Always on from the front lines1

Editor's Notes

• #4: Always On Availability Groups is an enterprise-level high-availability and disaster recovery solution introduced in SQL Server 2012 to enable you to maximize availability for one or more user databases. Always On Availability Groups requires that the SQL Server instances reside on Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) nodes.
• #7: First, we need to add the Windows Failover Cluster Feature to all the nodes running the SQL Server instances that we will configure as replicas. OS - Windows 2016. So to do that, Open the Server Manager  => select Add roles and features.
• #8: Click Next until Select Features dialog box comes up.
• #10: Select the Failover Clustering checkbox
• #11: Click Install to install the Failover Clustering feature.
• #12: Now, Open Server Manager and select "Fail over Cluster Manager
• #13: Select Failover Cluster Manager and select the Option Create Cluster OR You can right-click on the Failover Cluster Manager and select Create Cluster from the menu.
• #14: We will Create Cluster from the Wizard
• #15: Add the Nodes (Servers) if you know them already just type them in and click add or you can browse and find them, you want be in the Cluster and then click Next
• #16: You will be getting a validation warning. Select Yes to Validate the Cluster nodes
• #17:   Select the Testing option, Run all tests
• #18: Failover Cluster Testing is complete, it is a good practice to analyze report as well, to that you will simply click View report. I would also like to note here that: The Cluster Validation Wizard is expected to return several Warning messages, especially if you will not be using shared storage. Other than that if you find any error messages you need to fix them prior to creating the Windows Server Failover Cluster.
• #19: In the Access Point for Administering the Cluster dialog box, enter the Cluster name and virtual IP address for Windows Server Failover Cluster , then click Next.
• #20: Cluster creation is complete, you can see here however you should view report for analysis.
• #21: Quorum is a configuration database for the cluster and is stored on a shared location, accessible to all of the nodes in a cluster. In Case of Even number of nodes (but not a multi-site cluster Node) then Disk Majority Quorum configuration is recommended. If you don't have a shared storage Node then File Share Majority is recommended. In our case here we will be configuring a FileShare Witness quorum. It is recommended that you configure the quorum size to be 500 MB. This size is the minimum required for an efficient NTFS partition. Larger sizes are allowable but are not currently needed.
• #22: Right Click on Your Cluster Select Configure Cluster Quorum Setting from the More action menu.
• #23: Click Next,… Next
• #24: In the Select Quorum Witness page, select the Configure a file share witness option. Click Next.
• #25: Type the path of the file share that you want to use in the File Share Path: text box. Click Next. It is recommended to have the share folder on a different node than the node participating on Cluster
• #26: In the Confirmation page, click Next.
• #27: In the Summary page, click Finish.
• #30: We can now proceed with enabling the AlwaysOn Availability Groups feature in SQL Server 2016. This is possible after installing and configuring the Windows Failover Cluster on all the nodes. Open SQL Server Configuration Manager - > SQL Server Properties - [SQL Server (SQLAG01)] In the Properties dialog box, select the AlwaysOn High Availability tab. Check the Enable AlwaysOn Availability Groups check box. This will prompt you to restart the SQL Server service. Click OK.
• #31: SQL server properties page, AlwaysOn High Availability Tab. Type the Cluster name.
• #32:  Right click on the SQL server service (SQL Server (SQLAG01), Restart the SQL Server service.
• #33: Go to Management Studio, right click Availability Groups and click New Availability Group Wizard. Click Next
• #34: Specify Availability Group Name . This group name is SQLAVG2016. Then click Next.
• #35: Choose Database, Here you can see whether the DB meets the prerequisites, Database should be in full recovery mode. You should make a full backup to add the DB into the Availability Group
• #36: Specify Replicas: This page applies to the New Availability Group Wizard and the Add Replica to Availability Group Wizard of SQL Server 2016. If a server instance that will host a secondary replica is not listed by the Availability Replicas grid, click the Add Replica button.
• #37:  Adding Secondary Replica here, Make connection to the secondary Replica, Click connect
• #38: Here Check Auto Failover and Synchronous Commit for both Primary and Secondary, Then Click End points Tab.
• #39: Endpoints Use this tab to verify any existing database mirroring endpoints and also, if this endpoint is lacking on a server instance whose service accounts use Windows Authentication, create the endpoint automatically. Click Backup Preferences Tab.
• #40: Backup Preference  Use this tab to specify your backup preference for the availability group as a whole and your backup priorities for the individual availability replicas. Choose Prefer Secondary. Click on Listener Tab.
• #41: In Listener Tab: An availability group listener is a virtual network name (VNN) to which clients can connect in order to access a database in a primary or secondary replica of an AlwaysOn availability group. You point applications to the listener (which is registered with DNS) and directs traffic in the AG. Then move to Select Data Synchronization.
• #42: Select Data Synchronization   Use the Always On Select Initial Data Synchronization page to indicate your preference for initial data synchronization of new secondary databases. This page is shared by three wizards—the New Availability Group Wizard, the Add Replica to Availability Group Wizard, and the Add Database to Availability Group Wizard. The possible choices include Full, Join only, or Skip initial data synchronization. Before you select Full or Join only ensure that your environment meets the prerequisites.   For each primary database, the Full option performs several operations in one workflow: create a full and log backup of the primary database, create the corresponding secondary databases by restoring these backups on every server instance that is hosting a secondary replica, and join each secondary database to availability group. Select this option only if your environment meets the following prerequisites for using full initial data synchronization, and you want the wizard to automatically start data synchronization. Specify a shared network location accessible by all replicas. Click next.  
• #43: Here verify your choices and click finish. Hope fully things will go as planned.
• #52: It was a great pleasure to have this opportunity to present AlwaysOn From The Frontline to you today. I hope you have learned how to implement AlwaysOn step by step and what are some of the challenges you may face and how to resolve those challenges. Thank you very much. For further questions and comments please email me!