Microsoft® SQL Server(TM) 2000 High Availability [Paperback]

Allan Hirt (Author), Cathan Cook (Author), Kimberly L. Tripp (Author), Frank McBath (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 6, 2003

Get the definitive reference to maximizing the availability of your critical, SQL Server 2000-based business systems. Developed by Microsoft field consultants who create and support high availability solutions every day, this practical guide explains how to plan, design, implement, and support highly available SQL Server 2000-based systems for both 32-bit and 64-bit environments. You get in-depth, end-to-end guidance—from evaluating availability requirements and capacity planning to implementing failover clustering, log shipping, replication, system backup and restore, system recovery, and other technologies and processes. Real-world scenarios illustrate the book’s best practices in action. You also get a CD featuring evaluation software, planning worksheets, scripts, and other on-the-job resources.

Discover how to:

• Evaluate technical, staffing, and budget requirements
• Plan and configure disk subsystems for performance and availability
• Configure Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server or Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 to optimize SQL Server 2000 availability
• Plan, implement, and maintain a base server cluster and Network Load Balancing
• Plan and configure failover clustering
• Use built-in log shipping features or code your own
• Create comprehensive backup and restore plans
• Choose replication methods for high availability—and expose replication architecture
• Develop prevention and disaster recovery strategies; sample runbook and scripts included on CD
• Minimize downtime for server upgrades and service pack installations
• Baseline performance and use availability-monitoring tools and techniques

CDs feature:

• 120-day evaluation version of SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition
• Scripts for custom log shipping, backup and restoration, system monitoring, and other administrative tasks
• Sample disaster-recovery runbook
• Worksheets, checklists, and templates
• Fully searchable eBook

A Note Regarding the CD or DVD

The print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to [e-mail].

Product Details

• Paperback: 784 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press (August 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735619204
• ISBN-13: 978-0735619203
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,038,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars New High Availability Wizard for SQL Server 2000, October 14, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Microsoft® SQL Server(TM) 2000 High Availability (Paperback)

I had to say something here. Everyone got so used to everything being easy in windows, they don't want to hear about also having to know what their doing. Do you think running big available db's is a step-by-step process that Bill left out of the books online? One book can't teach you a college degree worth of information.

This book was right on track and the cluster and log ship info just isn't anywhere else. I agree replication was light, but who runs repl for availability anyway? The book put some humor into a grim subject, so it comes across not so serious, but at least it wasn't boring or a reprint of books online. The last chapter had monitoring info you can't get anywhere else, and it was worth the price of the book. Take a look at the cd, there's some kick-A stuff on it, like what looks like another chapter on performance issues effecting uptime.

What some of you guys write here and in thse newsgroups just proves that Bill's worse problems are not in his software. If you're serious about software, you keep up with it. If Microsoft saw some use in trying to get the word out by printing a late book on sql and getting some big name writers to do it, then I'm reading it. Are you going to ignore it because of some guy off the internet? Remember we're talking availability here, so its not the million dollar question.

I'm giving the book four stars. It skimmed over some things it should of covered (like performance, operations, qa testing, handling heterogenous systems, and some other stuff) and it should be a series of books, not just one huge one. It wouldn't hurt if they could referenced non-microsoft books for some subjects that aren't software. Plus it should have more on running high availability systems without clustering or fancy hardware. Only some databases that have to be up all the time run on Enterprise Edition. But everyone will blame Bill if their system is down. Don't they know that by now?

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have for SQL 2000 / 2003 Server Administrators, July 29, 2003

By 

"contiguous1" (South Frankston, Vic, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft® SQL Server(TM) 2000 High Availability (Paperback)

This book is the fast track way to gain confidence in deploying a Microsoft SQL 2000 or 2003 Virtual Server.
Even if you have deployed SQL clusters, this book will probably have a few gems that you haven't seen.
The references to the 2003 Operating System are excellent.
The chapters on disk configuration, deployment and Service Packs are valuable in the real World.
The Authors have given you a complete process for rolling out a successfule SQL deployment. The fact is that planning and process are the key to a rollout and this book has that and the technical stuff we all love.
If you only buy one book on SQL and high availability deployment, this is the one.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Decent but not great, September 11, 2003

By 

Terry McNair (Boca Raton, FLA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft® SQL Server(TM) 2000 High Availability (Paperback)

I liked some things about this book:

cluster chapter
hardware coverage
Windows Server 2003 tidbits

I didn't like other things:

replication coverage - way to short to be useful. Doesn't tell much about high availability in relation to replicaton.

bad advice - several things they recommend even I know better than to do. I got to the point where I started ingoring the recommendations and just hunted for facts to help me form my own conclusions.

performance stuff -- its to weak and not discussed as much as it should be. I think you need to really go into performance issues when you talk about high availability because poor performance makes a system less available.

I guess the final word is that this is a decent book that you might want to get if SQL SERVER high availability is something you need to know about. Just don't expect a great book.