1. Serge Luca
Isabelle Van Campenhoudt
New-York City 2017
Unbreakable SharePoint 2016 with SQL Server Always On Availability Groups
Watch our webinar here:

2. Serge Luca Serge Luca 10 x Office Server and Services MVP, Brussels
Consultant, speaker, trainer
Managing partner of
Serge Luca
SharePoint since 2002
Blog:
Serge Luca
@SergeLuca

3. Isabelle Van Campenhoudt
Data Platform MVP, Brussels
Consultant, speaker, trainer, comunity leader
Managing partner de
SQL Server since 1999
Isabelle Van Campenhoudt
Blog:
TODO GUSS
@thesqlgrrrl
Isabelle
Van Campenhoudt

4. Agenda Business Continuity - Concepts SharePoint 2016 Architecture
SharePoint 2016 and Business Continuity
SharePoint 2016 and Always On Availability Groups
Conclusions – Q&A
Watch our webcast

5. Business Continuity

6. Good management practices, start from the business
Don’t reinvent the wheel:
ISO 22301
Compatible with :
ISO 9001 (quality)
ISO (security)

7. IT Role Prevent incidents Proactive Monitoring Staff organization
In case of incident
HA (High Availability)
DR (Disaster Recovery)

8. Service Level Agreement
Terminology
Service Level Agreement HA DR
RPO
RTO

9. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
Requirements
Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
How much data can we afford to loose ?
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
How long can we afford to wait ?
Example:
RPO 3 hours
RTO 1 hour
“I loose max 3 hours of data
I wait max 1 hour ”
RPO
RTO
Source : Microsoft, modified

10. Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Contracted delivery time
Availability%
Stop/Year
Stop/Month
Stop / Week
99%
3.65 hours
7.20 hours
1.68 hours
99.9%
8.76 hours
43.20 minutes
10.10 minutes
99.99%
52.56 minutes
4.32 minutes
1.01 minutes
99.999%
5.26 minutes
25.90 seconds
6.05 seconds %
31.50 seconds
2.59 seconds
0.61 seconds

11. RPO/RTO versus Cost
Cost
RPO/RTO

12. HA-DR HA DR

13. Architecture SharePoint 2013/2016

14. A SharePoint farm is not alone…
Apps
Add-ins
SharePoint 2016 farm
Office Online Server farm
Wokflow Manager farm + +

15. SharePoint Databases Farm specific databases Content databases
Usage
State
Config
Central admin
Farm specific databases
Content
Content databases
User Profile
BDC
Managed Meta
Search …
Services databases

16. SharePoint and Business Continuity

17. Remarks… Patching (HA) Deployment Stretched farm DR
in SharePoint > Downtime even if farm redundant
In SharePoint > No Downtime if farm redundant
Still risky…could become DR if farm is broken
Deployment
New custom code « breaks » the farm -> DR ?
Stretched farm
Not popular anymore latency requirements very strict 
Stretched farm is not DR
What if Config DB is corrupted ? DR
Building destroyed

18. Achieving H-A (High Availability)
Server redundancy
SharePoint, Office Web App, Workflows, SQL
Services redundancy
Services can be started on several machines
Different roles : search

19. DR Strategy (Disaster Recovery)
Recovery in hours or days
Backup, restore
Cold standby
Recovery in minutes, hours
Backup, restore, send VMs
Warm standby
Recovery in seconds, minutes
2 farms, synchronized via log shipping, Always On Availability Groups
Hot standby

20. SharePoint and SQL Server Always On Availability Groups

21. SQL HA/DR technologies
High Availability and Disaster Recovery
Potential Data Loss (RPO)
Potential Recovery Time (RTO)
Automatic Failover
Secondaries
Backup, Copy, Restore
Hours
Hours -to-days No
Not during a restore
Log Shipping
Minutes
Minutes-to-hours
Database Mirroring - High-safety (sync + witness)
Zero
Seconds
Yes NA
Database Mirroring - High-performance (async)
Always On Failover Cluster Instance (FCI)
Seconds to minutes
Always On Availability Groups - synchronous-commit 2
Always On Availability Groups - asynchronous-commit
0 - 8
TODO readable nodes ISA
2 secondaries
Up to 8 nodes including 2 sync

