What HA DR options allow the secondary server to be queryable? - sql-server

I want to implement solution such that the secondary server database is queryable.
Amongst the following options:
Log shipping
Transactional replication
Database mirroring
Always on failover clustering
Always on availability groups
Which of the above methods allows the secondary server database to be online and queryable?
Are there any more options other than the above 5 ?

Log shipping
Secondary Database is "normally" in a recovering state so that additional backups can be applied
Secondary database can be made readable between restores by restoring with STANDBY
Users on secondary must be disconnected so that the next restore can take place
Transactional replication
Primary and Secondary databases are independent and can have transactions on bot sides
Secondary database is not restricted to READ-ONLY. Users can make updates if they have permissions
Be wary of updates on the Secondary that could cause issues with future replication updates from the Primary
Secondary is always online
Database mirroring
Deprecated technology
Requires a Database Snapshot to be taken to allow a queryable copy
Snapshot Database will have a different name from the Primary and Secondary
No updates applied to Snapshot
Snapshot will increase in size as changes made to Secondary because of copy-on-write process
Need to drop the snapshot (disconnecting users) and recreate it to get newer data
Always on failover clustering
There is only 1 copy of the database in Failover Clustering - it is the ownership of the storage that changes on a failover. This has no Secondary to make available for querying
Always on availability groups
Allows a Secondary to be set to read-only
Continuously updated from Primary
Be wary also of license restrictions if you make secondary copies queryable.

Related

Opengauss+keepalived active/standby switchover, and the active/standby replication relationship is lost

Opengauss + keepalived active/standby switch, and the active/standby replication relationship is lost.
Use opengauss + keepalived to build a high availability environment for simple HA.
Process: After the failure of the primary simulation, the vip also drifts to the standby database. Check the status of the standby database, which has changed from standby to primary. Then, restart the master database, and the master database will preempt back to the vip, which will also drift to the master database. But before, through gs_ The master-slave replication relationship built by ctl build D/gaussdb/data/db1 - M standby is gone, so you need to manually rebuild the relationship.
Question:
After the primary database of opengauss is restored, does the previous active/standby replication relationship really disappear? It cannot be self created or automatically modified. Can you only manually re create the relationship?
Is there any solution to automatically modify or create a master-slave replication relationship after the failure recovery?
Keepalived.conf configuration file
Use the nopreempt parameter to set it to the non preemptive mode, so that after the master database recovers from the failure, the VIP will not be retrieved from the new master database. However, you need to set the master and backup states to backup.

cdc ON secondary database in SQL Server

I have a cluster of databases, one primary and two secondary. I need to enable CDC on a database, but I want to enable it on one of the secondary databases to eliminate any resource consumption on the primary database (similar to SQL Server secondary database backup). Is this possible to do it and how? If not: can you tell me the best practices for enabling CDC on cluster?
I want to enable it on one of the secondary databases to eliminate any resource consumption on the primary database
This is not possible. CDC writes the changes back to system tables in the target database, so must run against the primary replica. See Replication, change tracking, & change data capture - Always On availability groups

db replication vs mirroring

Can anyone explain the differences from a replication db vs a mirroring db server?
I have huge reports to run. I want to use a secondary database server to run my report so I can off load resources from the primary server.
Should I setup a replication server or a mirrored server and why?
For your requirements the replication is the way to go. (asumming you're talking about transactional replication) As stated before mirroring will "mirror" the whole database but you won't be able to query unless you create snapshots from it.
The good point of the replication is that you can select which objects will you use and you can also filter it, and since the DB will be open you can delete info if it's not required( just be careful as this can lead to problems maintaining the replication itself), or create specific indexes for the report which are not needed in "production". I used to maintain this kind of solutions for a long time with no issues.
(Assuming you are referring to Transactional Replication)
The biggest differences are: 1) Replication operates on an object-by-object basis whereas mirroring operates on an entire database. 2) You can't query a mirrored database directly - you have to create snapshots based on the mirrored copy.
In my opinion, mirroring is easier to maintain, but the constant creation of snapshots may prove to be a hassle.
As mentioned here
Database mirroring and database replication are two high data
availability techniques for database servers. In replication, data and
database objects are copied and distributed from one database to
another. It reduces the load from the original database server, and
all the servers on which the database was copied are as active as the
master server. On the other hand, database mirroring creates copies of
a database in two different server instances (principal and mirror).
These mirror copies work as standby copies and are not always active
like in the case of data replication.
This question can also be helpful or have a look at MS Documentation

Database is read-only error in Secondary Replica of Alwayson Groups

I tried many things and analyzed lots of documents but I haven't found a solution yet.
I have three virtual machines in VmWare called (DC,SQLServer01,SQLServer02). All of SQL Servers are member of a domain.(DC) I installed failover cluster for SQLServer01 and SQLServer02. I did necessary configurations in SQLServer01. Then I installed SQL Server 2014 for both servers. Now, I created an alwaysOn group. SQLServer01 is a primary and other is secondary. When I cut the connection of SQLServer01, everything is fine (Secondary becomes primary). It is acceptable for other condition.
However, when all servers are online, I can not do any operation (insert,update,delete,alter ,etc) except read operations in my secondary replica. I see always "database is read only" error. In properties of Alwayson group, both primary and secondary replica have all connections and secondary readable is "YES".
I want to make CRUD operations even if all servers are online. (I mean, do everything also for secondary replica. )
So, do you have any suggestion or idea?
Thank your time and consideration.
The error occurs because writing to secondary replicas in sql server is not possible. Only primary replica can host read-write databases, and an availability group can only have one single primary replica. Secondary replicas can host read-only databases only. When both replicas are available, only one of the two can be the primary and therefore support read-write. When only a single replica is available, that replica becomes primary replica because there are no other replicas, and read-write operations against that replica is possible.
What you need to configure instead is replication.
In SQL Server, merge replication allows you to write at multiple nodes, with periodic synchronization that resolves conflicts and pushes changes to all replicas.
Peer to Peer replication is another solution. Application layer must not allow conflicts (update of same row at more than one node), but is much faster.

Recovering from an Azure SQL Database failover

I'm designing my Azure Website for High Availability. In the interesting of doing so, I read the following: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-designing-cloud-solutions-for-disaster-recovery/#design-pattern-1-active-passive-deployment-for-cloud-disaster-recovery-with-a-co-located-database
In particular, I'm attempting to use Pattern #1. In short, you:
Establish your primary site and a backup site.
Your backup site remains active, but never used directly while your primary site is functional.
All database transactions are replicated from the primary to the secondary as they occur
When a failover occurs, your traffic only hits your backup site.
My question is: after you failover, how would you return to your primary site? If database transactions were written to your secondary database, they'd need to be written back to the primary. Would you use "Geo Restore" (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-sql-database-geo-restore/) and restore your backup over your primary, then update the Azure Traffic Manager to begin using your primary location again?
As I understand correctly, the 'syncing back' is done automatically.
See here
When the failed primary recovers and is available again, the system will automatically mark it as a secondary and bring it up-to-date with the new primary.
And then, yes, I would update the Traffic Manager to route to the original primary again.

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