Is There a (Good) Solution for SQL Server HA @ Azure?

Comment: I do not see Windows Azure SQL Database as a feasible solution for a firm that expects its business to scale. The reason is simple: You can not use a component in your system that its replacement will require a long downtime (yes, we are talking about hours if you will have a significant database size). The only way to migrate from Windows Azure SQL Database is to export its data and import it on a regular instance, and it's not acceptable when you have a significant traffic.

High Availability
The requirement for high availability is common: you don't want downtime, as downtime mean less business and it hurts your business image. 

The Azure Catch
Azure SQL Server VM is just like having a SQL Server on a regular VM. 
VM maintenance includes two layers: 1) maintaining the VM (installing patches, hardening...) and 2) doing the same to the host underneath.  
A common large size private and public cloud operation usually include an auto fail over, so when a host is having maintenance or unfortunately fails, the system automatically migrate the running VMs to another host(s) w/o stopping them. You could find this behavior in VMWare VMotion and at Amazon EC2 that runs over XEN.
Well... this is not the case at Microsoft Azure. When  Microsoft updates its hosts, don't expect your instances to be available (and yes the downtime may take dozens of minutes and it is not controlled by you). This is an acceptable practice when dealing with web and application servers (place several instances behind a LB and use a queue mechanism to deal with it). However, it is not good one when you deal with databases it's can be a major issue.

The Solution: Have a Master-Master Configuration
As you may understood, a master-slave solution is not acceptable in this case, and therefore, you will need to avoid Log Shipping (although it can be used various other scenarios).
Therefore, we were left with two solutions:

Mirroring:
This was a solution for HA architectures.
However "This feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using this feature in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature. Use AlwaysOn Availability Groups instead."

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189852.aspx

AlwaysOn Availability Groups
This solution is described by MS as the "enterprise-level alternative to database mirroring. Introduced in SQL Server 2012".
However, "The non-RFC-compliant DHCP service in Windows Azure can cause the creation of certain WSFC cluster configurations to fail, due to the cluster network name being assigned a duplicate IP address (the same IP address as one of the cluster nodes). This is an issue when you implement AlwaysOn Availability Groups, which depends on the WSFC feature."
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh510230.aspx

The Second Catch
According to our analysis it seems that both Mirroring (end of life) and AlwaysOn (severe bugs due to DHCP) are not recommended, so we actually left w/o good HA solution, and therefore with no good MS data store solution for the Azure environment.
We tried to get answers from Microsoft stuff, but we did not get good ones.

Bottom Line
When evaluating Azure as a cloud platform for your needs, you should consider your data solution and how it fits your needs. In this case you may need to consider some open source solutions such as MySQL, Cassandra and MongoDB on a Linux VM, instead of going the MS default stack.

Keep Performing,
Moshe Kaplan

Open is the New Black (hmm.... Standard)

Click on the post title to read the full post and the comments.

Only few years ago when a technological company was lagging behind in a new niche that was turned into a mainstream, it had a magic move: creating a new standard.

Standard: The Magic Touch
Many times the standard technology was less efficient, less robust and with less users than the technology that was advanced by the market leader. Yet, it had a magic charm: it was open, and most the players in the market could use it without royalties or other fees. That was including #2, #3 in the market as well as many other giants that were not focused in that market, but had to integrate and expand their product support to that technology.
It worked for DEC with Ethernet (vs. IBM's Token Ring); it was great for NetApp that chose iSCSI with 3% market share vs. EMC leading Fiber Channel protocol and it was like a charm for a small silicon valley firm named CISCO that chosen IP.

How do you Standardize Software?
Let say you are a software company that is lagging behind. Anyone said Yahoo! vs. Google in the internet market? Yahoo! had a great idea to scale out using a BigTable like product, but had no deep pockets for that.
Another example? Facebook? What if you had the largest image store publicly available, yet you have only few hundred developers and you need a new scalable database. What do you do?

Open: The New Magic Touch
Well, both Yahoo! and Facebook chose Open Source their infrastructure products creating two of the leading infrastructure products in todays world: Apache Hadoop and Apache Cassandra.

And Cloud, What about the Cloud?
Well it seems that last week Rackspace move: establishing OpenStack.org and contributing major parts of its propriety cloud infrastructure code to this project, is a clear say that being #2 in the IaaS market (see Jack of all Clouds latest report) that is being invaded by major players such as VMware, Google, Salesforce.com and Microsoft is not an easy task even to such a major player in the old hosting business. (If you want to know more regarding this move, see Geva Perry's analysis).

Bottom Line
It seems that the cloud market and mostly the IaaS one is getting to their mainstream phase, where scale is a top factor and community is a major factor in survival.

Would you like to share you opinion? Can you add more information? Feel free to comment!

Keep Performing,
Moshe Kaplan

VMForce: a Joint Strategic Move by VMware and Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com and VMware have just announced VMforce.com, a new PaaS that enables Java developers deploy their systems on VMware/SpringSource/force.com based cloud platform. This solution has a lower vendor lock-in barrier than the current force.com, but it includes all existing benefits of force.com pre-built platform elements, including reporting and analytics, search, web services API, and application security services.


This announcement is a result of several strategic moves in the market:

• Salesforce.com is turning from SaaS and very limited PaaS platform (Force.com) to a closer position to the IaaS market. By this move it turns itself into a valid competitor in the PaaS market (the market that Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure are aiming to).
• SpringSource acquisition by VMware less that a year ago, enabled VMware with its first PaaS platform component (SpringSource was behind the Spring framework that enables instant delivery and management of Java applications). 

Few prospects into the future that only time will tell:

• Salesforce.com move into the PaaS world may signal that its next target is the IaaS market that it currently controlled by Amazon Web Services. This move can be achieved by acquiring smaller players such as OpSource Cloud.
• VMware is currently focused in the hypervisor market (vendor position). Will this move take it closer to cloud computing provider market (service provider)? Or will it keep with its mother company strategy: keep playing with all market providers?
• Will EMC get into the Enterprise Software market in response to Oracle move into the Storage and Hardware market (Sun acquisition)? Will EMC acquire Salesforce.com gaining both a cloud computing provider and the leading SaaS package in the market?

Keep Performing,
Moshe Kaplan

GPU Cloud - VMware moves ahead?

Hi,

Since I wrote about GPU cloud a week ago, I met another two software companies which are interested in this issue.

Is there any change in the foreseen future? The following post by Michael Larabel reveals a possible answer: "Tungsten Graphics has been acquired by VMware. Open source graphics technology development will continue as part of VMware's engineering team". VMware is the leading virtualization player in the market (but weaker in the cloud market) and this move will probably lead to "improving the 3D support within virtualized environments".

Probably, a move of a key technology player will enable cloud service providers provide better GPU support in the future.

Moshe,
RockeTier