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Category: Linux

The Story Behind SQL Server On Linux

Published 2016-12-21 by Kevin Feasel

Slava Oaks is back blogging and gives us some insight on how SQL Server on Linux came to be:

To give you an idea of the effort involved, the SQL Server RDBMS and other services that ship with it in the SQL Server product suite account for more than 40 million lines of C++ code. Even though SQL Server has a resource management layer called SQLOS, the codebase bleeds Win32 semantics throughout. This means a pure port could take years just to get compiling and booting let alone figuring out things like performance and feature parity with SQL Server on Windows. In addition, doing a porting project while other SQL Server innovation is happening in the same codebase would have been a daunting task and keep the team in a close to endless catch-up game.

In conclusion, even though the potential job-offer intrigued me, it felt like an impossible task for one to take on.

It’s a great story, one which I never would have thought possible six years ago.

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SQL Server On Linux Service Commands

Published 2016-12-13 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Peterson shows how to start, stop, and restart the SQL Server service on Linux:

Start Service

                 sudo systemctl start mssql-server

He also shows how to do a status check.  This is for distributions which use systemd, which includes the Red Hat distribution set (Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise).  If you’re on Ubuntu, there’s no support quite yet, but you can use start and stop.

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Powershell Remoting To Linux

Published 2016-12-05 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad shows that Powershell remoting works for connecting Linux to Windows and vice versa:

Connecting Linux to Windows

This is strange but, more likely, you will get an error the first time you try to connect. Just try the second try and it will work.

I need to see what Powershell objects for Linux currently exist; my guess is “not many, if any” but as those start getting fleshed out, I think even the most adamant of grep-sed-awk users will want to pick up at least a little bit of Powershell.

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SQL Server For Linux Tools

Published 2016-12-02 by Kevin Feasel

Sanjay Nagamangalam looks at different tools you can use to connect to SQL Server:

  • New SQL command line tools for Linux: We’ve created Linux-native versions of your favorite SQL command line tools such as sqlcmdand bcp and sqlpackage and also added the new mssql-conf tool that lets you configure various properties for the SQL Server instance on Linux (e.g., SA password, TCP port and collation).

  • New versions of SSMS, SSDT and SQL PowerShell: We have released updated versions (v17.0 RC1) of our flagship SQL Server tools including SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), Visual Studio SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) and SQL PowerShell with support for the SQL Server v.Next on Windows and Linux.

They also have a plugin for Visual Studio Code, which can be helpful if you’re running on Linux.

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Database Restoration In Linux Via SSMS

Published 2016-11-30 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Peterson walks through the easy way of restoring a database backup to a Linux installation of SQL Server:

But my Backup file is still not visible in the wizard!

Permissions.  If you drill down into the folders in Linux, we found that the files already present in the /data/ folder are owned by the user mssql.  Our recently copied backup file is NOT owned by mssql, and it not accessible to other users. So, our wizard cannot see the file.

The whole process is pretty straightforward.

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Checking File Permissions

Published 2016-11-25 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Peterson runs chmod 664 on a database backup:

You’re attempting to RESTORE a SQL Server database backup to your Linux installation and you get the message:

Msg 3201, Level 16, State 2, Line 17
Cannot open backup device ‘C:\home\user\Downloads\AdventureWorks2012.bak’.
Operating system error 2(The system cannot find the file
specified.).
Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 17
RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally.

If you’re going to administer SQL Server on Linux, it’s a good idea to check out the Unix-style permissions model.  It’s a bit different than what we’re used to on Windows, though it does make sense with a bit of practice.

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SQL Server On Linux Is Boring

Published 2016-11-23 by Kevin Feasel

Grant Fritchey, defying the common opinion (or is he?):

Suddenly though, it was boring. I tested a few Redgate tools (SQL Compare is right there above, connected to Linux) to be sure they worked. No major issues encountered. Great. However, now, it’s just another instance of SQL Server.

I guess I could start complaining that SQL Agent isn’t there… except I’m not that big a fan of SQL Agent, and I can schedule all sorts of stuff to run in Linux using the sqlcmd command line tool.

This is a good kind of boring.

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High Availability On Linux

Published 2016-11-22 by Kevin Feasel

David Bermingham looks at high availability within SQL Server on Linux:

With Microsoft’s recent release of the first public preview of MS SQL Server running on Linux, I wondered what they would do for high availability. Knowing how tightly coupled AlwaysOn Availability Groups and Failover Clustering is to the Windows operating system I was pretty certain they would not be options and I was correct.

Well, the people over at LinuxClustering.Net answered my question on how to provide high availability failover clusters for MS SQL Server v.Next on Linux with this great Step by Step article.

The linked article is amazing.  It uses a piece of third-party software to perform clustering, so it’s not a free solution.  We’ll see if Microsoft is able to build in a full HA solution in the first version of Linux-supported SQL Server, but if not, it looks like there’s an alternative.

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Thinking About Linux Internals

Published 2016-11-22 by Kevin Feasel

Anthony Nocentino speculates on the internals of SQL Server on Linux:

OK, so everyone wants to know how Microsoft did it…how they got SQL Server running on Linux. In this article, I’m going to try to figure out how.

There’s a couple of approaches they could take…a direct port or some abstraction layer…A direct port would have been hard, basically any OS interaction would have had to been looked at and that would have been time consuming and risk prone. Who comes along to save the day? Abstraction. The word you hear about a million times when you take Operating Systems classes in undergrad and grad computer science courses. 🙂

Anthony talks about picoprocesses, which causes me to say that containers (like Docker) are probably the most important administrative concept of the decade.  If you don’t fundamentally get the concept, learning it opens so many doors.

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Cross-Platform Database Restoration

Published 2016-11-22 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad walks through restoring a SQL Server database to a new Linux instance:

So, before you start working or trying to restore your Windows SQL Databases to SQL Server on Linux, there are a few things you may need to do. This will involved installing components which are not installed by default when first build your Linux System.

One thing I had to say with confidence! You WILL find all your answer on the internet. Any of the Linux Distro forum have your resolution to any of the issue you may encountered. Also, most of the time you Linux system will tell you (or gives a tip) what do with missing dependencies.

Other than that, there are Linux Application Updater solution to help keep your system up-to-date.

This is an amazing time to be in the SQL Server space.

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