Black Friday and Cyber Monday have entirely changed the IT network security landscape with an absolutely exorbitant (and growing) volume of shoppers logging on each year to pull the best holiday deals.
Hear from our CEO, Donald Boxley, and other IT executives as they provide insight on the best technologies to prepare yourself for these global events, and the aging technologies that need to be updated.
DH2i to Join with Microsoft to Present Live Talk, “Containerize with Ease with Cross-Platform SQL Server AGs”
FORT COLLINS, CO – November 6, 2023 – DH2i®, the world’s leading provider of always-secure and always-on IT infrastructure solutions, today announced it will showcase its DxEnterprise smart high availability clustering software at next week’s PASS Data Community Summit (November 14-17, Seattle, WA).
Visitors to DH2i’s Booth 101 will have the opportunity to see firsthand how DxEnterprise enables seamless SQL Server modernization with containers, unlocking your path to zero downtime and providing fully automatic database-level failover for Availability Groups (AGs) in Kubernetes.
In addition, don’t miss OJ Ngo, CTO at DH2i, and Amit Khandelwal, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, as they present: “Containerize with Ease with Cross-Platform SQL Server AGs” on November 16, 10:15 AM-11:30 AM, in Room 400.
This talk will explore the motivators behind the SQL Server container explosion taking place across the globe. Organizations are in pursuit of enhanced scalability and portability, reduced management and operating costs, and peak utilization, amongst a wealth of other benefits. However, one of the greatest hurdles that stands in their way is high availability (HA). Attendees will learn how to break through the traditional constraints of Always On Availability Groups (AGs) and perfectly unify Windows, Linux, and Kubernetes in a single, highly available AG. To learn more about this session, please visit: https://passdatacommunitysummit.com/sessions/2078/.
To learn more about the PASS Data Community Summit and register to attend, please visit:https://passdatacommunitysummit.com/. You can use code: DH150CP for a $150 discount.
Not attending the PASS Data Community Summit? Learn more about DH2i’s approach to smart high availability technology with a one-on-one demo today. Sign up here: https://dh2i.com/demo/.
About DH2i
DH2i Company is the world’s leading provider of multi-platform smart high availability (HA) clustering and software-defined perimeter (SDP) software for Windows, Linux, and containers. DH2i enables users to connect securely and failover enterprise applications – from anywhere to anywhere. DH2i’s DxOdyssey® SDP software, the unVPN® networking solution for Zero Trust security, enables users to create highly available application-level Zero Trust Network Access tunnels across any mix of locations and platforms. DH2i’s DxEnterprise® smart high availability clustering software – now optimized for containers, delivers an all-in-one clustering solution for any application, any OS, any server configuration, and any cloud. DxEnterprise is the only SQL Server clustering solution to provide fully automatic failover of SQL Server AG in Kubernetes. To learn more, please visit: www.dh2i.com, call: 800-380-5405 or +44 20 3318 9204, or email: [email protected].
We are excited to be a Silver Sponsor at this year’s PASS Data Community Summit taking place in Seattle from November 14-17.
You will be able to find us in the exhibitor hall at BOOTH 101 where we’ll have some fun swag, live demos, and some brilliant engineering minds to talk about the SQL Server goals in your environment. We’re also incredibly excited to introduce some brand new DH2i technology at this years Summit.
We will be hosting a session titled, “Containerize with Ease with Cross-Platform SQL Server AGs.” Our team, along with Microsoft SQL Server Senior Product Manager, Amit Khandelwal, will be doing some magic using our Smart High Availability Clustering software solution, DxEnterprise, and you will see Windows, Linux and Kubernetes high availability management unified like never before.
This technology has huge implications for anyone with SQL Server under management, and especially those trying to sustain heterogeneous environments or move into SQL Server containers.
The session is scheduled for Thursday November 16, 10:15-11:30AM, and we hope you can make it!
Lastly, if you have yet to register for the conference, head to the PASS Data Community Summit website and use discount code: DH150CP for a $150 discount.
On a random Thursday in September, our brave SQL Server heroes, OJ Ngo, Co-Founder and CTO at DH2i, and Amit Khandelwal, Senior Product Manager of SQL Server at Microsoft, set out on Microsoft’s “Data Exposed” show with the lofty goal to drop jaws and completely redefine how SQL Server Availability Groups can be leveraged in heterogeneous environments. The results of their efforts can be well summarized by the reaction of the show’s host, Anna Hoffman:
“I’m blown away by one, that this is possible, and two, how few commands you can do it in.”
What exactly did they show though? Let’s start from the beginning.
Microsoft’s Always On Availability Groups (AGs) technology has now been around for over a decade since its original introduction in SQL Server 2012. Delivering high availability and disaster recovery, this powerful step up from traditional failover clustering is now appropriately regarded as a staple in the SQL Server high availability arena.
With each subsequent release since its creation, enhancements and features have been added to make AGs an increasingly powerful tool for SQL Server disaster recovery and HA. However, one particular bottle-necking constraint has never been removed from SQL Server Availability Groups; the need for the underlying cluster nodes to be like-for-like. This means only Windows nodes can be clustered together in a single Windows Availability Group, or only Linux nodes together in their own separate Linux Availability Group.
