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Category: Replication

Azure Transactional Replication

Published 2016-04-14 by Kevin Feasel

John Sterrett names transactional replication into Azure as his favorite feature:

In the field, I see a lot of people using Availability Groups to have a near real-time replica for reporting.  I talked a little bit about this above.  What isn’t mentioned here is you have to maintain a Windows Failover Cluster, Quorum, Active Directory (Unless using Windows 2016 Preview) and more. This gets you a replica that is just a copy of the database. What does this mean? You cannot change database objects like security, indexes, etc. Also, what if you don’t need the whole database(s) for reporting? If not, you can replicate only the data you truly need.

So, let’s recap here.  You only have to replicate the data that you need.  You can have different security and indexes on your reporting subscriber database(s).  The reporting subscriber database can be scaled up or down as needed based on your needs.  The reporting database can now be an Azure Database. Folks, I call this a huge win!

There’s a lot more replication love out there than I’d expect.  John promises to follow up with a guide on how to implement this, so keep an eye out for that.

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Replication

Published 2016-04-13 by Kevin Feasel

Jon Morisi loves him some replication:

Seriously though, replication has been around since the beginning and it’s not going anywhere.  I can’t think of any other feature more prolific than replication.  Name another SQL Server HA/DR technology that is as extensible as replication.  Replication has gotten a bad rap over the years mostly on anecdotal comments that it “breaks all the time” or “it takes too much time to manage”.  I’ve worked in many environments and have setup dozens and dozens of instances of log shipping, mirroring, clusters, availability groups, and replication.  From my anecdotal experience, I can tell you I’ve had more trouble with availability groups than I have with replication.  If you have a good DBA that understands replication, uses it correctly, and is provided the correct tools (read $ for hardware/infrastructure) replication works just fine.  I have setup replication in a global environment in which multiple databases, publications, subscriptions, and agents ran around the clock and without issue.

Replication is very powerful, I agree…but it still breaks.  A lot.  I’m grateful for its existence and also for the fact that I’m not the one maintaining it…

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