Clustering/Fail-over installation mentor

[MBaraz]

We are doing a complete technology refresh. We got 4 DL-385 servers running VM ESXi each with 3-4 Windows 2008 Enterprise Edition server guests. Some will be web servers others database servers. We need to create two Windows 2008 clusters with fail-over within each. Then we need to set up SQL 2008 Std Ed in a 2 node cluster on each of the two windows server clusters.

This is fairly straight forward in Win2003 (which we have good enough skills) but the game changed completely in Win2008 and we have been getting nowhere.

We're small and budget conscious but need to retain someone who has done this on the scale we're at to get us over the hump.

--
Michael Baraz
Building data-driven, high-performance, massively-scaleable, infinitely extensible, über
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[kmcferrin]

Before you get too far, Microsoft does not support running failover clusters on VM guests. That pretty much kills you right there.

Secondly, Microsoft ESPECIALLY does not support running SQL in a failover cluster on VM guests.

If you want highly available SQL, you have two supported options:

1. Use two physical servers and cluster them.
2. Use a single VM and make it highly available via VMware HA.

The last option (which isn't really a highly available option) is to set up two VM guests and use SQL Log Shipping and/DB Mirroring.

________________________________________
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[MBaraz]

That is not happy news. Do they have the same restrictions on Hyper-V guests?

--
Michael Baraz
Building data-driven, high-performance, massively-scaleable, infinitely extensible, über
websites

 

[58sniper]

Yes - you cannot use any VM failover options when you're also using clustering. What's the point?

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

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[MBaraz]

It isn't VM failover I am looking for, I am looking for each of the Windows guests to be highly available. The question is how to stand up the Windows (guest) 2008 servers in a cluster so if one fails the other(s) in the cluster continue to process the requests. My own little naive mind says it shouldn't matter if they are virtual or real machines in that context... okay, so that's the "theory.

 

[kmcferrin]

No, it doesn't matter what virtualization vendor/technology you are using, Microsoft will not support failover clustering of guest VMs. That may change in the future, but that is their current policy.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

 

[MBaraz]

OK, thanx guys. we're working out a plan "B

 

[mrdenny]

While clustering Windows 2008 isn't supported it is very much possible.

The trick is that Windows 2008 doesn't support clustering with SCSI disks any more, when is how VMware presents the shared storage.

This means that you have to use iSCSI to present storage to the Windows 2008 guests so that the storage doesn't show up as local SCSI storage.

I have a couple of Windows 2008 clusters in my lab setup this way, and I'll put putting a couple of clusters into production this way shortly.

Using SQL Server Mirroring with auto failover is just about as good as using the Cluster Service to cluster and it is fully supported within a VM environment.

Denny
MVP
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
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[theravager]

Just use mirroring

 

[kmcferrin]

Agreed, guest VM failover clustering appears to work OK. My company uses it in demo environments because it's easier to take a beefy laptop to a customer site than to bring two servers and a SAN. But it's still not supported by Microsoft, and we would never recommend running anything production-oriented in an unsupported configuration.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator