We have a two R3.4xlarge instances running MS-SQL on a windows server.
One is reserved and other is on demand. We currently start-stop between those instances (only one of them is running at a time), to avail RI benefits.
Can we launch both these instances at the same time as a scale-down R3.2xlarge instances and get the RI savings from one R3.4xlarge? Are there any RI limitations for Windows platform?
thanks
-Ravi
While that feature does exist for Linux/Unix instances, this does not apply to Windows Instances.
Instance size flexibility does not apply to Reserved Instances that are purchased for a specific Availability Zone, bare metal instances, Reserved Instances with dedicated
tenancy, and Reserved Instances for Windows, Windows with SQL Standard, Windows with
SQL Server Enterprise, Windows with SQL Server Web, RHEL, and SLES.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/apply_ri.html
Related
We have multiple applications developed in Visual Foxpro 8.0 running in a data center on Windows 2008 R2 on VMware. We also have a Citrix farm on the same network where users run yet another VFP 8.0 application in Citrix sessions. All applications share the same set of data tables located on a file server (also Windows 2008 R2 VM). Virtual hosts are connected by 10Gb LAN (managed switch).
Since mid-July we started seeing random 1104 "Error reading file..." errors on multiple different applications on multiple servers. All of them reference different files on the file server.
The problem started mid-July and it frequency gradually increased. Earlier it was most frequent in the afternoons by 3 pm, now it happens from early morning till late afternoon. It affects EDI servers (these run batch jobs in unattended mode) and Citrix servers and a variety of applications. It occurs when a VFP application (any of them) tries to open a database container file or individual tables most often with USE command but some times executing a SQL Select statement, or when loading a VFP form that opens tables in DataEnvironment
We caught a moment when the same exact error happened on two different servers running different applications at the same exact moment (up to a second). We also saw two different applications running on the same computer erroring out at the same moment.
We replaced the file server with a new virtual machine with no relief (we since changed it back to the old file server ).
We disabled the antivirus.
We updated VMware on all hosts to the latest version.
Sysinternals Process Monitor displays "INVALID_NETWORK_RESPONSE" event when the error occurs.
We captured traffic on both the server side and client side when the error occurred and had it analyzed by a network analysis specialist. He observed a peculiar pattern, where client OS starts retrieving the file in question from the file server AFTER VFP application had thrown an error. It seems that VFP application requests a file from OS, then it either gets an abnormal response or just times out and only after that the OS sends packets requesting the file. Again, this happens sporadically.
OpLocks and SMB2 have been disabled on all computers both on the server and client side of the equation for many years and everything was running smoothly until now...
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
My first piece of advice would be to re-enable OpLocks and SMB2. There is no reason to mess with either of those items as things stand today and you are losing a huge amount of performance running at SMB1 level.
In my experience these issues have almost always been caused by one of the following.
Antivirus/antimalware software.
Replication or online backup software like MozyPro.
The Windows Search indexing service.
You should consider installing the Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Hotfix Rollup if you haven't already.
That problem mostly related by SMB2!
Some Antivirus Software!
Windows updates! If you use VFP apps by DBF/DBC file. Do not update your system/OS. That is my personal suggestion. Windows Server 2012+ or Windows 10+ prorbably would big problems at near future.
And the point high probably is:
What is your I/O request per secs? if your IO request bigger than 1000~2000 per secs for a dbf file that is a bottle neck; and your storage device is HDD -> you need to switch/update your HDD to SSD. I suggest m.2 pro series SSD.
I am looking for a way to be able to do the following:
Create an instance of Windows with installed prerequisites and configuration
An isolated environment would be recommended (As in it will not modify the existing configuration on local machine only in that VM-like environment)
Ability to use the internet within that environment
Using it sort of like a "check-point" (Start working on it, doing something wrong and being able to start once again from the instance that we created)
Ability to share the environment
Possibility of creating multiple different environments
Low disk usage if possible
Fast deployment of environment on local machine
I have looked into Docker which seems pretty good for what I need, but I want to investigate other options as well because it requires Windows 10 x64 Enterprise
.
Something that works on Windows 7/Server/8/8.1 would be nice
I would also love to get arguments on why X option is better than Y option.
Thanks in advance!
If you want a completely separate environment, creating a Virtual Machine will be worth considering.
There are products from VMware and Oracle to create your virtual machine. I have been using Oracle Virtualbox (Oracle's virtual machine software) for some time now and find it pretty useful.
With a virtual machine it addresses all your concerns:
Create an instance of Windows with installed prerequisites and
configuration - A virtual machine will run on top of your installed OS without making
any modifications in current installation
An isolated environment would be recommended (As in it will not
modify the existing configuration on local machine only in that
VM-like environment) - It runs completely isolated like a separate
machine.
Ability to use the internet within that environment - You can use
internet inside of a virtual machine
Using it sort of like a "check-point" (Start working on it, doing
something wrong and being able to start once again from the instance
that we created) - You can take a snapshot and save the state. Next time when you start the VM it will be started from this state only.
Ability to share the environment - Export a created VM and it can be
reused.
Possibility of creating multiple different environments - You can run
multiple VMs on your machine. Configure the disk usage and RAM
accordingly.
Low disk usage if possible - Configurable while creating a virtual
machine.
Fast deployment of environment on local machine - Yes, you'll need
the .iso image of your Operating System
Are there any tools or processes available for migrating the services which got deployed in IIS to Windows Azure Cloud space. Is there any way to take snapshot/image of a set of virtual directories and move it to Windows Azure?
-Mahender
There are several ways to run an IIS web site on Windows Azure (see http://davidpallmann.blogspot.com/2012/07/windows-azure-is-3-lane-highway-how-to.html for a comparison).
Windows Azure Web Sites
Cloud Services (Platform-as-a-Service) - Hosted Service
Virtual Machines (Infrastructure-as-a-Service)
If your requirement is to copy files up and be done with it, option 1 (WAWS) and option 3 (Virtual Machines) allow that. You can upload files by FTP for WAWS, and through a remote desktop connection for VMs. However, note that WAWS does not support multiple virtual directories or any kind of custom IIS configuration. And with Virtual Machines, you have the responsibility of managing your VMs yourself.
I recommend going through the hands-on labs in the Windows Azure Training Kit (downloadable from azure.com) to see what's involved in setting up web sites using these different approaches to determine which is the best fit for you.
I'm experimenting with OnStart() in my Azure role using "small" instances. Turns out it takes about two minutes to unpack a 400 megabytes ZIP file that is located in "local storage" on drive D into a folder on drive E.
I though maybe I should do it some other way around but I can't find any data about how fast the local disks on Azure VMs typically are.
Are there any test results for how fast Azure VM local disks are?
I just ran a comparison of disk performance between Azure and Amazon EC2. You can read it here, although you will probably want to translate it from Norwegian :-)
The interesting parts, though, are the following HD Tune screenshots.
First, a small instance at Amazon EC2 running Windows Server 2008:
Next, a small instance on Azure running Windows Server 2012:
This isn't a fair comparison, as some of the differences may be due to missing Windows 2012 drivers, but you may still find it useful.
As pointed out by Sandrino, though, small instances at Azure only get "moderate" I/O performance, and this may be an argument in favor of Amazon.
It all depends on your VM size: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/#cloud-services. As you can see a small instance will give you a moderate I/O performance, and medium/large/xxl will give you a high I/O performance.
If you want specifics I suggest you read through this blog post: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 VM Performance on Windows Azure Virtual Machines – Part I: I/O Performance results. They talk about the SQLIO tool that can help people decide on moving they SQL Server infrastructure to Windows Azure VMs.
This tool is interesting since it might just give you the info you need (read and write MB/s):
Considering that SQL Server Express is free, why would you ever use any other database for a Windows based multi-user database-driven application?
Because (not sure if all of these are still true, but they were at one time):
Limited to 1GB of memory
Database size limited to 4GB (10GB in newer versions)
It can only use one CPU
No importing or exporting of data
No job scheduler
There are a lot of applications for which the above factors make SQL Server Express impractical.