Transparent Data Encryption with SQL Server 2016 causing drive space issue - encryption

We are attempting to use TDE with SQL Server 2016 to encrypt a large database. However, when the encryption gets to about 91% we receive a drive space error and the encryption fails. Being that TDE does not cause an increase in the database size, would someone be able to tell me why this is happening?
My only assumption is that a copy of the DB is being encrypted and then the non-encrypted version is being dropped as part of the process. Which means we need to ensure that we have enough available space on the drive to support two .mdf files for the single database. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Related

Accessing huge data from application

Before starting application, I just would like to know the feasibility here.
I have data around 15GB (text and some Images) stored in SQLite database of my SD Card, I need to access it from my application. Data will get increased on daily basis and may reach till 64 GB.
Can any one tell me limitations in accessing such huge database stored in SD card from the application?
SQLite itself supports databases in that range like 16-32GB (it may start working slower, but it should still work).
However, you are likely to hit a limit of FAT32 maximum file size, which is just 4GB - and this will be tough to overcome. SQLite allows to use attached databases which allow you to split it into smaller chunks, but this is really cumbersome.
If you can format your SD card as ext4, or use internal storage as ext4, then you should not really have big problems.

Why are SQLite transactions bound to harddisk rotation?

There's a following statement in SQLite FAQ:
A transaction normally requires two complete rotations of the disk platter, which on a 7200RPM disk drive limits you to about 60 transactions per second.
As I know there's a cache on the harddisk and there might be also an extra cache in the disk driver that abstract the operation that is perceived by the software from the actual operation against the disk platter.
Then why and how exactly are transactions so strictly bound to disk platter rotation?
From Atomic Commit In SQLite
2.0 Hardware Assumptions
SQLite assumes that the operating
system will buffer writes and that a
write request will return before data
has actually been stored in the mass
storage device. SQLite further assumes
that write operations will be
reordered by the operating system. For
this reason, SQLite does a "flush" or
"fsync" operation at key points.
SQLite assumes that the flush or fsync
will not return until all pending
write operations for the file that is
being flushed have completed. We are
told that the flush and fsync
primitives are broken on some versions
of Windows and Linux. This is
unfortunate. It opens SQLite up to the
possibility of database corruption
following a power loss in the middle
of a commit. However, there is nothing
that SQLite can do to test for or
remedy the situation. SQLite assumes
that the operating system that it is
running on works as advertised. If
that is not quite the case, well then
hopefully you will not lose power too
often.
Because it ensures data integrity by making sure the data is actually written on to the disk rather than held in memory. Thus if the power goes off or something, the database is not corrupted.
This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f428dSRkTs4 talks about reasons why (e.g. because SQLite is actually used in a lot of embedded devices where the power might well suddenly go off.)

What is SQLite3 Disk I/O Error in Cocoa

I am programming in snow Leopard 10.6. My application opens up a locally stored database successfully, but when it tries to insert into the database, I continue to receive
'Disk I/O error". Anyone has any ideas as to what could possibly cause this?
Thanks
Yang
From sqlite.org:
SQLITE_IOERR
This value is returned if the operating system informs SQLite that it is unable to perform
some disk I/O operation. This could mean that there is no more space left on the disk.
This could be one reason. Another could be insufficient rights (maybe the db-file is write protected?).

locked s3db-journal

a few days we had a strange error with sqlite. We use a sqlite database on a network share with several computers accessing it. Our client reported, that the database is gone. A quick overview showed, that the database was still there but no computer could access it. It also showed a s3db-journal file indicating that someone is/was accessing the db when something happened. The thing that is strange - the s3db-journal file was locked by the file system (we could not copy/delete it). After restarting all applications, the locked file disappeared as it should be.
How does this happen? We would like to deduct somehow how our client got into this situation. We know, that there was a corrupt network cabeling to one of the computers.
Thank you for your help.
Tobias
To clarify this: several = up to 10 computer
From the "Appropriate uses for SQLite" page:
If you have many client programs accessing a common database over a network, you should consider using a client/server database engine instead of SQLite. SQLite will work over a network filesystem, but because of the latency associated with most network filesystems, performance will not be great. Also, the file locking logic of many network filesystems implementation contains bugs (on both Unix and Windows). If file locking does not work like it should, it might be possible for two or more client programs to modify the same part of the same database at the same time, resulting in database corruption. Because this problem results from bugs in the underlying filesystem implementation, there is nothing SQLite can do to prevent it.
A good rule of thumb is that you should avoid using SQLite in situations where the same database will be accessed simultaneously from many computers over a network filesystem.
It very well might be a bug in the network filesystem you're using. Either way, the SQLite developers explicitly recommend against using databases on network filesystems.
The issue is resolved. The database-component (zeos) threw an exception and we tried a rollback. Due to the way the component was designed, this is only allowed when you started a transaction. If you don't you get the locked s3db-journal file.
In the end we learned 2 things: never rollback when you did not start a transaction, second - there is a function InTransaction from zeos for that.

