phani112 (9/19/2012)
HiWe also have a similar situation in my current project where we are planning to have SQL MSCS on ESX. The main purpose of MSCS is for hardware failures which can be offset by VMWare HA. But what about guest OS related issues? If the OS of a standalone/cluster node VM is corrupted unexpectedly and went into BSOD, then how to recover that particular VM?
One alternative I know is VMWare FT for standalone VMs. But I also heard VMWare FT is slower in recovering VMs than MSCS? Is that true?
Please suggest whether to go for VMWare FT or MSCS for guest failures??
If your requirement is to mitigate failures at the guest OS level then yes, virutal clusters are ideal and work very well.
The requirements between MSCS (Windows 2003 and beyond) and WSFC (Windows 2008 on) have changed quite a bit. The main change that affects virtual clusters is the requirement for all storage to meet SCSI-3 persistent reservations.
The use of RDM's presents the best way to expose your SAN based LUNs directly to the clustered VMs as shared storage.
With the improvements in Windows 2008 and SQL Server 2012, AlwaysOn groups make a much more attractive HA solution.
Check the Microsoft SVVP for what is and isn't supported in the way of hypervisors and other software.
Set yourself up a test system first and use this to validate your requirements.
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