Technical White Paper

Dell High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solutions Using Microsoft SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn
Availability Groups
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Contents
Executive summary ....................................................................................................... 4
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 4
Objectives................................................................................................................ 5
Why Dell server and storage hardware for AlwaysOn setup? .................................................... 5
Processors ............................................................................................................. 5
Memory ................................................................................................................ 5
Internal storage (HDD and SSD) ................................................................................... 5
Introduction to Microsoft SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AVG) ............................... 6
AlwaysOn Availability Groups Architecture ........................................................................ 6
Most common HA and DR deployments for SQL databases ...................................................... 7
Dell reference configuration for AVG ............................................................................... 8
AVG deployments on non-shared storage .......................................................................... 8
Major advantages and limitations of implementing AVG on non-shared storage ......................... 9
AVG deployments on shared storage .............................................................................. 10
Advantages and limitations of implementing AVG on shared storage .................................... 14
AVG deployments on hybrid (HDD and SSD) storage ............................................................ 14
Benefits .............................................................................................................. 14
Advantages and limitations of implementing AVG on hybrid (SSDs and HDDs) storage ............... 15
Flexible failover policies and enhanced diagnostics for detecting failover conditions .................. 15
Summary .................................................................................................................. 16
Figures
Figure 1. Availability Groups on WSFC ............................................................................. 7
Figure 2. Simple AVG deployment on PE R720XD local storage ................................................ 9
Figure 3. Scenario 1 : SQL Server FCI with AVG on shared storage ......................................... 11
Figure 4. Scenario 2 : SQL Server FCI with AVG on shared storage ......................................... 12
Figure 5. Creating AVG with FCI ................................................................................... 13
Figure 6. FCI with AVG deployment setting ..................................................................... 13
Figure 7. AVG deployments on SSD and HDD .................................................................... 14