wish each of you a happy new year. I wish for all of you success as you strive to perfect your craft using computers and software to fulfill your business goals. Remember, you alone are responsible for your continued education. Your employer may provide assistance as a benefit…but you are the one who can […]

End of the Year is Near Just two more working days until 2013. With that in mind I’m turning my thoughts to accomplishments this year, and goals for next year. I’m not sure if that is something unique to the culture of the USA, but I grew up learning to take a look back, and planning for the future. One […]

Where Should I Pivot? Recently I was talking with a young programmer just graduated from College about pivoting data. He had been studying the Pivot capabilities built into SQL Server. However, he had also seen the same capability when producing pivoted reports in college using Crystal Reports and Excel. So, his natural question was, which way should I pivot data? […]

Using my Work Log I mentioned yesterday that keeping my work log has helped me to manage my time more efficiently. It helps because I can’t remember everything I have done from day to day…they all just kind of meld into one another. So, using my log I can look at my work log history. I find that I am […]

Keeping a Work Log Recently I have begun keeping a work log for those times when I pick up ad-hoc requests to get tasks done that are not part of my current planned work load. I’m operating as a cloud architect and DBA on an Agile development team . However, we often have needs for maintenance tasks or requests to […]