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Drop the Pressure on your Production Server
This document summarizes an agenda for a TechNet Live meeting about using SQL Server AlwaysOn availability groups to offload reporting workloads from production servers. The agenda includes an introduction to AlwaysOn, setting up readable secondary replicas, configuring connection access, performing backups on secondary replicas, and discussing the impact of workloads on high availability, primary servers, and query plans.
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Drop the Pressure on your Production Server
- 1. TECHNET LIVE MEETING Dropthe pressure on your production server Pieter Vanhove
- 2. WHO AM I • Pieter Vanhove • SQL Server Database Consultant at Kohera • MCTS, MCITP Database Administrator 2008 • Love to work with SQL HA/DR solutions • E-mail: pieter.vanhove@kohera.be • Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Pieter_Vanhove • Blog: http://blogs.sqlug.be/pieter/ • MEET: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/meet/#Pieter+Vanhove
- 3. AGENDA • AlwaysOn – In Short • Offloading reporting workload in SQL Server 2008 R2 • Setting Up Readable Secondary Replicas • Configure Connection Access on an Availability Group • Backup on Secondary Replica • Impact of Workloads on a Secondary Replica • On High Availability • On Primary • On Query Plans & Statistics
- 4. ALWAYSON – INSHORT • HA and DR solution that provides an alternative to database mirroring • A container for a discrete set of user databases that fail over together • Multiple possible failover targets
- 5. ALWAYSON – INSHORT • Each availability group defines a set of two or more failover partners known as availability replicas • Each replica hosts a copy of the databases in the availability group Replica
- 6. ALWAYSON – INSHORT Primary Role • Every replica is assigned an initial role – primary role or the secondary role, which is inherited by the availability databases of that replica. • Primary replica is assigned the primary role and hosts read-write databases • Secondary replica hosts read-only databases. Secondary Role
- 7. ALWAYSON – INSHORT 1 Commit 7 Acknowledge 6 Acknowledge Constantly Redoing on Replica 2 Transmit to Replica 2 Write to Local 3 Committed 4 Write to Log in Log Remote Log 5 DB Log Log DB
- 8. ALWAYSON – INSHORT - BENEFITS • Supports on primary replica and up to four secondary replicas • Supports Asynchronous-commit mode and Synchronous-commit mode • Read-Only access to the secondary databases • Performing backup operations on secondary databases • Provide fast application failover
- 9. READ-ONLY ACCESS TOSECONDARY REPLICA • Take advantage of your existing investment • Offload your read-only workloads from your primary replica • Optimizes resources on your primary replica • Near real time • Read-Only access is configured at the replica level. • You can determine the read-only access behavior whenever the replica is a secondary replica
- 10. LIMITATIONS AND RESTRICTIONS •Change tracking and change data capture are not supported on the databases that belong to a readable secondary replica • DBCC SHRINKFILE operation might fail on the primary replica if the file contains ghost records that are still needed on the secondary replica • DBCC CHECKDB is blocked. “The database could not be exclusively locked to perform the operation”
- 11. OFFLOADING WORKLOAD INSQL SERVER 2008 R2 • Database Mirroring • Snapshot on the mirror • Name of the snapshot is different • Snapshot is a static view, no real-time data • Overhead
- 12. OFFLOADING WORKLOAD INSQL SERVER 2008 R2 • Log Shipping • Run a reporting workload on the log shipping target node • Data Latency • If the secondary database is open for reporting workload, the log backups cannot be restored
- 13. OFFLOADING WORKLOAD INSQL SERVER 2008 R2 • Replication • Transactional replication • You can create reporting-workload-specific indexes • Filter the dataset on the subscriber database • All tables require a primary key • Not suitable for high transaction throughput
- 14. SETTING UP READABLESECONDARY REPLICAS • Yes • Clients can connect to the secondary replica explicitly to run the reporting workload • Read-intent-only • Connections that have the ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly are accepted. • Allows clients to automatically connect to readable secondary • Prevent read loads from running on the primary
- 15. CONFIGURE CONNECTION ACCESS •For each readable secondary replica that is to support read-only routing, you need to specify a read-only routing URL • For each availability replica that you want to support read-only routing when it is the primary replica, you need to specify a read-only routing list
- 16. CONFIGURE CONNECTION ACCESS ReadOnly Check DB and AVG Routing URL Primary R e d i r e c t Secondary
- 17. WHERE WOULD YOUPREFER TO PERFORM BACKUPS? • Preference Description Only on the primary Backups should always occur on the primary replica. replica On secondary Backups should occur on a secondary replica except replicas when the primary replica is the only replica online. Only on secondary Backups should never be performed on the primary replicas replica. Backup jobs should ignore the role of the availability No preference replicas when choosing the replica to perform backups.
