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AlbertWT
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

MS SQL Server 2008 failover clustering over VMware HA design consideration

Hi Everyone,

I'd like to build highly redundant SQL Server 2008 database and Infrastructure monitoring software for both my production and DR environment, I wonder if this design below is make sense and can provide me with sufficient redundancy at any level ?

My goal is that when the Production site is having a problem, the user can use the monitoring application from DR site as automated fall back plan.

Redundancy-Diagram.jpg

Any kind of comments and input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

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AlbertWT
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Since, there are no EDIT button in this topic, now i decided to re-think and draw again from scratch as previously it was my idea at 1 AM, so it seems that Failover clustering on top of VMware HA is too complex to implement and slight downtime ~ 5 mins during the failback/server restart is acceptable for me, therefore I have now decided to go with SQL Server 2008 Mirroring HA (see the attached).

the only single point of failure is the Witness VM (which runs SQL Server 2008 Express) if you can suggest any other placement then that'd be great.

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malaysiavm
Expert
Expert

I saw you had dedicated low latency fiber in place for your DR, you may want to consider the VMware HA cross location with solution like Netapp Metrocluster, EMC Metrocluster which allow you to vmotion and HA across data center. At the same time, you just need to ensure the L2 network are transperent over two different datacenter.

Regards,

Craig

http://malaysiavm.com

Craig vExpert 2009 & 2010 Netapp NCIE, NCDA 8.0.1 Malaysia VMware Communities - http://www.malaysiavm.com
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AlbertWT
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Wow I didn't know about that technology before, but then again yes I was trying to deploy MSCS on top of VMware HA cluster but it seems too complex to understand and troubleshoot later on as the current SQL Server 2008 cluster doesn't support Clustering across different subnet unless I wait until DENALI-Hadron comes out.

Unfortunately the cost would be too much for us to implement it, that is why I can only use the EMC SnapView for the LUN replication to DR LUN.

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malaysiavm
Expert
Expert

In that case you may want to consider local HA in the same data center with 2 VMs in different host, and perform SRM over to DR. More cost effective for you to do this.

DR do not usually trigger or initiate in the event of a host failure, DR require business approval to execute as a standard practice. Unless you are looking to active active data center geographically then it is no longer active cold DR solution as we discuss here.

the cost to have active active data center is never come cheap.

Smiley Happy

Craig vExpert 2009 & 2010 Netapp NCIE, NCDA 8.0.1 Malaysia VMware Communities - http://www.malaysiavm.com