March 16, 2012 at 4:47 am
Dear all,
I read and understand that vMotion, DRS, and HA features are not working with Microsoft Failover Clustering in VmWare environement.
"Microsoft Failover Clustering (MSCS) – Microsoft failover clusters utilize a shared storage availability solution using the Microsoft Clustering Service to handle failover of application services in the event of active node failure. Microsoft failover clusters provide application-aware availability, but offer a single point of failure in the storage subsystem and because of the need for a quorum disk, Microsoft failover clusters cannot utilize VMware features like vMotion, DRS, and HA."
With Windows 2008/2008R2, it's possible to chose "Node and File Share Majority" as quorum. Will then vMotion, DRS and HA work in a virtual cluster with Node and File Share Majority quorum?
I'm interresting in clustering especially for maintenance (reboot, updates and service pack installation, ...)
Thank you.
March 16, 2012 at 1:40 pm
which edition\version of VMWare are you using?
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March 16, 2012 at 4:20 pm
Hello,
Thank you for your reply
We use the last version of VMWare VCenter 5/ VSphere 5 / ESX 5.
HA, DRS and FT are implemented with 2 geographically separated site.
March 16, 2012 at 5:05 pm
rabensql (3/16/2012)
Hello,Thank you for your reply
We use the last version of VMWare VCenter 5/ VSphere 5 / ESX 5.
HA, DRS and FT are implemented with 2 geographically separated site.
OK, when using MSCS guests in a VMWare HA\DRS cluster you must follow specific guidelines relating to VM restart policy and affinity, you must also disable DRS for each MSCS guest. HA and MSCS effectively negate each other and DRS and vMotion will play havoc with your cluster VM's too. I can't think of one good reason why you would want to use all these technologies together, use one or the other. See these links for info
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40_u1/vsp_40_u1_mscs.pdf
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-mscs-guide.pdf
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"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉
March 19, 2012 at 3:12 am
Thank you Perry Whittle.
I want MSCS for server maintenance (reboot, service pack, updates) and also for software failure. Other solution should be mirroring with automatic failover, but it's not designed for this usage (maintenance).
VMWare links were realy usefull to understand HA and DRS settings to implement and the fact that cluster on one physical host must remain on one physical host and cluster accross physical hosts must remain accross physical hosts.
I will try to implement cluster on one physical host with FT for Disaster Recovery solution in dev environement.
March 19, 2012 at 5:57 am
rabensql (3/19/2012)
Thank you Perry Whittle.I want MSCS for server maintenance (reboot, service pack, updates) and also for software failure. Other solution should be mirroring with automatic failover, but it's not designed for this usage (maintenance).
VMWare links were realy usefull to understand HA and DRS settings to implement and the fact that cluster on one physical host must remain on one physical host and cluster accross physical hosts must remain accross physical hosts.
I will try to implement cluster on one physical host with FT for Disaster Recovery solution in dev environement.
Hmm, yes, cluster in a box as it's called is pretty pointless really as the single point of failure is the host itself, if it's just for maintenance purposes within SQL Server itself then you may be ok.
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