This is an unfortunate reality for IT pros to wrestle with because hybrid, mixed-platform deployments aren’t just growing more common; they’ve effectively established themselves as the new normal. In-turn, organizations with a need for both highly available Windows and Linux SQL Server in their environment are forced into a situation of managing multiple AGs, or a combination of other clunky SQL Server HA solutions like Pacemaker or Windows Server Failover Clustering. This equates to a high degree of management complexity, as well as a massive recurring technology and licensing expense.
DH2i set out to solve this problem with DxEnterprise (DxE) Smart High Availability Clustering software and already had a solution capable of clustering Windows and Linux nodes together several years ago. Not only that, but this technology unveiled cross-platform failover—the ability to failover a SQL Server database in Windows straight to Linux, or vice versa.
These accomplishments were the first couple building-blocks for the grand finale of technical capability that DH2i brought to the table in this episode of “Data Exposed.”
Jumping into the demo introduction, OJ and Amit start by providing a brief description of the Always on Availability Group they will be creating; one single, unified AG containing:
Once configured, this unique cross-platform Availability Group will give the user the ability to right-click failover workloads between Windows, Linux, and containers within this same AG. This is worth a pause for dramatic effect…
Moving on, OJ begins the demo and prepares each replica and enters each of them into the AG quorum by running just a few simple commands. Most impressively—as Amit elaborates on—the last step on the AKS node uses a single command leveraging a DxEnterprise Helm chart to deploy a SQL Server container side-by-side in the same pod (sidecar). This Helm chart capability drastically simplifies initial configuration and reduces time to deployment. DH2i’s sidecar capability allows users to totally eliminate any combined-container image headaches and simplify ongoing support.
A big part of the “secret sauce” of this solution stack also comes down to how the SQL Server AG replicas are connected. The beauty of the DH2i software used in this demo is that the entire Availability Group is connected using secure, highly-performant zero trust network access (ZTNA) tunnels, a built-in feature in DxEnterprise. This means this AG was set up without opening any firewalls or establishing any VPNs to connect the three replicas. Connections were established using certificate-based endpoint authentication without creating any TCP commands, with all certificate creation being taken care of on the backend.
After creating the 3-replica AG quorum, OJ moved on to adding a database to actually put the Availability Group to use. To demonstrate the true cross-platform capability of the AG, this database was then manually failed over from the Windows node to the Azure VM running Linux in a matter of seconds. “The SQL Server engine remains the same whether you run it in Windows, Linux, or containers,” Amit added.
The last step in the demo involved demonstrating automatic failover. While having the AKS container replica set as the primary database, OJ went ahead and executed a command to delete the pod. This prompted fast automatic failover of the workload to the Windows node facilitated by DxEnterprise. Additionally, AKS did its job and started up a new pod that it rejoined to the DxE and AG quorum. And within seconds of the original pod deletion, full database synchronization was reached between the three replicas with the Windows node operating as the new primary database.
Everything you just read about was shown in a 10-minute demo, so that demonstrates just how fast you can stand up a 3-replica Availability Group with DH2i. As an additional clarification, much of the demo showed management through the UI, but DxEnterprise can be administered exclusively through the CLI as well. This means these processes can be completely scripted for automation—something many DH2i customers are doing already to automate Kubernetes container deployments.
The DH2i team was incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be featured in this episode of Data Exposed, and even more excited to have a senior member of the Microsoft SQL Server product team evangelize DxEnterprise right beside us. So, huge thanks to Amit for joining OJ on this session.
The duo demonstrated DxEnterprise’s capability in a Windows, Ubuntu, and AKS cluster in this session, but there is no limit to this technology. You can create highly available Always On Availability Groups across sites, platforms, distributions, and containers. It is truly a cross-environment solution to unify heterogeneous IT installations anywhere. Deployment is made easy with Helm chart capability, and your whole Availability Group is effortlessly secured with built-in ZTNA tunneling technology.
As Amit mentioned, this whole stack is production-ready with Microsoft supporting the SQL Server component, and DH2i supporting the clusterware. You can get started whenever you’re ready by downloading free trial software right here.
Please let us know if you have any questions about the content in this blog and feel free to reach out if you’d like to schedule a personalized demo for your organization.
DevOps Engineer, Mohammad Falahat, participated in a free trial of DxEnterprise Smart High Availability Clustering software and wrote an article about using it to create a SQL Server Availability Group inside of a Kubernetes cluster.
He included a 6-step tutorial that you can follow along with to create the cluster and test failover capability. DxEnterprise is the only solution on the market currently that enables fully automatic database-level failover for SQL Server Availability Groups in Kubernetes.
October of 2023 marks the 20th year of Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Our CEO and Co-Founder, Don Boxley, had the opportunity to provide some insight on this topic to several industry publications.
He and many other IT leaders around the globe recognize pursuing innovation and adopting solutions such as software-defined perimeter as the keys to overcoming today’s cyber threats.
