Resilient hosting - AlwaysOn SQL Server feature support

Dean Lynn asked on July 6, 2015 12:55

I previously raised a question regarding Kentico's support for SQL Server mirroring and in particular the use of Principal, Mirror and Witness database servers to provide resilience on a production environment:

http://devnet.kentico.com/questions/resilient-hosting-principal-mirror-and-witness-sql-server-support

I received positive responses regarding this configuration, however since Microsoft do not currently recommend using the related SQL Server features I am now investigating alternative options.

"This feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using this feature in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature. We recommend that you use AlwaysOn Availability Groups instead."

Source: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190202.aspx

SQL Server offers alternative High Availability features:

AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances
AlwaysOn Availability Groups

In regards to the above features:

Has anyone successfully used the above functionality (either, or both) in a production environment?
Are you aware of any gotchas using the above features?
Does Kentico support the use of the above features?

Thanks in advance,

Dean

Recent Answers

Dean Lynn answered on July 14, 2015 11:45

Can anyone help with the above query?

Has anyone in the community tried using AlwaysOn features of SQL Server with Kentico?

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MyPoint CreditUnion answered on July 14, 2015 18:30

Going through this myself right now. Turns out it is not easy to set up, my network admins are not very happy with me right now...

My main problem is: how do I do OS patches on my DB server without bringing the whole site down? We have HA/redundant everything, except the DB server so I am trying to figure out how to build it correctly.

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Dean Lynn answered on July 15, 2015 10:55

Thanks for the response Ryan. Although it sounds like you have hit an issue with your infrastructure, in regards to Kentico's support for Always On features this is positive feedback.

In regards to configuring Kentico to run using Always On features:

What is the current setup e.g. how many servers? In what configuration? Etc.
Did you encounter any technical problems with Kentico using this setup?
Did you have to alter the configuration of Kentico?
Did you have to modify the out-of-the-box product to run using this setup?

Thanks again!

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