Rolling Upgrades, The Easy Way Argenis Fernandez Senior Database Engineer,

About your Speaker Today… SQL Server MVP Member of the Database Engineering team at SurveyMonkey Formerly: Senior Consultant, Microsoft Consulting Services & Senior DBA at Outerwall and Ultimate Software Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008, Microsoft Certified Solutions Master: Charter - Data Platform 2014 Friend of Red Gate Software Idera SQL Server ACE DBA/Dev/SysAdmin for 15 years Regular Speaker (PASS Summit, PASS SQLRally, SQLBits XI, TechEd 2013, IT/DevConnections) Founded and lead the Security Virtual Chapter for PASS Twitter enthusiast; infrequent blogger.

What is a Rolling Upgrade? “Upgrade of a software version, performed without a noticeable downtime or other disruption of service”

Scope for Today’s Talk Heavy focus on Database Mirroring (Because it’s actually easy!) Will evaluate Log Shipping as an alternative for rolling upgrades Explore (not in detail) how to handle Availability Groups on SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014 FCI (Clusters) – brief mention We will NOT discuss OS-level upgrades. That’s an ENTIRELY different talk!

Features and Builds Database Mirroring: SQL Server 2005 SP1 and above Failover Cluster Instances: SQL Server 2008 RTM and above Availability Groups: SQL Server 2012 RTM and above

In-Place Upgrades Suck Are Not Great. Too much risk inherent to upgrade process There is no easy way to test an in-place upgrade The last thing you want to know is that the upgrade failed, and you’re left with a useless server. Clean installs on freshly imaged servers are always recommended, if you have the resources

Mirroring for Rolling Upgrades? High Availability! Available in Standard Edition No need for a WSFC (Windows Server Failover Cluster) Duplication of data offers a plausible rollback plan, while still maintaining minimal downtime You do NOT need similar hardware for the mirror

Guidelines

Demo Rolling Upgrade Using Database Mirroring

Log Shipping Is Underrated Included with every Edition of SQL Server Mirroring was once referred to as “Real-time Log Shipping” You can use the GUI to set it up, or roll your own SQL Server jobs can run every 10 seconds, but you can roll your own scripts and copy/restore even more frequently

Demo Rolling Upgrade using Log Shipping

What About Availability Groups? “It’s Complicated!” It might indeed appear complex, but follow best practices and you’re on your way Always upgrade the remote instances first, then the local secondaries, THEN the primary Take cautionary measures to avoid downtime! Best reference I can point to is: us/library/dn aspxhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dn aspx

Demo Rolling Upgrade using Availability Groups

FCI (Failover Clustered Instances) Upgrade passive node(s), then failover and upgrade the active node The database will be upgraded upon failover, just like in all the previous cases.

Thank You!

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