The basic jist of the problem is that there was an issue with the inter-node communication within the Windows cluster which caused the AG to take longer than expected to fail over.

If you are having this problem I’d recommend reading this MS KB and getting the hot fix installed on your cluster.  As this is just a hot fix and not a service pack (it should be included in Windows 2008 R2 SP2) I’d recommend only installing this if you are having the problem it shows.

Denny

I then mentioned that this would create all sorts of productions for Direct Access as it requires IPv6 to function.  Which let to a quick back and forth about what Direct Access was and how it worked.  Suddenly Wendy Pastrick (blog | twitter) comes into the conversation asking specifically about Direct Access.  Apparently she has a new client which has many remote SQL instances installed on peoples laptops and those laptop use merge replication to sync up data with the central database.  This is a perfect situation for Direct Access to be deployed.

What’s Direct Access?

Direct Access is a feature of Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 where the client computers can create an automatic SSL protected connection to the company network on demand without the user needing to initiate the connection.

How can it help?

The current solution that the company has to deploy requires that the user initiate a VPN connection then the user would need to start the SQL Replication job to begin the data transfer (or have the distribution agent setup to try over and over until it succeeds).  Using Direct Access when the SQL Server attempts to connect to the distributor (I’m assuming a pull subscription here) the computer will see the attempt to request access to an internal server, so it’ll then connect to the direct access server effectively making a VPN connection, which would then allow the data transfer to complete without the user even knowing that the connection was needed.

Obviously Direct Access isn’t a feature that most DBAs would know about.  Now that you know about this feature you can pitch it if you are in the need for a distributed merge replication solution that will allow for automatic replication of data without the remote user knowing that the replication needs to take place.

Denny

Windows 2008 R2 core mode is actually useful.

Some of the things which are now supported which weren’t before include .NET Framework 2, 3 and 3.5 (both normal .NET services and ASP.NET), Powershell, Certificate Services and WoW64 (Windows on Windows).  All these features require that you install them as Windows 2008 R2 like Windows 2008 is a very thin OS.  This will allow you to use core mode to run your web servers which then gives you a very thin, and much more secure web server to face the Internet.  As there is much less software installed on the server there is much less possible attack vectors on the server.

If you’ve ever tried to configure a core mode server, then this next part is for you.  If you haven’t ever tried to configure a core mode server, grab the nearest pen, glue a sharp tack to it, and stab yourself in the eye (please don’t, you get the idea though).  That’s about the same level of pain we are talking about when you try and configure a core mode server.  Just changing the name of the server, putting it on the domain, and changing the IP of the server will make your fingers numb from typing.  But no-more.  Windows 2008 R2 Core mode includes a command line UI to help you configure the server.  From a command line on the server (like you have any other tools besides notepad available) run the sconfig application.  This will launch the app within the shell window.  It looks a lot like a old MS DOS app.  If you don’t remember MS DOS it’ll be a little blue app with white letters, and you should remember that this is what most apps looked like so no more complaining about 256 color mode.  The sconfig will allow you to configure the IP address, server name, domain, etc.  If you want to script all this you can do so via powershell.  If you hate yourself the net sh command is still available.

Denny

The old methodology is to build the management tool, then build some command line apps which can do the same thing.  This has left holes in the command line tools where there are things you can’t do in the command line but you can do in the Management Tools.

The new methodology is to build the powershell applets, then when they are done put a management interface on top of them.  This way the management interface can do everything that the powershell applets can do and vice versa.  This also allows for the admin to be able to script everything that the managment interface can do.

The down side to all this powershell is that there’s a new thing to learn.  The up side is that there’s a new tool for editing powershell scripts which will help make life easier on you.  This is the actually comes with Powershell v2.  It gives you tab completion and with Windows 2008 giving you tons more applets this is an extremely powerful tool for administration.  The biggest new feature with Windows 2008 R2′s powershell (in my opinion at least) is that you can now run powershell applets on remote servers.  This will come in very handy in the next post where we talk about some of the changes in Windows 2008 Core mode.

Denny

One of the best enhancements (in my opionion) is that Active Directory now has a recycle bin.  It’s something that needs to be enabled and has its own requirements before you can do so.  To enable this recycle bin you’ll need to have all your domain controllers running Windows 2008 R2, and your domain needs to be in Windows 2008 R2 functional mode.  At this point you can enable the recycle bin (there is a document available on TechNet which shows the process) which will now save you from yourself.

What this recycle bin does is allows you to completely recovery any AD object that you deleted without having to do an authoritative restore on all or part of your AD database.  In the event that an object (account, OU, etc) is deleted you can restore it with a simple powershell applet.  There’s no UI for the recycle bin, however Kirk Munro (Blog | Twitter) has released the Active Directory Recycle Bin PowerPack.  A video about the PowerPack is available on YouTube.

Personally I hope to never need this feature, but I can’t wait to upgrade all my domain controllers to Windows 2008 R2 so that I can enable it.

Now by default the recycle bin holds the objects for 180 days (you can adjust this).  After this 180 days the objects will be moved into the tomb-stoned state where you can still get them back, but its a different process.  However if you need to restore something after 180 days and don’t notice it you are probably doing something wrong.

Denny

In this post I’m going to cover some of the high level information, then over a few future posts I’ll give more into what was covered.

Windows 2008 R2 Management

Windows 2008 R2 has some great new management features.  Much of which resolves around Powershell.  If you have been like me and avoided powershell, apparently it is time to get over it.  The new management tools look pretty good, and all use powershell under the covers.  There are all sorts of Best Practice Analyzers (BPAs) available for Windows 2008.  I’ll dig into this more in a later blog post.

Windows 2008 R2 Core

Windows 2008 R2 Core mode is actually going to be useful.  You won’t be able to run SQL Server on it, but you will be able to run ASP.NET websites on it, which is a big change from Windows 2008.  Windows 2008 R2 Core mode now has some configuration tools which I’ll take more about in a later blog post.

Licensing

In a very large change in Microsoft licensing policy, when you deploy Windows 2008 R2 you have to buy new server licenses (this isn’t exactly new here), however the new part is that you don’t need new Windows 2008 R2 CALs for your users or devices.  The Windows 2008 CALs work for both Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2.  This is different than with Windows 2003 R2, and may well be different when Windows 2012 R2 (or whatever its called) is released.

Exchange 2010 HA appears to be the bomb

Exchange 2010 has all sorts of very cool HA options built into it.  This includes new clustering features, as well as backup features.  I’ll dig into this later on.

Hyper-V v2

With the release of Windows 2008 R2 comes the release of Hyper-V v2.  This includes a lot of new features in the HA space.  This includes clustering, failover, and auto-poweron and off.

So check back over the next couple of weeks (after PASS for the most part) as I write more about all of this.

Denny