In David Fowler's blog, SQL Server has been added to the list of scale out providers for service bus.
I am in the process of implementing Redis on our Windows servers. Based on what I know about Redis, I'm guessing it will be significantly faster than using SQL Server - is that a fair assumption?
If so, how does the Windows version of Redis implement fail-over?
Redis is ~x200 faster than SQL, mainly because it's in-memory and the protocol is designed for speed.
If that helps, Redis Cloud is now offered on Windows Azure, and HA is a built-in capability of the service.
Disclosure - I'm the Co-Founder & CTO of Garantia Data, the company behind the Redis Cloud service.
Based on what I know about Redis, I'm guessing it will be
significantly faster than using SQL Server - is that a fair
assumption?
It will be faster than SQL Server since it's optimized for in-memory based operations, however its speed isn't the only advantage. Support of advanced data structures offers a great deal of flexibility when dealing with various scenarios.
If so, how does the Windows version of Redis implement fail-over?
There is a link in download section to unofficial windows based port of redis which however isn't meant to be used for production purpose. Official version of redis supports replication and sentinel has automatic failover, but it's hard to say what's the state of these features in windows port. In general I wouldn't recommend to use redis on windows machine but rather use virtual machine with linux distro and run it there.
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I am new to Redis & I am in process of setting up a Redis OSS for development region for my project. I have few questions about the deployment model which I want to have validated.
1) Will Redis run on just one node? since my request is for a development region I do not need high availability.
2) Can I create multiple databases to support various projects with one instance I am setting up?
3) I am going with Red Hat Linux since for production I plan to use Redis Enterprise considering its support model.
1) Yes - the redis-server always runs on one node.
2) Yes - you can multiple logical/shared databases on the same server using the SELECT command. That, however, is considered bad practice. You should, instead, use a different redis-server for each database. These redis-server processes CAN be run on the same physical server.
3) You can use the trial version of the Enterprise for development.
Disclaimer: I work for Redis Labs, home of OSS Redis and provider of the Enterprise products line.
Redis proides three development models: single(default),sentinel,cluster. Without considering the model you used, you can just start the redis instance to build a test development.
If you want to support various projects with one instance, you can create a project for one database. Redis supports at most 16 databases. Also, you need do your logical work in Redis for the aimed project with con your destination database.
Redis is a free and opensource software, so it is unnecessary for you to consider if it is an enterprise, unless you buy a customized version from RedisLabs or other software company.
Thanks all ..
On creating multiple databases per http://www.rediscookbook.org/multiple_databases.html its mentioned that we can create multiple databases.
Since this is for development/ test region, I would think creating multiple databases should be fine compared with the production where we would need best performance.
Redis is designed to be single thread which has its own pros and cons. Redis answers for multi core with sharding - https://redis.io/topics/partitioning.
Yes you can create multiple databases in same redis instance though it is not recommended. But since you are setting up staging model its your call.
Hope this helps.
I downloaded Redis server and cli to my local machine and it working good.
I just wanted to know if I can use it also in production server:
Are there any critical limitations? For example: Can I use 100 GB for free? (It will be on my computer).
I know that Redis labs cost money per month but if I download the redis to my machine and not using the redis labs, would it be free? (and the cost will be only the storage of the machine I using).
Redis is an open source software, licensed under BSD. That basically means you can do anything you want with it, without owing anyone anything.
Redis Labs, the home of open source Redis and the provider of commercial products that leverage on it, offers a wide spectrum of solutions - whether hosted, as-a-service, downloadable, remotely managed and so forth. You can (and should sometimes) use them, but that's definitely not a requirement.
Disclaimer: I work at Redis Labs and with the open source project.
Apologies if this is the wrong platform for this question.
If I want to migrate 100 VM's onto Azure VM's what all things I need to consider and how can I migrate?
This is not a comprehensive answer but some things to consider are:
- Start with a thorough inventory of the VMs to migrate. Issues to watch out for include..
- Any unsupported OS versions, including 32-bit.
- large numbers of attached drives.
- Disk drives >1TB.
- Gen 2 VHDs.
- Application and network interdependencies which need to be maintained.
- Specific performance requirements (i.e. any VMs that would need Azure premium storage, SSD drives etc.).
In developing a migration strategy some important considerations are:
- How much downtime can you tolerate? To minimize downtime look at solutions like Azure Site Recovery which supports rapid switchover. If downtime is more flexible there are more offline migration tools and scripts available.
- Understand whether to move to the new Azure Resource Manager or the Service Management deployment model. See https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/resource-group-overview/.
- Which machines to move first (pick the simplest, with fewest dependences).
- Consider cases where it may be easier to migrate the data or application to a new VM rather than migrate the VM itself).
A good forum to ask specific migration questions is: Microsoft Azure Site Recovery
Appending to sendmarsh's reply
The things you will have to consider are:
Version of virtual environment i.e VMWare or Hyper-V.
Os version, RAM Size, OS disk size, OS disk count, Number of disks, Capacity of each disk, format of hard disk, number of processor cores,number of NIC's, processor architecture, Network configurations such as IP address's, generation type if the environment is Hyper-V.
I could have missed a few more things... like checking if the VMWare tools are installed. Some of the configurations are not supported like having an iSCSI disk will not be supported. Microsoft supports not all naming conventions for the machines, so be careful in setting the name as that might affect things later.