- 18. BACKUP PRIORITY Setting Description The relative priority of a given replica relative to the 1..100 backup priorities of the other replicas in the availability group. 100 is the highest priority. The availability replica will never be chosen for 0 performing backups.
- 19. BACKUP – IMPORTANTPOINTS • The backup on the primary replica still works • Only copy only full backup is allowed for secondaries • Differential backups are not supported on secondary replicas • BACKUP LOG supports only regular log backups, the COPY_ONLY option is not supported • Secondary replica must be able to communicate with the primary replica and must be SYNCHRONIZED or SYNCHRONIZING • Priority is not enforced by SQL Server, script your backup jobs
- 20. SCRIPTING OF BACKUPJOBS Determine whether the current replica is the preferred backup replica? sys.fn_hadr_backup_is_preferred_replica IF (NOT sys.fn_hadr_backup_is_preferred_replica(@DBNAME)) BEGIN Select 'This is not the preferred replica, exiting with success'; RETURN 0 END BACKUP DATABASE @DBNAME TO DISK=<disk> WITH COPY_ONLY; Remark: If you use the Maintenance Plan Wizard, the job will automatically include the scripting logic that calls and checks the sys.fn_hadr_backup_is_preferred_replica function
- 21. IMPACT ON HIGHAVAILABILITY • Recovery Point Objective • Asynchronous commit mode, there is no additional impact • Synchronous commit mode, no data loss • Recovery Time Objective • After a failover, the REDO thread needs to apply the transaction log records. • The longer the REDO thread, the longer it takes to bring the DB online
- 22. A READ-ONLY WORKLOADCAN IMPACT THE RTO • If the reporting workload is I/O bound • The REDO thread can be blocked by the reporting workload • DML operations • DDL operations • Result = Data Latency
- 23. TROUBLESHOOTING REDO BLOCKING •a lock_redo_blocked Extended Event is generated • query the DMV sys.dm_exec_request on the secondary • AlwaysOn Dashboard
- 24. IMPACT ON PRIMARYWORKLOAD • 14-byte overhead occurs only when an existing row is updated or deleted or when a new row is added. • This is very similar to the impact of enabling RCSI/SI on the primary • No row versions need to be generated on the primary replica. • The extra 14 bytes can lead to more page splits
- 25. IMPACT OF AREPORTING WORKLOAD UNDER SNAPSHOT ISOLATION • Snapshot Isolation • When a row is modified, its previous version is saved in the version store backed by tempdb and a 14-byte pointer is set from the modified row to the versioned row. • 4 scenarios • SI and RCSI are not enabled on the primary - secondary not enabled for read • SI and RCSI are not enabled on the primary - secondary is enabled for read • SI and RCSI are enabled on the primary - secondary not enabled for read • SI and RCSI are enabled on the primary - secondary is enabled for read
- 26. SECONDARY NOT ENABLEDFOR READ WORKLOAD
- 27. SECONDARY ENABLED FORREAD WORKLOAD
- 28. PRIMARY RCSI ORSI ENABLED, SECONDARY NOT READ ENABLED
- 29. PRIMARY RCSI ORSI ENABLED, SECONDARY READ ENABLED
- 30. DO READ WORKLOADSRUNNING ON THE SECONDARY REPLICA IMPACT THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (ACK) FOR THE 1 Commit 7 Acknowledge TRANSACTION COMMIT? 6 Acknowledge Constantly Redoing on Replica 2 Transmit to Replica 2 Write to Local 3 Committed 4 Write to Log in Log Remote Log 5 DB Log Log DB
- 31. QUERY PLANS &STATISTICS • Statistics created on the primary are automatically available on the secondary • How are missing statistics created or stale statistics updated on the secondary replica? • Temporary statistics are created and stored in tempdb. • Statistics can be lost if SQL Server is restarted • Temporary statistics are removed when a primary replica fails over.