22. HA-Always On Availability & SharePoint
High
Availability
Production
New York
FARM 1
Synchronous (no data loss)
SQL 1
SQL 2

23. HA-Always On Availability Groups & SharePoint
High
Availability
Production
New York
FARM 1
Synchronous
You can take backup from the replicas, but you’ll need a licence
SQL 1
SQL 2

24. HA – Sync Commit SP FARM New York Sync
Config
Config
Central admin
Central admin
State
State
Usage
Usage
Content
Content
User Profile
User Profile
BDC
BDC
Managed Meta
Managed Meta
Search
Search

25. Set up: farm in New York (main farm)
point alias LISTENER1 to “AVG1 listener”
point alias LISTENER2 to “AVG2 listener”
point alias LISTENER3 to “AVG3 listener”
SharePoint 2013 with SP1 and CU April 2014 or SP2016
3 aliases : 1 for content DB, 1 for Services DB, 1 for farm DB (CA, Config, State).
Install the SharePoint farm in Brussels
3 SQL aliases
Everything can easily be scripted !
$configDB = ...
$alias1 = “LISTENER1” # pointing to sql1 in a first place
$alias2 = “LISTENER2” # pointing to sql1 in a first place
$alias3 = “LISTENER3” # pointing to sql1 in a first place
New-SPConfigurationDatabase -databaseName $ConfigDB -DatabaseServer $alias1
New-SPWebApplication -DatabaseServer $alias2
New-SPMetadataServiceApplication -DatabaseServer $alias3
New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -DatabaseServer $alias1
Recovery mode to “full” for databases to be sync
SharePoint databases Full Backup
In Test take log backups
Configure SharePoint DB
Create Windows Cluster and add every SQL Node
Create 3 Always On AG & Add SharePoint DB
Create the 3 listeners (1/AVG)
Copy SP logins & permissions and other server objects on every node
Configure SQL Server Cluster
& Always On

26. DR with Always On Availability Groups & SharePoint (Active/Passive)
Production
New York DR
Brussels
FARM 1
FARM 2
Synchronous (no data loss)
Asynchronous (potential data loss)
Todo ISA sync and async not visible in projector->to fix
SQL 1
SQL 2
SQL 3
Disaster
Recovery

27. SQL02 SQL03 SQL01 SP FARM SP FARM BRUSSELS New York (DR) Sync Async
Config
Config
Config
Central admin
Central admin
Central admin
State
State
State
Usage
Usage
Async
Usage
Content
Content
Content
TODO vibrer
User Profile
User Profile
User Profile
BDC
BDC
BDC
Managed Meta
Managed Meta
Managed Meta
Search
Search
Search !!!
SQL01
SQL02
SQL03

28. Database Support – Async Commit
Supported
Admin Content No
App Management
Yes
BDC
Config
Content
Managed Metadata
PerformancePoint
PowerPivot
Not Tested*
Project
Search Analytic Reporting
Search Admin
Database
Supported
Search Crawl No
Search Links
Secure Store
Yes
State Service
Subscription Settings
Translation Services
UPA Profile
UPA Social
UPA Sync
Usage
Yes – NR
Word Automation

29. Set up: farm in Brussels (DR farm)
Everything can easily be scripted !
SharePoint 2013 with SP1 and CU April 2014 or SP2016
Install the SharePoint farm in Brussels
Test DR failover with SharePoint
Test,Test,Test…

30. How to
Create a cluster as a Computer Name Object in Active Directory (specific OU)
grant user account permission to create the cluster
grant CNO permission to the OU
Install the Windows Server Failover Cluster on the SQL Machines – Add the Nodes – Configure the Quorum
Create 3 availability groups (AVG)
Create 3 listeners
Add databases into AG – (powershell is better)

