SQL 2000 Cluster P2V VMWare

  • We have a 2000 Active/Active Cluster. 2 Servers Server05 and Server06 with Quorum. We are looking to Virtual this cluster to VMWare like for like.

    The applications that the databases serve are a mixture of in-house and 3rd parties.

    My colleague who is from the Hardware and VMWare side has devised a plan to virtualise this below.

    The following steps would be taken to produce this scenario:

    1.Ensure all backup processes associated with these servers are sane and complete

    2.Quiesce both SQL and Clustering services on both Server05 and Server06 but ensuring the drives from FAS are visible on at least one.

    3.Provision a volume on lefthand storage which equates to the sum total of the FAS (401Gb)

    4.P2V Server06

    5.Power off Physical Server06

    6.Power on Virtual Server06

    7.Present new iSCSI volume to the Virtual Server06 and partition appropriately (same volumes and drive letters as FAS)

    8.Copy (robocopy) data from FAS disks on physical Server05 to iSCSI disks on virtual Server06

    9.P2V Server05

    10.Power off physical Server05

    11.Power on virtual Server05

    12.Ensure cluster configuration is correct – drive letters for applications/groups and network adapters.

    13.Start the cluster services

    14.Start the SQL services

    Is there anything to be aware of or add to the plan.

    thanks

  • I am said colleague, I just noticed that there is a fairly obvious step missing and that is the presentation of the iSCSI volumes to the server05.

    I'm approaching this from a sysadmin perspective but unsure of any potential pitfalls in the SQL services arena.

    One other approach I wondered was to present the iSCSI to the physical servers to migrate the data and clustering services over to these volumes, then P2V or introduce new nodes into the cluster.

    If anyone has any opinions please fire over.

  • I know this won't answer your question but why you are still running SQL 2000? If I was you, I would put all my effort and convince upper management that such version of SQL should be replaced and its obsolete.

    Last time I saw SQL2000 was actually for a P2V conversion too, previous job. The Developers that run the app were gone and the hardware was about to be decommissioned. But the virtual machine was turned off and taken out of the network.

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