- 32. RESOURCES • AlwaysOn TeamBlog • http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlalwayson/ • SQL Server 2012 Whitepapers • http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh403491 • SQL Diablo Blog • http://www.sqldiablo.com/alwayson/
- 33. © 2011 MicrosoftCorporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.
Editor's Notes
- #8 This leads to the question: “Do read workloads running on the secondary replica impact the acknowledgement (ACK) for the transaction commit?” The answer is that this is unlikely. In the secondary replica in the preceding picture, there are essentially two background threads: one receives the log record over the network and the other hardens that log record. SQL Server gives priority to background threads over user threads (including the ones that are running read workload). This means that at least from the CPU perspective, a read workload cannot delay the ACK. An I/O intensive read workload could slow down the transaction log write, but this would only happen if the data and the transaction log were to share the same physical disk. In most production deployments, transaction log disks are not shared with data disks, so it is a nonissue. However, a network bottleneck can add to the latency of the transaction, but in that case it is unrelated to read workload. In summary, in a well-configured and well-managed system, it is unlikely that the read workload on the primary will add to the transactional latency.
- #12 Database mirroring: The mirror database in the database mirroring configuration is not readable, but you can create a database snapshot on the mirrored database, which is readable. The read-only workload can then run against the database snapshot. This approach has the following challenges:The name of the database snapshot is different from the name of the database in the database mirroring configuration. If your application has a hard-coded database name, you need to make modifications in order to connect to the snapshot. The database snapshot is a static view of the data at the time the snapshot was taken. If an application needs to access more recent data, you must create a new database snapshot with a new name unless you drop the old database snapshot. In other words, near real-time access to data is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve if you are using a database snapshot.A database snapshot employs copy-on-write operations. These operations can add significant overhead if there are multiple database snapshots. Also, queries that run on a database snapshot incur more random I/O. Together, these issues can cause significant performance degradation.
- #13 Log shipping: With log shipping, you can run a reporting workload on the log shipping target node, but the data latency incurred by the reporting workload depends on the frequency of the transaction log restore. However, if the secondary database is open for reporting workload, the log backups cannot be restored. This can be management challenge because you must choose between high availability and the latency incurred by a reporting workload. If you reduce the frequency of the log restores, both the data latency for the reporting workload and the recovery time objective (RTO) are negatively affected. If you increase the frequency of the transaction log restore, you must disconnect all users on the secondary database before the restore. That does not work for many scenarios, especially if you have long-running queries, because they may never run to completion due to RTO constraints.
- #14 Replication: Transactional replication can be used as a solution for offloading read and reporting workloads. A few key benefits of replication are that customers can create reporting-workload-specific indexes and filter the dataset on the subscriber database. The challenges here include the following: all tables require a primary key, which may require schema changes (for example, unique key), and replication is not suitable for high transaction throughput. There can be significant latency between publisher and subscriber, particularly under large batch jobs and high transaction volumes.
