Standalone to High Availability SQL Server Clusters in Minutes - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Standalone to High Availability SQL Server Clusters in Minutes

Denny Cherry mrdenny@dcac.co Denny Cherry & Associates Consulting

Topics

Problems With Native Clustering Converting Standalone Instances Quality of Service Restart Times Multi-Subnet Support

Problems With Native Clustering

Requires Active Directory Requires Active Directory permissions to deploy Operating system can’t be upgraded SQL upgrades can be complex Converting from standalone to clustered isn’t supported Migrations from cluster to cluster for OS upgrades are a “special process” All machines must be the same operating system

Cluster-able Operating Systems

Any Operating System No requirement that the Operating Systems are the same version No requirement that the Operating Systems are the same edition No requirement that the Operating Systems are the same patch level Operating Systems don’t know they are clustered

High Availability and Disaster Recovery

Same basic idea as Microsoft Failover Clustering, without the limitations Requires shared storage Supports clustering of any edition of SQL Server Supports clustering on any number of nodes No Enterprise Edition requirement for a 3+ node cluster Supports mixed versions in one cluster Supports mixed editions in one cluster

Windows Version Support

Windows 2008 R2 Windows 2012 Windows 2012 R2

Converting Standalone to Clustered

Install DH2i to all nodes Present storage to all nodes Take control of storage with DH2i Migrate databases to storage* Install standalone instance on new nodes Tell DH2i to switch instances to clustered

Demo!

QoS

Supports QoS to ensure resource availability Moves SQL instances from node to node as needed Ensures that SQL instances have the correct resources available to run Prevents noisy neighbor problems

Demo QoS!

Fast Restarts

Restarting clustered instance is just a service restart No waiting for drive and quorum slowdown like Windows Clustering has Outages for patching last seconds

Multi-Subnet Support

Supports multi-subnet configuration Allows for multisite clustering without stretch vLANs Support Standard Edition Multi-site integrates with third party storage replication software Supports stretching over any distance (limited by storage vendor support)

SQL Server 2012 / 2014 Certified Hyper-V Certified Azure Certified Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2 Certified

Support

Fully Microsoft Supported DH2i can be uninstalled while SQL Server is running for troubleshooting

Q&A

Visit dh2i.com to request a private demo or get a free trial

DH2i DxEnterprise and Microsoft SQL Server

Denny Cherry mrdenny@dcac.co Denny Cherry & Associates Consulting