SQL Always On - things to get set up before you get going with the Wizard....

This article is key. At this point, I'm assuming that all the nodes involved are in the Windows Failover Cluster

• Make sure that all nodes in the cluster are patched with this. Otherwise, you cannot set quorum votes on this node. Do this before the server is a live server. Regardless of what the article says, you need to restart each node. This means failing over. This means downtime. This is a pain in the butt if you have seven instances of SQL on a three node cluster.

• Set the Node Votes. Easy. Use Powershell. Use the Windows Powershell Modules found in admin tools in the start menu. If it's not there, make sure it's installed. This doesn't result in downtime
• Get-clusternode | fl NodeName, NodeWeight
  Should be ‘1’ for each node because that’s the default.
  This needs to be changed to ‘0’ for DRSQLALWAYSON by running
  (Get-ClusterNode “DRSQLALWAYSON”).NodeWeight = 0 
   

• Make sure that HADR Always On is enabled for each instance of SQL involved. The easiest way is via SQL Configuration Manager. You will have to restart SQL. Again, downtime.

• Make sure that the DR node is not a node onto which the primary instance of SQL could failover. This doesn't result in downtime.
• Get-ClusterOwnerNode -resource “SQL Server (InstanceName)”
  Set-ClusterOwnerNode -resource “SQL Server (InstanceName)” –owners Node1,Node2
   It is worth running get-clustergroup in order to establish the names of the SQL Server instances. For the default instance on the cluster, I found that the command was 
• Get-ClusterOwnerNode -resource "SQL Server")

•  Work out where your listener will be.  If you've got primary and secondary instances on different subnets, this will be a whole bunch of fun. You need to us TSQL rather than the GUI:
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/saponsqlserver/archive/2012/04/24/sql-server-2012-alwayson-part-7-details-behind-an-alwayson-availability-group.aspx

USE [master]
           GO
           ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP MyAvailabityGroup
           ADD LISTENER N'MyListener' (
           WITH IP
           ((N'local.ip.add.dress', N'255.255.0.0'),
           (N'dr.ip.add.dress', N'255.255.0.0') ) , PORT=60173);
           GO

By far my most used script...

The one for an ad hoc backup of a database where I'm using Ola Hallengren's excellent solution, and I've ensured that I'm using the default backup location.

DECLARE @dbname VARCHAR(50)

SET @dbname = 'dbname'

DECLARE @servername VARCHAR(50)

SET @servername = @@SERVERNAME
SET @servername = Replace(@servername, '\', '$')
SET @SERVERNAME = LEFT(@servername, 30)

/*Specify backup location*/
DECLARE @filefolder VARCHAR(50)

--SET @filefolder = 'W:\SQL_Backups_FULL\'
/* Or, to use default location*/
EXEC master.dbo.xp_instance_regread
  N'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE',
  N'Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer',
  N'BackupDirectory',
  @filefolder output;

DECLARE @filelocation VARCHAR(150)

SET @filelocation = @filefolder + '\' + @servername + '\' + @dbname
                    + '\FULL\' + @dbname
                    + Replace(CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), Getdate(), 101), '/', '')
                    + Replace(CONVERT(VARCHAR(5), Getdate(), 108), ':', '')
                    + '.bak'

DECLARE @backupname VARCHAR(50)

SET @backupname = @dbname + '-Full Database Backup'

BACKUP DATABASE @dbname TO DISK = @filelocation  
WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT, name = @backupname, SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, stats = 10, COPY_ONLY
 
GO

SQL Integration Services Access

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in SQL 2008, all users had access to connect to Integration Services in Management Studio. Naturally, SQL 2012 does it differently, and you have to explicitly grant access via Component Services

1. Run Dcomcnfg.exe. This lets you edit the registry.
   
2. In the Component Services dialog, expand
   Component Services --> Computers --> My Computer --> DCOM Config .
   
3. Right-click Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services 11.0, and then click Properties.
4. On the Security tab, click Edit in the "Launch and Activation Permissions" area.
   
