Step by step to teach you to merge your SQL Server database

Planning to perform a merge of SQL Server is a huge task. You can simplify this project by breaking it down into separate components, as shown in the following step guide:

This information is from our initial expert ebook "Planning Your SQL Server consolidation" chapter II "Consolidate SQL Servers for availability, scalability and C OST savings ". This chapter explains the 5 steps for merging and other key consolidation considerations.

Author Introduction:

Hilary Cotter

Hilary Cotter has been in the IT industry for more than 20 years, and he is a network and database advisor. Microsoft first awarded the Cotter Microsoft SQL Server MVP honor in 2001. Cotter a Bachelor of Applied Science in mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto, then studied economics at the University of Calgary and studied computer science at Berkeley College. He wrote a book on SQL Server transactional replication and is now writing a book on merge replication and Microsoft Search technology.

Step 1: Create SQL Server consolidation methodology

To make a successful enterprise-wide SQL Server merge, you must first define the merge goals for your merged teams and customers, and for the business owners of the user database. These goals are different depending on how you merge: Merging on a virtual machine, piling up a SQL Server environment, and using a storage area network (SAN), and so on.

It is critical that the merge team discuss the actual service level agreement (SLA) with the customer beforehand. These SLAs provide more than just expectations for availability, support, change control, and monitoring, as well as performance. An SLA with a set of supported expectations still has a long way to go to build confidence in the consolidation effort.

Mission-critical applications should be identified. Their SLAs will be tougher than other SLAs, either requiring them not to be merged or carefully planned to ensure that SLAs are met or exceeded in a consolidated environment. Standards should be applied, and those applications should be taken out of all and under the control of the merged team.

Another reason to negotiate SLAs in advance is to avoid the spread of the scope, and if it does, your merge team will have to deal with unexpected performance problems and enhanced functionality.

Your team must consider a variety of scenarios when implementing SLAs. For example, some people may find that the application performance is poor when identifying the database, and these databases are a good choice for merging. The ideal customer should melt these applications down on demand and optimize them. If your team chooses to optimize, then you need to be burdened with any performance problems or bugs that arise in future events. The choice of fame is simply to identify and return these databases to the business owner, and to specify the behavior in the SLA.

If business units are unwilling, or cannot be asked to melt down and optimize these SQL servers, move them to your datacenter and enforce standards as much as possible, but do not merge them with another SQL Server. Merging a poorly performing user database can degrade the performance of all other user databases on SQL Server.

Once the SLA is in place, your consolidation team should create a schedule that divides the enterprise-wide plans into multiple phases.

The first phase should include sections that have the least complex user databases. This gives the team members a chance to practice before encountering more difficult mergers. This phase should also teach them how to handle user databases more easily between SQL Server as the database load changes over time. For example, when a particular user database grows, he may cause the performance of all user databases on the merged SQL Server to degrade. On the other hand, when the lifecycle of an application reaches the end, the resources that the user database needs will decline, and it is possible to move to a lower-horsepower server.

The test script should be created to help measure an existing SQL Server application. It allows team members to familiarize themselves with performance monitoring and SQL Server Profiler to capture and reproduce representative workloads and monitor consolidation solutions.

The merge team should also divide specific groups to simplify the monitoring consolidation solution.

Once the members of the merged team understand each of their tasks and prepare for the merger, the next step is analysis.

Step 2: Analyze the merged alternate databases and servers

During the analysis phase, the merge team should observe each SQL Server and his user database to determine their performance characteristics, resource requirements, dependencies, and how to migrate them. In a merged environment, a multiuser database should be grouped or stacked on the basis of performance characteristics, internal and external dependencies, SLAs, and versions. They will be divided into a single SQL Server, also known as the SQL Server heap. There are three parts to analyze candidate SQL Server and their user database for merging.

1. Analyze data access and utilization patterns, and then analyze the SQL Server environment for user database installation

2. Replicate these patterns in a merged environment, and users will feel the same way, even if they are not better.