What Is Active/Passive Failover Clustering? 1

[JohnBates]

hi experts,

2008 Enterprise has the What Is Active/Passive Failover Clustering feature. Can anyone tell me what it is, how it can be used?

Thanks, John

 

[mrdenny]

Active/Passive Clustering is when you have two SQL Servers running as a Windows cluster. The SQL Server is setup to potentially run on both servers (it only runs on one server at any one time). When the SQL Server is running on a cluster, if the physical server fails, then the SQL Server can be restarted on the other node (servers in a cluster are called nodes) of the cluster within a few seconds effectively providing you with up to 99.999% up time of your database.

If you have a subscription to SQL Server Magazine (

http://www.sqlmag.com)

check out the December issue from 2008. I did a whole article on Clustering SQL Server.

Denny
MVP
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[Leonos]

But you're screwed if your harddisk fails or if the database comes corrupt. Then your downtime will enormous !

I'd go for replication.