What's the best solution for file storage for a load-balanced ASP.NET app?

We have an ASP.NET file delivery app (internal users upload, external users download) and I'm wondering what the best approach is for distributing files so we don't have a single point of failure by only storing the app's files on one server. We distribute the app's load across multiple front end web servers, meaning for file storage we can't simply store a file locally on the web server.
Our current setup has us pointing at a share on a primary database/file server. Throughout the day we robocopy the contents of the share on the primary server over to the failover. This scneario ensures we have a secondary machine with fairly current data on it but we want to get to the point where we can failover from the primary to the failover and back again without data loss or errors in the front end app. Right now it's a fairly manual process.
Possible solutions include:
Robocopy. Simple, but it doesn't easily allow you to fail over and back again without multiple jobs running all the time (copying data back and forth)
Store the file in a BLOB in SQL Server 2005. I think this could be a performance issue, especially with large files.
Use the FILESTREAM type in SQL Server 2008. We mirror our database so this would seem to be promising. Anyone have any experience with this?
Microsoft's Distributed File System. Seems like overkill from what I've read since we only have 2 servers to manage.
So how do you normally solve this problem and what is the best solution?
Consider a cloud solution like AWS S3. It's pay for what you use, scalable and has high availability.
You need a SAN with RAID. They build these machines for uptime.
This is really an IT question...
When there are a variety of different application types sharing information via the medium of a central database, storing file content directly into the database would generally be a good idea. But it seems you only have one type in your system design - a web application. If it is just the web servers that ever need to access the files, and no other application interfacing with the database, storage in the file system rather than the database is still a better approach in general. Of course it really depends on the intricate requirements of your system.
If you do not perceive DFS as a viable approach, you may wish to consider Failover clustering of your file server tier, whereby your files are stored in an external shared storage (not an expensive SAN, which I believe is overkill for your case since DFS is already out of your reach) connected between Active and Passive file servers. If the active file server goes down, the passive may take over and continue read/writes to the shared storage. Windows 2008 clustering disk driver has been improved over Windows 2003 for this scenario (as per article), which indicates the requirement of a storage solution supporting SCSI-3 (PR) commands.
I agree with Omar Al Zabir on high availability web sites:
Do: Use Storage Area Network (SAN)
Why: Performance, scalability,
reliability and extensibility. SAN is
the ultimate storage solution. SAN is
a giant box running hundreds of disks
inside it. It has many disk
controllers, many data channels, many
cache memories. You have ultimate
flexibility on RAID configuration,
adding as many disks you like in a
RAID, sharing disks in multiple RAID
configurations and so on. SAN has
faster disk controllers, more parallel
processing power and more disk cache
memory than regular controllers that
you put inside a server. So, you get
better disk throughput when you use
SAN over local disks. You can increase
and decrease volumes on-the-fly, while
your app is running and using the
volume. SAN can automatically mirror
disks and upon disk failure, it
automatically brings up the mirrors
disks and reconfigures the RAID.
Full article is at CodeProject.
Because I don't personally have the budget for a SAN right now, I rely on option 1 (ROBOCOPY) from your post. But the files that I'm saving are not unique and can be recreated automatically if they die for some reason so absolute fault-tolerance is necessary in my case.
I suppose it depends on the type of download volume that you would be seeing. I am storing files in a SQL Server 2005 Image column with great success. We don't see heavy demand for these files, so performance is really not that big of an issue in our particular situation.
One of the benefits of storing the files in the database is that it makes disaster recovery a breeze. It also becomes much easier to manage file permissions as we can manage that on the database.
Windows Server has a File Replication Service that I would not recommend. We have used that for some time and it has caused alot of headaches.
DFS is probably the easiest solution to setup, although depending on the reliability of your network this can become un-synchronized at times, which requires you to break the link, and re-sync, which is quite painful to be honest.
Given the above, I would be inclined to use a SQL Server storage solution, as this reduces the complexity of your system, rather then increases it.
Do some tests to see if performance will be an issue first.

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