   
   
5. Add users and assign appropriate permissions, and then click OK. If you don't like your users remoting onto the server, chose 'remote launch' and 'remote activation'
   
   
   
   
6. Repeat steps 4 - 5 for the "Access Permissions" area. Again, grant remote access if you don't allow users to log directly onto the server.
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Restart the Integration Services Service in SQL Configuration. Restart Management Studio if you had it open, and were trying to connect from that.
   

SQL Agent Jobs in SQL2012

In the last week or so, we've been tightening up the security on our SQL boxes, and removing as many logins with sysadmin access.  This has included various of the service accounts.

On pretty much every single SQL 2012 box, this has had an unintended consequence: the SQL Agent Jobs have suddenly stopped running. Moreover, if you start a SQL Agent job, it looks like it is running, but, then, hit close - and actually it's done nothing at all. Until you look in the SQL Agent Error Log.

A selection of errors:

Date        21/02/2014 08:14:38
Log        SQL Server Agent (Current - 21/02/2014 09:45:00)

Message
[298] SQLServer Error: 229, The SELECT permission was denied on the object 'sysjobschedules', database 'msdb', schema 'dbo'. [SQLSTATE 42000] (SaveAllSchedules)

Date        21/02/2014 09:45:31
Log        SQL Server Agent (Current - 21/02/2014 09:45:00)

Message
[298] SQLServer Error: 229, The SELECT permission was denied on the object 'sysjobservers', database 'msdb', schema 'dbo'. [SQLSTATE 42000] (ConnExecuteCachableOp)

Date        21/02/2014 09:45:31
Log        SQL Server Agent (Current - 21/02/2014 09:45:00)

Message
[298] SQLServer Error: 229, The UPDATE permission was denied on the object 'sysjobservers', database 'msdb', schema 'dbo'. [SQLSTATE 42000] (ConnExecuteCachableOp)

Date        21/02/2014 09:45:31
Log        SQL Server Agent (Current - 21/02/2014 09:45:00)

Message
[298] SQLServer Error: 229, The EXECUTE permission was denied on the object 'sp_sqlagent_log_jobhistory', database 'msdb', schema 'dbo'. [SQLSTATE 42000] (ConnExecuteCachableOp)


Note: just giving the SQL Agent account db_owner permissions on msdb didn't work. I just got different errors:
Date        20/02/2014 09:17:24
Log        SQL Server Agent (Current - 20/02/2014 09:17:00)

Message
[298] SQLServer Error: 14262, The specified @job_id ('CF59EAF1-FAEC-4E5B-BE53-D07FE2CD9F60') does not exist. [SQLSTATE 42000]

Date        20/02/2014 09:17:24
Log        SQL Server Agent (Current - 20/02/2014 09:17:00)

Message
[000] Unable to retrieve steps for job SQL Backup full backup: master and 5 others (created 05/07/2013 13:06:40)





(Yes, we use Red Gate SQL Backup here. And jolly good it is too).

Giving it additional SQL Agent Operator rights, however, did work...and was rather less sledgehammery in its approach than giving it sysadmin rights. If using Red Gate SQL Backup, you will need to ensure the account can execute the stored procedures in master. If using Ola Hallengren's Backup Solution (we use that too), then the only answer is, in fact, to grant sysadmin access - otherwise the SQL Agent Account cannot create the relevant folders. If you have regular checkdb jobs running, then you need to make sure it can execute DBCC CHECKDB on all databases.

How to install SQL Configuration Manager

When moving Sharepoint Foundation 2010 databases, the official advice is to set up a SQL Alias so that the Web Application Servers point at the new SQL server while using the old SQL Server name.

In order to do this, you need to have installed SQL Server Configuration Manager on the Web and Application Servers.

It's very easy to install SQL Server Configuration Manager without installing all the rest of SQL Server: just install the 'Client Connectivity Tools'. Ensure you install the version of the tools which matches the version of SQL Server installed on your database server.

• Choose Install -> New installation or add features to an existing installation.
• Choose all defaults until you get to the Feature Selection tab
• Select Shared Features -> Client Tools Connectivity
• Choose all remaining defaults and confirm installation

And that's it. No restart required. I did find that CPU on the server shot up to 100% for much of the install in our QA environment, so I don't recommend doing this in anger during office hours. Leave it to out of hours if you can.