- #15 Yes option: Supported TDS clients can connect to the secondary replica explicitly to run the reporting workload. The client is responsible for ensuring that it is connecting to readable secondary, because the roles of replicas can change in case of failover. The key benefit of this option is that older clients can run reporting workloads on the readable secondary.Read-intent-only option: Only connections that have the property ApplicationIntent set to ReadOnly are accepted. The word intent indicates that you want to use the connection as read-only; it does not prevent read/write connections. It is still possible to connect using a read/write application if the ApplicationIntent option is set to ReadOnly, but the application fails on the first DML or DDL operation. This option allows clients to automatically connect to an available readable secondary, and you can use it to prevent read workloads from running on the primary replica. For more information about how to use this setting, see Connecting to Secondary Replicas later in this white paper.
- #16 For each readable secondary replica that is to support read-only routing, you need to specify a read-only routing URL. This URL takes effect only when the local replica is running under the secondary role. The read-only routing URL must be specified on a replica-by-replica basis, as needed. Each read-only routing URL is used for routing read-intent connection requests to a specific readable secondary replica. Typically, every readable secondary replica is assigned a read-only routing URL. For information about calculating the read-only routing URL for an availability replica, see Calculating read_only_routing_url for AlwaysOn.For each availability replica that you want to support read-only routing when it is the primary replica, you need to specify a read-only routing list. A given read-only routing list takes effect only when the local replica is running under the primary role. This list must be specified on a replica-by-replica basis, as needed. Typically, each read-only routing list would contain every read-only routing URL, with the URL of the local replica at the end of the list.
- #17 Read-only routing uses the following algorithm to locate a readable secondary:Client connects to an Availability Group listener endpoint.Note this endpoint always points to the primary replica for the availability groupClient specifies ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly in the connection string, this is transmitted to the server during loginOn server side, server checks that incoming connection is using an Availability Group listener endpointOtherwise, read-only routing is disabledServer checks the target database and determines if it is in an availability groupIf database is in an availability group, we check if the read_only_routing_list is set on the primary replicaIf list is not set, routing is disabledIf list is set, then routing is enforcedServer then enumerates the replicas in the read_only_routing_list and checks each replica in the listFirst replica it finds that is synchronizing and accepts readers (allow_connections=read_only or all) is the routing targetServer next reads the read_only_routing_url from this replica and sends this response to the clientClient reads routing URL and re-directs to the readable secondary instance
- #18 PreferenceDescriptionOnly on the primary replicaBackups should always occur on the primary replica. This alternative is useful if you need backup features, such as creating differential backups, that are not supported when backup is run on a secondary replica.On secondary replicasBackups should occur on a secondary replica except when the primary replica is the only replica online. In that case, the backup should occur on the primary replica. This is the default behavior.Only on secondary replicasBackups should never be performed on the primary replica. If the primary replica is the only replica online, the backup should not occur.No preferenceBackup jobs should ignore the role of the availability replicas when choosing the replica to perform backups. Note backup jobs might evaluate other factors such as backup priority of each availability replica in combination with its operational state and connected state.
- #25 When a secondary replica is enabled for running reporting workloads, any changes to the rows done as part of DML operation start incurring a 14-byte overhead, as explained earlier. Note that no changes to the size of rows need to be made to existing rows. This 14-byte overhead occurs only when an existing row is updated or deleted or when a new row is added. This is very similar to the impact of enabling RCSI/SI on the primary, except that no row versions need to be generated on the primary replica. The extra 14 bytes can lead to more page splits as the size of the row or rows is increased. However, the reporting workload does not affect the transactional throughput on the primary replica. When a transaction is run on the primary replica, the transaction log records are writtento the log buffer and at the same time are sent to the log pool tobe sent to the secondary replica (in thisexamplethere is onlyonesecondary replica, but the same logic holdsfor multiple replicas) as shown in the following picture.
- #27 In this case, SI and/or RCSI are not enabled on the primary replica and the secondary replica is not enabled for read workload. As shown in the following picture, there is no row versioning overhead on either the primary replica or the secondary replica.
