SQL Server 2019 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 now Generally Available
Published Jan 08 2020 10:07 PM 8,126 Views
Microsoft

SQL Server support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 was announced at last Red Hat summit and was in preview. Our team since then made numerous improvements to fully embrace the Red Hat 8 ecosystem which includes a native RHEL 8 package for SQL Server 2019 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux based containers and are fully supported in production. You can now leverage the latest SQL Server innovations on Red Hat 8.

 

SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

We are happy to announce the availability of SQL Server 2019 package native to RHEL 8 ecosystem, fully supported for production use, starting with CU1. You can read about SQL Server 2019 CU1 release at following page.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4527376/cumulative-update-1-for-sql-server-2019

 

Instructions on how to install SQL 2019 CU1 with RHEL 8 have been updated on the documentation at following pages.

Configuring Repo: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-change-repo?view=sql-server-ver15&pivots...

Installation Tutorial: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/quickstart-install-connect-red-hat?view=sql-server-linux-...

 

SQL Server on Red Hat Universal Based Image Containers

We are also glad to announce the availability of SQL Server 2019 CU1 container image build on Red Hat Universal Based Image 8 (UBI8). It’s fully supported for production use. You can read about how to deploy the container at following page.

 

Running Red Hat UBI 8 based container: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-configure-docker?view=sql-server-ver15#r...

SQL Server on the Red Hat Container Catalog  https://access.redhat.com/containers/?tab=overview#/mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/rhel/server

 

Performance Improvement Updates

As one may have worked with SQL Server on Linux, they may have introduced to certain storage and IO flush related configurations due to unavailability of FUA (Forced Unit Access) functionality in user mode of Linux ecosystem. You can read extremely good technical details at following blog written by Bob Dorr, a lead in SQL Server product group.

https://bobsql.com/sql-server-on-linux-forced-unit-access-fua-internals/

 

If you see the “Safety and Performance” section in the blog, it outlines the various configurations you can have depending on kernel version and storage capabilities.

 

We are glad to say that Red Hat engineering team have introduced the FUA capability in user mode for XFS filesystem starting with RHEL 8. This means for SQL Server 2019 on RHEL 8, recommended configuration is following.

If using XFS filesystem with FUA-capable storage for database files storage then,

  • Enable trace flag 3979
  • Set control.writethrough (a mssql-conf configuration option) to 1.
  • Set control.alternatewritethrough (a mssql-conf configuration option) to 0.

Of course, if EXT4 filesystem is in use then the blog should be reviewed thoroughly to see how to get best performance based on underlying storage configuration.

 

We hope you give SQL Server 2019 on Red Hat 8 try and let us know what you think.

Thanks!

Mike Habben (Principal Software Engineering Manager)

Vin Yu (Senior Program Manager)

Tejas Shah (Principal Program Manager)

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Last update:
‎Jan 09 2020 02:14 PM
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