Welcome to the Fantastic 12 of 2012: Behind the Scenes Blog Series! If you haven’t read The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012, you can download the PDF here. Over the next several weeks we will be publishing video blogs that will provide a behind the scenes look at how SQL Server 2012 was developed, some the feedback we’ve received, answers to common questions, and insights from members of the SQL Server Engineering Teams that worked on the capabilities that are part of SQL Server 2012.

In our first installment of this series, we focus on Required 9s and Data Protection. Luis Carlos Vargas Herring, Senior Program Manager, from the SQL Server Team shares his top 3 features that he is most excited about around AlwaysOn and his favorite moments while developing the AlwaysOn capabilities in SQL Server 2012.

We’ll have new posts in this series every week and we’ve got some special surprises in store. So keep coming back to see what we have planned next!  
 


Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012

1  Required 9s and Data Protection
Deliver required uptime and data protection, server to cloud without wasting time and money

Greater Uptime

  • SQL Server AlwaysOn: Help reduce planned and unplanned downtime with the new integrated high availability and disaster recovery solution. Achieve maximum application availability and data protection with options to configure multiple secondaries and the ability to quickly failover and recover applications.
  • Windows Server Core: Help reduce OS patching by as much as 50-60%† with new support for Windows Server Core.
  • Maintain uptime during maintenance operations using enhanced online operations and eliminate planned downtime on Hyper-V environment using Live Migration.


Improved Productivity

  • Common Tools: Configuration Wizard, Windows PowerShell support, dashboard, system views and System Center alignment simplifies deploying and managing of Availability Groups within AlwaysOn.


Greater Hardware Utilization

  • Help reduce idle hardware and improve IT cost efficiency and performance using Active Secondaries which enables offloading of various workloads to the secondary instances.

Download SQL Server 2012 today and learn more about SQL Server 2012 through our on-demand Virtual Launch Event.

 

† The percentage reduction in patching varies and can be less based on the server roles that are enabled and the type of patches that are applied.