Boosting database availability through intelligent ...i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/... · Microsoft SQL Server 2012 offers several capabilities that enhance database
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is accelerating the growth of database footprints.
The Microsoft SQL Server database platform
and applications can be particularly important,
because they are frequently used to manage
core business functions ranging from sales and
marketing to order administration and financials.
To illustrate, although applications such as
Microsoft Exchange messaging software are
vital, IT administrators can take them down
for maintenance at off-hours during the day—
but doing so can still affect the organization.
However, if a financial institution using SQL Server
to run core financial modeling allowed that
database to become unavailable, the downtime
could result in significant loss of productivity,
revenue, and customer goodwill. Similarly, a
global company that depends on its Web site
for 24/7 online sales cannot afford to have the
underlying database offline.
For these reasons, organizations require
database resiliency to help ensure continuity of
business operations. Selecting the right storage
is essential for meeting these requirements—
organizations need available, responsive,
and flexible storage that can grow with their
databases. Dell Compellent storage supports
high-availability features introduced in SQL
Server 2012 and includes capabilities that enable
administrators to manage databases in a way that
helps ensure continuous uptime and resiliency.
(For more information on how Compellent
and Microsoft virtualization technologies work
together to boost IT efficiency, see the sidebar,
“Heightening business agility.”)
Examining database resiliency features
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 offers several
capabilities that enhance database availability
and data protection. It includes SQL Server
AlwaysOn, a high-availability and disaster-
recovery feature that helps improve application
failover time to increase the availability of
mission-critical applications.
AlwaysOn availability groups, introduced
in SQL Server 2012, help ensure availability of
application databases with an integrated set
of options, including automatic and manual
failover of a logical group of databases,
support for up to four secondary replicas, fast
application failover, and automatic page repair.
AlwaysOn failover cluster instances support
multisite clustering across subnets, which enables
failover of SQL Server instances across data
centers. This fast, predictable failover capability
facilitates quick application recovery.
In addition, SQL Server 2012 introduces key
features such as in-memory column store for
increased speed and fast response to queries.
Data quality services help ensure the integrity
of data and the accuracy of reports. And
enhanced data modeling capabilities address
the diverse requirements of business intelligence
users across an organization.
Extending data protection, availability,
and performance
IT organizations can leverage storage-based
resiliency features to enhance and extend
Microsoft SQL Server database resiliency—if
the storage selected meets at least three key
requirements. First, storage must be built to
avoid downtime through hardware redundancy
and on-the-fly administration. Second, storage-
based business continuity technologies such
as snapshots are essential for protecting
Heightening business agility Together with advanced storage virtualization technologies from Dell
Compellent, end-to-end server virtualization and management tools from
Microsoft help IT decision makers simplify data center management—enabling
organizations to adapt quickly and flexibly to changing business conditions.
Capitalizing on Compellent virtual storage for server consolidation allows
organizations to advance IT efficiency in several major ways:
• Maximize utilization of storage resources
• Minimize data center footprint
• Heighten power and cooling efficiency
• Optimize total cost of ownership
A virtual data center environment based on Microsoft and Compellent
technologies is designed to ensure continuous availability and improved
disaster recovery through instant local virtual machine recovery and simple
replication of virtual servers and storage.
Replays for application integrity
Dell Compellent Replay Manager integrates with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to help ensure time-consistent replays of Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Microsoft Hyper-V® volumes. In this video, discover how to use Replay Manager to schedule and manage replays for maintaining application integrity.