31. Demo: Failover Cluster and Always On
Add-SqlAvailabilityDatabase ` -Path SQLSERVER:\SQL\PrimaryServer\InstanceName\AvailabilityGroups\MyAG ` -Database "MyDb"
Video : start after

33. Demo:
SharePoint High Availability

34. Demo:
SharePoint Disaster Recovery

35. SharePoint Search and DR
2 farms-> 2 search ?
Problems
2 search configurations
Analytics

36. SharePoint Search & DR solutions
Backup Restore of the Search Admin DB + recreate SSA
Backup – Restore of the Search SA
Followed by a full crawl
No analytics
Analytics

37. Patching with 2 farms (no downtime)
1.Patch Farm 2 (DR)
Install binaries
Dismount content DBs (because read-only)
Remove Service DB AVG + set read-only in farm1 primary node
Upgrade farm2 with Psconfig
Mount content DB in farm 2 (run in compatibility range)
Switch users to farm 2
Patch farm2 while users & DBs stay on farm1.
Install binaries.
Dismount content DBs on farm2.
Failover “service-apps” AG to farm2 SQL instance.
No hacks needed here; it’ll just work.
Suspend data movement for all service-app DBs.
You’ll break farm1 if it receives the patched databases without having the equivalent binaries installed, which right now it doesn’t have.
Finish upgrade on farm2 with PSConfig. Service-apps upgraded because they’re read/write
Mount content-databases to farm2.
Switch users and content-databases to farm2.
Patch farm1 while users on farm2
Dismount content DBs
Resume data movement in service-app AG so farm1 gets patch changes for service-app DBs.
Finish upgrade on farm1 with PSConfig.
Upgrade content database in PowerShell.

38. Patching 2 farms (continued)
2.Patch Farm 1
Install binaries
Dismount content DB (because read-only)
Resume data movement in service AVG ->farm1 get patch from farm 2
PSConfig
Mount content DB (run in compatibility range)
Upgrade content database
(SP-UpgradeContentDatabase)
ALTER DATABASE [ManagedMetadata] SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE
ALTER DATABASE [ManagedMetadata] SET READ_ONLY WITH NO_WAIT
ALTER DATABASE [ManagedMetadata] SET MULTI_USER
RESTORE DATABASE ManagedMetadata WITH RECOVERY

39. Pitfalls for Availability Groups
Installation
File location
Same service accounts
Operations
Backups & Logs
Logins synchronization
Avoid VMotion
Check Network Multisubnet

40. Adjust your cluster settings
Get-cluster).SameSubnetThreshold = 10
(Get-cluster).CrossSubnetThreshold = 10
(Get-cluster).CrossSubnetDelay = 4000
(Get-cluster).SameSubnetDelay = 2000
SameSubnetThreshold = Controls how many heartbeats can be missed on the same subnet before the route is declared as unreachable.
CrossSubnetDelay = Controls the time interval, in milliseconds, that the cluster network driver waits between sending Cluster Service heartbeats across subnets
Todo (Isa) : danger d’augmenter ces valeurs ?
TODO isa check

41. If you use apps/add-ins…
Use the same authentification realm in the main farm and in DR farm !
$authrealm = Get-SPAuthenticationRealm
#on the DR farm
Set-SPAuthenticationRealm –Realm &authrealm
Restart-Service sptimerv4
Restart-Service spadminv4

42. Conclusions

43. Define SLAs with the business
Conclusions
Define SLAs with the business
Major Role of SQL Server AOAG in HA/DR
HA = 1 SP farm SP, DR = 2 SP farms
Search limitation !!!
SP farm + Workflow farm + Office Web App farm

44. Thank you ! Merci ! ivc@shareql.com @thesqlgrrrl sergeluca@shareql.com