A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
I was recently wanting to test out some PolyBase features in SQL Server. Azure being my test environment of choice these days, I spun up an Azure SQL Virtual Machine, but I quickly found that PolyBase wasn’t installed. To add it I would need the install media of course, but how does one get that in an Azure SQL Virtual Machine?
Everybody should test out PolyBase, but that’s because I’m wildly biased. Anyhow, Bob shows us where we can find the installation media.
Leave a CommentAditya Badramraju has an announcement:
SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines is powered by the SQL IaaS Agent extension which provides many features that make managing your SQL Server easy. This blog will discuss new features and changes we’ve recently released in this extension.
Click through for those changes. I was prepared, upon seeing the “Retiring Modes” section, to have a cynical response about forcing everyone into what was effectively Full mode, but that proto-take ended up being way off base and the truth is much nicer.
Comments closedDenny Cherry diagnoses a problem:
Over the weekend, I was configuring our new VMware servers. I was happily working around when all of a sudden, vCenter started showing the hated “no healthy upstream” message on the vCenter website.
Thankfully, this was not the first time I’d seen this happen, and it usually occurs randomly (at least in my experience). The solution is easier than most people would think.
Click through to learn what you should do if you see that error.
Comments closedAnthony Nocentino operates a Mac:
Last week I purchased a shiny new MacBook Air with an M2 processor. After I got all the standard stuff up and running, I set out to learn how to run SQL Server containers on this new hardware. This post shows you how to run SQL Server on Apple Silicon using colima.
Colima is a container runtime that runs a Linux VM on your Mac. This Linux VM runs using the Virtualization framework hypervisor native in MacOS. Your containers will run inside this virtual machine.
Read on to see what you’d need for the task.
Comments closedAndrew Pruski creates a role I can get behind:
So, how can we create a user in vSphere that only has the required permissions that the STONITH resource needs (it needs to be able to power on/off the machines in the pacemaker cluster).
First thing to do is create a user in vSphere: –
Read on for the additional rights you need, as well as a bit more cleanup work on Andrew’s part.
Comments closedAndrew Pruski picks up Chekov’s Gun:
Recently I had to create another pacemaker cluster, this time on-premises using VMWare virtual machines. The steps to create the pacemaker cluster and deploy an availability group where pretty much the same as in my original post (minus any Azure marlarkey) but one step was different, creating the STONITH resource.
A STONITH resource is needed in a pacemaker cluster as this is what prevents the dreaded split brain scenario…two nodes thinking that they’re the primary node. If the resource detects a failed node in the cluster it’ll restart that node, hopefully allowing it to come up in the correct state.
Read on to see how Andrew did it.
Comments closedAnthony Nocentino does some PolyBase work:
In this blog post, I’ve implemented two example environments for using SQL Server 2022’s s3 object integration. One for backup and restore to s3 compatible object storage and the other for data virtualization using Polybase connectivity to s3 compatible object storage. This work aims to get you up and running as quickly as possible to work with these new features. I implemented this in Docker Compose since that handles all the implementation and configuration steps for you. The complete code for this is available on my GitHub repo…I’m walking you through the implementation here in this post.
In my post Setting up MinIO for SQL Server 2022 s3 Object Storage Integration we did this step by step at the command line. Using Docker Compose it will do all the hard work for you and you can get up and running fast.
Let’s walk through what you’ll get in each environment.
Read the whole thing, especially the note at the bottom about minimum RAM requirements on the Docker container.
Comments closedJoey D’Antoni tightrope walks without a net for fun:
I was working with a client recently, were we had to reconfigure storage within a VM (which is always a messy proposition). In doing so, we were adding and removing disks from the VM. this all happened mostly during a downtime window, so it wasn’t a big deal to down a VM, which is how you can remove a disk from a VM via the portal. However, upon further research, I learned that through the portal you can remove a disk from a running VM.
Read on to see how. Though I’d generally still recommend shutting the VM off first just to be sure.
Comments closedArun Sirpal explains the benefit behind scale sets in Azure:
I really like scale sets. It lets you create and manage up to 1000 load balanced VMs per availability zone using windows or Linux images. (We can have flexible or uniforms modes for orchestration which dictates if you go down the homogenous VM route or a mix, where a mix is the flexible option.
There are many other benefits too apart from scaling, such as built-in load balancing options, increased resiliency via 3 Availability Zones and from a cost perspective you can couple scale sets with Azure Hybrid benefit or even use reserved instances – cost is important in the cloud!
Read the whole thing.
Comments closedDavid Klee loops us in on a tricky-to-catch problem:
We’ve been tracking a weird state with SQL Server virtual machines on VMware and possible warnings on database corruption while VM backups are running, largely centered around (but not isolated to) the tempdb database.
TLDR: We’ve now got a VMware KB article on this situation that you and your VM admins should read if you hit the condition and fall into the specifics listed below. Reference VMware KB 88201 for more details.
Read on for David’s thoughts and what to do if you hit this problem.
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