Title: Creating a High Availability and Disaster Recovery Plan

Speaker: Ryan Adams

Abstract: You have been tasked to configure a high availability and/or disaster recovery plan to ensure your company's systems are always up and running while able to withstand a disaster. SQL Server offers several options, but how do you choose the right one to meet your business requirements? I've been faced with this same problem. I'll help you figure out how to choose the right technology. We will start off with a solid foundation in backups and demonstrate how to configure them for initializing the various HA/DR technologies while also cutting your backup and restore time in half. You will see how you can keep an offsite copy of your database in sync with your production system with mirroring.

You've read that several of the HA/DR solutions require Windows Failover Clustering, but you don't know anything about managing a complicated Windows cluster. I'll show you how to setup and configure a Windows cluster and we'll build on that with SQL Server AlwaysOn Failover Clustering Instances that provide the 99.999% of up-time your management demands. Lastly we'll dive into how to setup AlwaysOn Availability Groups to solve both HA and DR in one solution. We will see how all these technologies work together by discussing a case study and developing a comprehensive solution just like you have to do when you return to the office. Here's what you will learn:

Planning a backup strategy to avoid a data disaster

Cutting your backup and restore time in half when initializing DBs for Mirroring or Availability Groups

Configuring mirroring to keep production in real-time sync with an offsite database copy

Learning configuration tips to increase throughput

Configuring a Windows Failover Cluster to meet that five 9s business requirement

Discovering how to properly configure a Windows Cluster quorum to support the AlwaysOn feature set

Implementing a SQL AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instance

Creating a SQL AlwaysOn Availability Group to solve both your HA and DR requirements in one solution

Learning Objectives:

Learn how to design and implement a solid backup strategy.

Understand how to configure Windows Clustering and quorum design to support SQL Server HA and DR technologies.

How to install AlwaysOn Failover Clustering and AlwaysOn Availability Groups along with best practices.

Session Prerequisites:

Basic understanding of networking

Knowledge about different types of database storage

BIO: Ryan Adams is a SQL Server MVP and has worked for Verizon for 17 years. His primary focus is the SQL Server Engine, high availability, and disaster recovery. Previously he was a Senior Active Directory Architect and designed the company's worldwide Active Directory infrastructure. He serves on the Board of Directors for the North Texas SQL Server User Group and is President of the PASS Performance Virtual Chapter. He is also a PASS Regional Mentor and holds the following certifications: MCP MCSA MCSE MCDBA MCTS MCITP.