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Ask Slashdot: Low Cost Way To Maximize SQL Server Uptime?
jdray writes "My wife and I own a mid-sized restaurant with a couple of Point of Sale (POS) terminals. The software, which runs on Windows and .NET, uses SQL Server on the back end. With an upgrade to the next major release of the software imminent, I'm considering upgrading the infrastructure it runs on to better ensure uptime (we're open seven days a week). We can't afford several thousand dollars' worth of server infrastructure (two cluster nodes and some shared storage, or some such), so I thought I'd ask Slashdot for some suggestions on enabling maximum uptime. I considered a single server node running VMWare with a limp-mode failover to a VMWare instance on a desktop, but I'm not sure how to set up a monitoring infrastructure to automate that, and manual failover isn't much of an option with non-tech staff. What suggestions do you have?"
Why don't you have good uptime to begin with? I've SQL Server 2005 on a single unimpressive physical server with months of uptime. Is your restaurant open 24 hours? Is your current server flaking out? Concerns about uptime itself might be misplaced. What isn't made clear in the OP is why you think you need better uptime.
Man, why is every askSlashdot these days full of people who don't think anyone can do their own backend infrastructure (or anything else, for that matter) unless that's their only job? Look, this guy has obviously been running his POS system for some time, already. Just because he isn't a whiz at SQL Server failover doesn't mean he should just throw up his hands and hire a contractor.
Have you completely given up on learning new things and exploring your options, or do you just advocate that other people do so?
MySQL is not web scale. He should use MondoDB. That is web scale.
I was the Program Manager in the SQL Server team owning all of our availability products in Redmond (created the AlwaysOn program). My recommendation is to 1) keep it simple and 2) implement a layered approach. But first I have a basic question - are you trying to protect SQL Server only or do you also need to protect that application and hardware? Because before we dive into the details, it might make sense to take an entirely different approach than the lower level availability technologies. And you also want to consider what it is you are protecting against. If you want to protect against hackers as well as power outages, disk failures, etc (and I suppose you probably will want to do that!), then I recommend that the first thing you do is perform regular backups to a cloud provider. That gives you the ability to restore to a point in time prior to a malicious attack. And it gives you defense in depth. Then, if you want to protect the app overall, maybe you should consider making it something that can also be hosted in the cloud for the next layer of redundancy. That way if you completely lose the site you can direct people to the cloud enabled app. But this also retains the ability to run it locally as the POS solution. Next, I'd consider a way to keep the data synchronized between the POS local installation and the cloud solution running in the VM. The cheapest solution is to use log shipping which performs backup and restores into the secondary (here in the cloud). This is also nice since you need the backups anyway for the first reason stated and this automates it. You should consider using database mirroring (now called AlwaysOn in the latest incarnation in SQL Server 2012) for the data synchronization. It's integrated into the SQL Server engine and provides better performance and the ability to configure it for no data loss and auto failover using the synchronous option. It comes in Standard Edition (sync only) and Enterprise Edition (async and sync). Also cover yourself for the common failures locally. Use a battery backed UPS and consider RAID for your disks on the computer. RAID 5 is probably fine for POS. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me johnmatthewhollingsworth@gmail.com. Best. Matt