A full length of pre-requisites list is over at:
[1]: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/site-recovery-best-practices/#azure-virtual-machine-requirements
Update: Using Powershell to automate the migration would make your life easier.
I have a Python / REDIS service running on my desk that I want to move to my Blue-Domino-hosted site. I've got Python available on the server, but not REDIS. They don't give me root access to my Debian VM so I can't git, extract, and install myself from a Unix prompt.
Their tech support might do the install for me, but they need me to point them to server requirements, which I don't see on the REDIS download page.
I could probably FTP binaries to the site if they were available, but that's dicey.
Has anyone dealt with this?
Installing Redis is actually quite easy, from source. It doesn't have any dependencies, so just download the tarball, unzip it, and follow the install instructions. I'm always afraid of doing that sort of stuff, but with Redis it really was a breeze. If you don't dare to do it their tech support should be able to do it.
If it is Intel/AMD server, you can compile the Redis somewhere (32 bit version for example), and upload it as binary. Then start it with Python. I did this myself couples weeks ago.
For port you will need to use something over 1000. I don't recommend to use default port. Remember to change LogLevel too. Daemonize works well as non-root too.
Some servers blocks all external ports, so you will not be able to connect to Redis from outside, but this will be a problem only if you connect from different machine. For same machine should be OK, since is "internal".
However, I am unsure how hosting administrator will react when he sees the process running :) I personally will kill it immediately.
There is other option as well - check service like Redis4you.com . But their free account is small, you probably will need to spend some money for more RAM.
Is your hosting provider looking for a minimum set of system requirements for running Redis? This is indeed not listed on the Redis website. Probably because there aren't many exotic requirements. Also it depends a lot on your use case. Basically what you need to run Redis is:
Operating system: Unix like, Linux is recommended (one reason to favor Linux I've heard of is the performance of its TCP/IP stack)
Tools: GCC, make, (git).
Memory: lots (no seriously this depends on your use case, but because Redis keeps everything in-memory you need a least more RAM than the size of your dataset).
Disk: disk access for making snapshots.
The problem seems to be dealing with something non-traditional with my BlueDomino hosting. Since this project is a new venture, I think the best course for me is to rent a small Linux VM from rackspace and forget about the BD hosting.
Azure and EC2 are optimized for running servers. Lots and lots of servers. Both platforms attempt to manage tons of things for you -- in Azure's case, it wants to manage even the target operating system.
However, I'd like to use such a service for a different reason: Testing.
I've got a ton of operating systems I need to support. My tests don't actually take that long, but running them on every platform is time consuming. I was going to just use a cloud service for this, thinking that these machines would be running for much less than an hour, and it wouldn't cost all that much.
The problem is that the major cloud services won't run client versions of Windows -- Windows Server only.
Is there a cloud service which would let me run every client and server version, and every service pack level, of Windows released starting with Windows 2000 SP4 to the present day?
Try CloudSigma, Defiantly can upload your own ISO's and run any x86 and 64bit OS you like on it. They have their in-house versions to get started but you can bring your own OS versions.
Based in Switzerland but they would have also the servers in the US, performance i've expected to quite good.
https://www.cloudsigma.com/
There is also a free trail on at the moment
https://cs.cloudsigma.com/accounts/signup/
The list of Open Virtualization Alliance members may have some candidates for you.
A search on the page for "operating system" suggests the following possibilities (in addition to the already-mentioned CloudSigma):
ElasticHosts
stepping stone GmbH (I'm less sure about this one)
Sublime IP
No, commercial cloud services like Azure and Amazon EC2 are themselves virtual, so you don't get a great deal of control over the operating system.
An option may be to consider renting a full physical server (colocated, or managed) and then use a battery of virtual machines to run the tests. Something like VMWare's snapshot feature sounds perfect: spin up a clean virtual machine, deploy the test code, then throw away changes to the disk once the tests have been completed.
Or, indeed, as #Stuart suggests - run the tests locally.
This definitely isn't something Azure offers - I think all of Azure's images are based near to Windows Server 2008 R2.
For EC2 you could set up images for Server 2003 through to 2008R2 - but nothing else. There are also some services out there to assist with this - e.g. VaasNet http://www.vaasnet.com/catalog
For testing the other Windows operating systems, I simply don't think there's a cloud service available to let you do this. I don't even think there are any cloud services where you can run "Virtual PC" type applications on top of the hosted operating system - as I think most of the virtualization APIs are disabled in the cloud environments (virtualization within virtualization not supported!)
Sorry to say this, but your best bet may be local test hardware running VirtualPC images.
It appears that the Xen Cloud Platform might do what you're after. This page ends with:
Guest Operating Systems: the XCP binary distribution is delivered with a wide range of Linux and Widnows guests. Check out the release notes for a complete list.
And their PDF document Xen Cloud Platform Virtual Machine Installation Guide (Release 0.1, Published October 2009) says that Windows 2000 Server has "No known issues."
(I don't have any affiliation with Xen)
In conjunction with the above, there is also a list of Xen VirtualPrivateServerProviders, several of which say they include Windows.
Buy time on an EC2 instance and use it to host VirtualBox VMs with VMs set up for each operating system you want to test for. Use a RDP client or VNC or some other means to control the guest OS. This forum post seems to point to that being possible. But yes it is not a cloud service itself and you would have todo some initial setup and configuration work yourself.