Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Introduction
This chapter highlights the new enhancements to availability and programmability features in
SQL Server 2008 R2.
The new features for availability in the database engine are specific to improvements in
database mirroring. They include the creation of hot standby for the databases to provide
rapid failover support with no data loss on committed transactions. By default, the stream of
transaction log records compression occurs in all mirroring sessions, and the ratio is around
12.5 percent. The availability enhancements also include an automated process to resolve
certain types of errors on data pages to avoid any failure on the principal database.
SQL Server 2008 R2 programmability enhancements and improvements include compressed
storage of tables and indexes, new collations, sparse columns, and spatial data storage
methods. The data partitioning feature helps to manage and access subsets of data quickly,
while maintaining the integrity of the entire data collection. In addition to this, the sparse
column feature is useful for the data storage that results in 40 percent of space savings. Also,
the spatial feature helps to store data related to physical location and share of geometric
objects in a database.
Preparing new Failover Cluster features
Failover Clustering is a high-availability feature, which requires the certified hardware (referred
to as Hardware Compatibility List or HCL) or Window Server catalog for the Windows Server
2003 or earlier operating systems. To prepare and install the Windows operating system
cluster, from Windows Server 2008 onwards, it is no longer a requirement to follow an HCL
test process as it is replaced by a new process called Cluster validation. SQL Server 2008
R2 Failover Clustering is built on top of the Windows operating system failover clustering to
provide availability for the entire SQL Server instance. The downtime for an application is
minimized and 99.99 percent uptime is guaranteed. The Failover Clustering functionality
represents an SQL Server instance with a Virtual SQL network name or Virtual SQL IP address
and performs failover from one node to another, which is handled by Windows Server cluster
service. Failover Clustering is only a feature of DataCenter and Enterprise editions of Windows
Server 2008, 2008 R2 operating systems, and SQL Server 2008 R2 version. However, the
Standard Edition also allows hosting a two-node cluster to provide the equivalent availability
for a mission-critical application.
In this recipe, we will go through the steps to prepare a new failover cluster, which is the new
feature of setup operations for failover clustering SQL Server 2008 R2 version.
 
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