Author: Nisarg Upadhyay

Nisarg is a SQL Server Database Administrator and Microsoft certified professional who has more than 5 years of experience with SQL Server administration and 2 years with Oracle 10g database administration. He has expertise in database design, performance tuning, backup and recovery, HA and DR setup, database migrations and upgrades. He has completed the Bachelors in Information Technology from Ganpat University.

SQL Server High availability: Install SQL Server failover clustered instance Part 2

Nisarg Upadhyay
Total: 3 Average: 4.7

In my previous article, I have explained the step-by-step process of installing SQL Server Failover Clustered Instance. In this article, I will explain how to add a secondary node to the existing failover clustered instance.

Install SQL Server Failover Cluster instance

Once SQL Server is installed on an SQL01.dc.Local node, connect to SQL02.dc.Local and run setup.exe – SQL Server installation wizard opens. In the wizard, select “Installation” from the panel on the left and click on “Add node to a SQL Server failover cluster”. See the following image:

Read More

SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups: Installation and configuration, Part 1

Nisarg Upadhyay
Total: 1 Average: 1

In this article, I will explain the process of installing pre-requisites to deploy the SQL Server AlwaysOn availability group.

For the demonstration, I have prepared a demo set up at my work station. See the following components:

Virtual Machine Host Name Purpose
Domain Controller DC.Local The domain controller is installed on this machine
Primary Replica SQL01.DC.Local This machine acts as a Primary replica in the Availability group
Secondary Replica SQL02.DC.Local This machine acts as a Secondary replica in the Availability group. This replica is in a Synchronous commit mode
Secondary Replica with SQL03.DC.Local This machine acts as a secondary replica in the Availability group. This replica is in an Asynchronous commit mode

I will explain the following actions:

  1. Installing a failover clustering role
  2. Create a failover cluster
  3. Enable AlwaysOn availability group features in SQL Server

Read More

How to install SQL Server vNext and Azure data studio on Ubuntu 18.04

Nisarg Upadhyay
Total: 1 Average: 5

Azure data studio is a cross-platform database management tool. This tool is used to connect, configure, and administrate SQL Server instances installed locally or in the cloud. This tool can be installed on the following operating systems:

  1. Microsoft Windows
  2. Linux
    • Redgate
    • Debian
    • Ubuntu
  3. macOS

Initially, Microsoft introduced this tool as the “SQL Server operations studio.” Later they renamed it Azure Data Studio. You can get more information about it here.

In this article, I am going to explain the step-by-step installation process of SQL Server 2017 and Azure data studio on Ubuntu. I have divided the article into two parts. Firstly, we will install SQL Server 2017, and later I will explain the process of installing Azure Data Studio. For demonstration purposes, I have created a virtual machine and installed Ubuntu 18.04 on it. You can download Ubuntu here. Read More

Move System Databases in the SQL Server Failover Cluster

Nisarg Upadhyay
Total: 6 Average: 3.7

Recently, I was assigned to a project – our customer purchased a new SAN, and they wanted us to replace the old one with a new SAN. User and system databases utilized SAN, meanwhile, the operating system and SQL were installed on the server’s local disks. Lucky us..!! The idea was to move the existing user and system databases to a new SAN and keep the downtime as minimum as possible. So, to minimize the downtime, instead of reinstalling OS and SQL, we decided to use the following approach.

  1. Attach a new SAN to an existing server, create new drives on it, and add those drives to an existing failover cluster instance.
  2. Stop SQL Server, copy master, model, and msdb databases on new drives and start the SQL services.
  3. Move User databases to new drives and remove the old SAN.

Read More

SQL Server High availability: Add new disk to an existing failover cluster instance

Nisarg Upadhyay
Total: 1 Average: 5

In my previous article, I have explained the step-by-step process of installing a node in existing SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance. Along with that, I have also demonstrated manual failover and automatic failover.

In this article, I am going to demonstrate the process of adding a disk in a failover cluster and then move the existing database to a new drive. Read More

How to Update SQL Server Statistics for Big Tables

Nisarg Upadhyay
Total: 1 Average: 5

In my previous article, I have briefly covered database statistics, its importance, and why statistics should be updated. Moreover, I have demonstrated a step by step process to create a SQL Server maintenance plan to update statistics. In this article, the following issues will be explained: 1. How to update statistics using T-SQL Command. 2. How to identify the frequently updated tables using T-SQL and also how to update the statistics of tables with frequently inserted/ updated / deleted data . Read More