- #28 In this case, SI and/or RCSI are not enabled on the primary replica, but the secondary replica is enabled for read workload. There are two interesting points to note here. First, the row version is only generated on the secondary replica; because RCSI or SI is not enabled on the primary replica, there is really no need to create row versions there. Second, the row versions need to be generated on the secondary replica, which means that the 14-byte overhead needs to be added to the new and modified rows on the primary, because the primary and secondary replicas must be physically identical. Existing rows that are not modified do not incur the 14-byte overhead. The following picture shows the 14-byte overhead on the primary replica and the generation of the row version on the secondary replica.
- #29 In this instance, SI and/or RCSI are enabled on the primary replica but the secondary replica is not enabled for read workload. This case is a bit simpler because the 14-byte versioning overhead is already added to the data rows on the primary replica independent of the status of secondary replica. As shown in the following picture, if the secondary replica is not enabled for read workload, there is still a 14-byte overhead on the rows on the secondary replica, but there is no row version generation on the secondary because the read workload has not been enabled.
- #30 In this case, SI and/or RCSI are enabled on the primary replica, and the secondary replica is enabled for read workload. This case is similar to the previous configuration except that row versions must also be generated on the secondary replica. The following picture shows the 14-byte overhead in the data/index row and the row version.
- #31 This leads to the question: “Do read workloads running on the secondary replica impact the acknowledgement (ACK) for the transaction commit?” The answer is that this is unlikely. In the secondary replica in the preceding picture, there are essentially two background threads: one receives the log record over the network and the other hardens that log record. SQL Server gives priority to background threads over user threads (including the ones that are running read workload). This means that at least from the CPU perspective, a read workload cannot delay the ACK. An I/O intensive read workload could slow down the transaction log write, but this would only happen if the data and the transaction log were to share the same physical disk. In most production deployments, transaction log disks are not shared with data disks, so it is a nonissue. However, a network bottleneck can add to the latency of the transaction, but in that case it is unrelated to read workload. In summary, in a well-configured and well-managed system, it is unlikely that the read workload on the primary will add to the transactional latency.
- #32 The reporting workload running on the secondary replica will incur some data latency, typically a few seconds to minutes depending upon the primary workload and the network latency. The data latency exists even if you have configured the secondary replica to synchronous mode. While it is true that a synchronous replica helps guarantee no data loss in ideal conditions (that is, RPO = 0) by hardening the transaction log records of a committed transaction before sending an ACK to the primary, it does not guarantee that the REDO thread on secondary replica has indeed applied the associated log records to database pages. So there is some data latency. You may wonder if this data latency is more likely when you have configured the secondary replica in asynchronous mode. This is a more difficult question to answer. If the network between the primary replica and the secondary replica is not able to keep up with the transaction log traffic (that is, if there is not enough bandwidth), the asynchronous replica can fall further behind, leading to higher data latency. In the case of synchronous replica, the insufficient network bandwidth does not cause higher data latency on the secondary but it can slow down the transaction response time and throughput for the primary workload.If your reporting workload cannot tolerate any data latency, you must run it on the primary replica. The good news is that generally most reporting workloads can tolerate some data latency and therefore can safely be migrated to secondary replica.
- #33 The first thing to note is that any statistics created on the primary replica are automatically available on the secondary replica for usage. The challenge is in allowing missing statistics to be created or stale statistics to be updated on the secondary replica. The short answer is that this is not possible because it violates the rule that the primary and secondary database must be physically identical. However, statistics on an object can be created and re-created using the data in the table. Based on this fact, temporary statistics are created and stored in tempdb. This change guarantees that up-to-date statistics are available on the secondary replica just like they are on the primary replica for the query optimizer. The implication of creating temporary statistics is that these statistics can be lost if SQL Server is restarted, but this is not a true data-loss situation because, as noted earlier, these statistics can be re-created at a relatively low cost by querying the underlying objects. Similarly, the temporary statistics are removed when a primary replica fails over.