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Have You Deployed an Availability Group?

This editorial was originally published on Apr 2, 2020. It is being re-published as Steve is on holiday.

The last few weeks have been interesting, to put it mildly, with both more and less engagement online. I see more people holding video calls, both inside and outside of work, but I also see less engagement at SQLServerCentral, blogs, Slack, and some of the more common community tools we've had. I suspect this new way of working is strange, and it's upset many of the rhythms that people have built over the years.

In any case, one very important and common technology in the SQL Server platform is an Availability Group. This technology has been in the product since 2012, and unlike clustering, it's relatively easy to set up. Not to say it's easy, and you do need to develop some skills outside of T-SQL to understand how this works. This week I'm wondering how many of you might never have done this?

Or maybe you've done it once or twice and forgotten about it.

While we're dealing with the various challenges of a pandemic, this is also a time where you might brush up on a few skills or learn new ones. Deploying, configuring, and testing an AG is something that is valuable to both DBAs and developers, and it's a good skill to bring to your next interview. Every employer wants to know you understand HA/DR.

We have a Stairway Series that can help you along with quite a few articles and blogs that people have written. There are various lab posts as well, including a good one from Ryan Adams, that can help you get started. If you don't have equipment handy, you can build one in Azure for cheap, and even turn off the VMs when you're not using them and spend just a few dollars a month on storage. That's not much cost to build a valuable skill in your career.

If you've built a lab, maybe you want to tackle something complex, like the scenarios that Allan Hirt writes about on his blog. If you've never done one, maybe try to build one, take notes and capture screenshots, and blog about it. In Word if you want to start a portfolio to send out with your resume, or on your live blog. It might be a good time to start a new blog.

Focusing on a project like this can help shut out some of the noise in the world and engage you in a new way with your career. Hopefully you are doing well, and life is proceeding for you. If not, maybe tackle a project to take your mind away from things, and check out our daily coping tips in the newsletter.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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 Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):

 

Join Hints

What does the REMOTE join hint do?

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 Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

A Big SmallDateTime

What is the maximum year for a smalldatetime datatype?

Answer: 2079

Explanation: The maximum date for a smalldatetime datatype is June 6, 2079. Ref: Smalldatetime - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/data-types/smalldatetime-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16

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Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.


SQL Server 2016 - Administration
system_health configuration - I'm on SQL Server 2016 (SP2-CU11-GDR) (KB4535706) - 13.0.5622.0 (X64) Dec 15 2019 08:03:11 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Enterprise Edition: Core-based Licensing (64-bit) on Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard 6.3 (Build 9600: ) (Hypervisor) Is there a way to change the lock timeout in System_Health GUI?  In the u_table.sql it looks like it's seto […]
SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL
row changes per hour by TagID - I have a large table being written too every second with equipment (PLC) information. I need to figure out how much of this data is redundant using an hour window, so from 7am-8am how many different values did I capture per Tagid(Machine). I'm trying to figure out for floatvalue how many distinct values where recorded […]
row changes per hour by TagID - I have a large table being written too every second with equipment (PLC) information. I need to figure out how much of this data is redundant using an hour window, so from 7am-8am how many different values did I capture per Tagid(Machine). I'm trying to figure out for floatvalue how many distinct values where recorded […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
Can CDC replicate data? - As far as I can tell all CDC does is capture and log data changes, can it also replicate like transactional replication?
Linked Server Connection Issue - Hi all, I have 2 SQL servers on different domains (lets call them SQL-A and SQL-B), network connected via IPSEC vpn. DNS is not yet set up between the two networks, so I have amended the hosts file on SQL-A. On the machine running SQL-A, I can use SSMS to connect to SQL-B successfully. I […]
High availability group synchronization - For high availability group, is there an option like transaction log shipping that I can choose the interval of time to synchronize the database. So for example  ,   delay it to 30 minutes to synchronize. Thanks    
SQL Server 2019 - Development
Sending messages on table rows updates/inserts/deletes to RabbitMQ from SQL Srvr - We have a requirement here. Whenever certain rows in a table are inserted, updated or deleted, we need to send messages to a message broker for further processing. Currently we are using triggers and SQL Server Service Broker for this purpose. But we want to use RabbitMQ for scalability and wider reach. Is there a […]
Indexing strategy very long text strings - Hey guys,  Just looking to see if anyone has any bright ideas how to solve this problem. Background I have been handed down a project to report on files that have gone 'missing'.. Ignoring the fact that are using the wrong tools for the job... I have a process which effectively writes the resutlts of […]
Frustrated trying to get Cross DB Access by Signing SP with Certificate - Maybe it is lack of caffeine, but I cannot see why the following test code does not work. I keep getting: Msg 916, Level 14, State 2, Procedure dbo.TestTrunc, Line 7 [Batch Start Line 92] The server principal "XDBSignTest" is not able to access the database "db2" under the current security context. Can anyone see […]
SSIS Execute Package Fail in SSMS but Agent Job Succeeds - Hello, I created a SSIS package to transfer data from an XML file to a  database in SQL Server instance A. It works perfectly in Visual Studio. Then the SSIS package was deployed to SQL Server instance B. When I set up a SQL agent job and run as a proxy user "svcSSIS", it works […]
Integration Services
Not picking up a specific period - Please assist. I am trying to bring in Period 8 which i find myself in. Its available in the data. I just cant seem to bring it into the ETL. Source and SSIS is attached.
Business Intelligence
How to merge first 3 rows when exporting to excel - Hi All, I have a report when I export to excel must auto merge first 3 rows for columns (A to N), when the user opens the report , instead of the user doing it manually, is this possible. Please see the below screen shot. After exporting I manually did merge and center and named […]
How to merge first 3 rows when exporting to excel - Hi All, I have a report when I export to excel must auto merge first 3 rows for columns (A to N), when the user opens the report , instead of the user doing it manually, is this possible. Please see the below screen shot. After exporting I manually did merge and center and named […]
How to merge first 3 rows when exporting to excel - Hi All, I have a report when I export to excel must auto merge first 3 rows for columns (A to N), when the user opens the report , instead of the user doing it manually, is this possible. Please see the below screen shot. After exporting I manually did merge and center and named […]
SQL Server 2022 - Administration
SQL Server UCP - Hello everybody, I just read on the Microsoft homepage that SQL Server Utility Control Point is still available in SQL Server 2022 Entertrise Edition (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/editions-and-components-of-sql-server-2022?view=sql-server-ver16). I couldn't find it in the SSMS what so ever.
 

 

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