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Category: Linux

Upgrading SQL On Linux

Published 2017-02-28 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones shows how to upgrade SQL Server on Linux to the latest version:

I saw this week that there was a new CTP (v1.3) of SQL Server v.Next. I haven’t had a lot of time to work on the Linux version lately, but I thought I’d try and see how well the upgrade went.

There’s an install and upgrade page at Microsoft you can use, but on Ubuntu, things are easy. First, connect to your system and run this:

sudo apt-get update

That will download updated packages and get the system ready. you can see that I have a lot of stuff to update on this particular system.

One small change I’d make to that script in the snippet is sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.  They do different things, both of which are useful.  I do hope that Microsoft keeps with the Linux-friendly upgrade process when it comes to CUs and SPs.

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SQL Server vNext CTP 1.3 Available

Published 2017-02-20 by Kevin Feasel

The SQL Server team has announced a new CTP:

Key CTP 1.3 enhancement: Always On Availability Groups on Linux

In SQL Server v.Next, we continue to add new enhancements for greater availability and higher uptime. A key design principle has been to provide customers with the same HA and DR solutions on all platforms supported by SQL Server. On Windows, Always On depends on Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC). On Linux, you can now create Always On Availability Groups, which integrate with Linux-based cluster resource managers to enable automatic monitoring, failure detection and automatic failover during unplanned outages. We started with the popular clustering technology, Pacemaker.

In addition, Availability Groups can now work across Windows and Linux as part of the same Distributed Availability Group. This configuration can accomplish cross-platform migrations without downtime. To learn more, you can read our blog titled “SQL Server on Linux: Mission Critical HADR with Always On Availability Groups”.

That’s a big headline.  In the Other Enhancements section, I like resumable online index rebuilds as well.

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SQL Server ODBC Driver 13.1 For Linux

Published 2017-02-10 by Kevin Feasel

Meet Bhagdev announces a new version of the SQL Server ODBC driver for Linux:

Added

  • BCP API support

    • You can use functions through the ODBC driver as described here on Linux.

  • Support for user-defined KeyStoreProvider for Always Encrypted

    • You can now user-defined/created AE Column Master Key keystore providers. Check out code samples and more information here.

  • Ubuntu 16.10 support

    • Developed a package Ubuntu 16.10 for an apt-get experience.

  • Dependency on the platform unixODBC Driver Manager instead of the custom unixODBC-utf16 Driver Manager

    • This avoids conflicts with applications/software that depends on the platform unixODBC Driver Manager.

No groundbreaking additions, but there are a couple nice fixes in the update.

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SQL On Linux Connectivity

Published 2017-02-01 by Kevin Feasel

Slava Murygin troubleshoots connectivity issues with SQL Server on Linux:

After you enter SA password you have to get “vNext” version of your SQL Server.
If you did not get the correct response you might have following problems:
I)   Wrong SA password. To fix it, just re-configure SQL Server.
II)  SQL Server Tools are not installed.
III) Typo. Check your syntax.

The troubleshooting process is a bit different from SQL Server on Windows, but it’s still pretty straightforward.

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Powershell On Windows 10 Bash

Published 2017-01-27 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad goes all the way with installing an Ubuntu environment on Windows:

It’s a known fact, if you install PowerShell Open Source in Windows 10 Bash subsystem, that it won’t work correctly. As soon as start typing $PSVersionTable and press enter, the cursor goes to the top of the screen. And, you keep typing and it gets very ugly.

Now, what if I tell you, I found the way to run PowerShell Open Source without any of these issues. Just like running it like it was installed in a Linux environment. No issues with the cursor going crazy and able to page up and down.

There are quite a few steps here, but Max lays them out clearly.

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Suse On Windows 10

Published 2017-01-18 by Kevin Feasel

Brad Sams reports that Ubuntu isn’t the only flavor of Linux available on Windows 10 anymore:

If you do go down this route, you have the option for installing either openSUSE Leap 42.2 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2.

The benefits here are obvious, with Microsoft enabling the Windows subsystem for Linux, they are opening the door to more than simply running Bash inside of Windows 10. While that is a good feature and one of the most likely used instances of this subsystem, what Microsoft has actually done is opened the door for more vendors to bring their Linux tools to the Windows platform.

I’d expect Red Hat to follow suit.

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Clustering SQL Server On Linux

Published 2017-01-05 by Kevin Feasel

Joey D’Antoni has some notes on clustering a SQL Server instance running on Linux.  First, some quick notes:

One other thing that wasn’t in BOL, that I had to troubleshoot my way through is that just like a cluster on Windows, you have a cluster identifier and floating IP address. I had to add that to /etc/hosts on each of my nodes to get it to resolve. The article mentions turning off fencing for non-prod environments—I had to do that in order to get failover working correctly in my environment.

Then some more notes:

It was faster than building a Windows cluster

It took me a while, I laughed, I cried, I cursed a lot, but if I look at the time it took for me to actually build the cluster and install SQL Server, it was a much faster process. Much of this comes down to the efficiency of the SQL Server installation process on Linux, which is as simple as running yum install mssql-server (mostly). Which leads me to my next point..

As Joey notes, SQL Server clustering on Linux is in its infancy.  It’s nice that it works right now, but expect improvements over the next version or two.

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Visual Studio Code

Published 2017-01-05 by Kevin Feasel

Rob Sewell shows how to run SQL Server queries using Visual Studio Code:

Reading this blog post by Shawn Melton Introduction of Visual Studio Code for DBAs reminded me that whilst I use Visual Studio Code (which I shall refer to as Code form here on) for writing PowerShell and Markdown and love how easily it interacts with Githuib I hadn’t tried T-SQL. If you are new to Code (or if you are not) go and read Shawns blog post but here are the steps I took to running T-SQL code using Code

I played around with an early version of this and my thought was that there were some nice improvements over Management Studio (like being able to filter and sort the result set grid without going back to the server), but that there are still too many nice things Management Studio does for me to take a serious look at it.  Still, I’m hopeful that Microsoft moves in the direction of having a fully-featured querying tool for Linux so I can finally join the perpetual Year of the Linux Desktop.

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New Powershell And SQL Server Previews For Linux

Published 2016-12-21 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad notes that there are new versions of Powershell and SQL Server previews available for Linux users:

To download the latest PowerShell Open Source just go to the link below:

https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell

Just remember to remove the previous version, and any existing folders as this will be resolved later.

To download the latest SQL Server vNext just check the following Microsoft blog post as the new CTP 1.1 includes version both Windows and Linux:

SQL Server next version Community Technology Preview 1.1 now available

Max has additional links and resources in that post as well.

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