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Luca82
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

SQL in Cluster

Hi everyone... I have a question: is RDM mandatory for SQL cluster? Or can I use a shared vmdk as well? Thank you!

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scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Full best practices guide: Updated – Microsoft SQL Server on vSphere Best Practices - Virtualize Applications


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NathanosBlightc
Commander
Commander

It's not mandatory, just recommended based on database total I/OPS. Whenever you have very high rate of read or write operations inside the SQL server guest OS (because of too much requests for database access) it can be a great action to assign a LUN from the stoage to the VM directly, so only that VM (SQL server) does R/W operations on that volume, especially when you replace it by disks with better IOPS.
However there are many best practice documents for SQL server virtualization, like those other Experts attached in this topic. I strongly recommend to read them too.

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Luca82
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Sorry amin, but in the kb 2147661 it seems to be mandatory... look at the table in the middle of the page...

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Luca82
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

What I have understood is that for cluster aross box RDM is still mandatory.

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