May 2009 - SQLHA

May 21, 2009

Want a Great Example of Why People and Process (Including Testing) Matter for High Availability and Disaster Recovery?

I live in the Boston area. Today, there were massive delays on the T trains (public transportation) all due to a power outage. The power outage which lasted about 7 minutes, was inadvertently caused by a maintenance crew accidentally tripping a breaker at one of the worst possible times – rush hour. To get everything back up and running took about 30 minutes, but the outage brought the trains to a standstill and things took awhile to get back to normal.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/05/power_outage_de.html

Imagine if someone did something similar to your IT infrastructure? This is why having clear processes, good plans, and fully testing everything BEFORE implementing in production is key.

May 19, 2009

SQL Server Failover Clustering Now Supported Under Virtualization for Production Use! (And A Final TechEd Update)

Clustering Virtual Machines in Production
Yesterday (5/19/09), the KB article which details the support policy for SQL Server failover clusters was officially updated to include support for clustering guests/Virtual Machines … including in production. So anyone who talked to me at TechEd last week, I was right until yesterday 🙂

Now a couple of points which the KB does not say currently (and I hope it will):
1. Don’t put both of your guests under the same hypervisor. It makes no sense, and creates a single point of failure for both of your cluster nodes. Nothing will stop you from doing this since both of your guests have no idea they are virtual machines.
2. Don’t mix physical and virtual/guest nodes. Choose a single strategy. There is nothing that will prevent you from mixing node types, but it really makes no sense to me.

Remember that each of the virtual/guest nodes running under the hypervisor of your choice must also meet the requirements for Windows failover clustering as if they were nodes on physical hardware. That means they must have redundant everything, which goes back to my point #1.

Other helpful links which apply:
KB943984 The Microsoft Support Policy for Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters
KB309395 The Microsoft support policy for server clusters, the Hardware Compatibility List, and the Windows Server Catalog (pre-Windows Server 2008)
KB327518 The Microsoft SQL Server support policy for Microsoft Clustering

This is all good timing as I am finishing up my book. It does make things a bit difficult as some chapters are done, but this will make it in one way or another.

TechEd Wrapup
It was a good week. Thanks to everyone who came to the booth and to my session. I do look and incorporate feedback from the sessions I do, so anyone who posted evaluations, it’s helpful.

The Tech Talk I did (Clustering Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with Windows Server 2008) is also posted, so have a look. It has some demos and is about 20 minutes long give or take.

May 12, 2009

The TechEd 2009 Update From Los Angeles #1

It’s the end of Day Two at TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles. I’m sitting here in my hotel room eating some dinner and catching up for the first time in a few days on some work and e-mails that I haven’t had the time to do since arriving at TechEd.

So far, it’s been a good two days. I’ve already taped two TechEd Online sessions (a panel, and a tech talk – both on clustering). The panel discussion, Planning a Windows Deployment for SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering, was just posted today and it came out well. It features Steven Ekren who is on the Windows Development team for clustering, Max Verun from the SQL Server development team, and myself. You can view the panel at: http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=6f3925e1-4b83-4f13-bb5f-4d69741916cb. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, and I hope you find it useful.

Speaker Idol is a lot of fun to judge; today was my first time sitting in this year’s competition (I did last year and was supposed to judge yesterday, but something came up). I’ll be judging the final two heats (tomorrow and Thursday) as well as the finals on Thursday night. Being a judge is also difficult. Everyone really is good, and the difference between the winner, runner up, and anyone else is usually pretty small. One or two things are usually the difference. Come the finals, it’ll be fun to see if the finalists incorporated any of our feedback, or just do what got them there. There is no right or wrong on that one. If you’re at TechEd, come by the Yellow TLC Theater at noon to see the final two rounds.

I’m also spending a lot of time in the DAT booth – more than I’m scheduled. Honestly, I really do enjoy interacting with everyone and answering questions. For those of you who have come by already, thanks! I hope you got as much out of it as I do talking with you. I’ll be there all week (although Friday AM I’ll be in the uprgade section, not the mission critical/HA one). Feel free to drop by. I will say this – it doesn’t matter how comfortable your shoes are. If you’re on your feet all day, you do feel it when you sit down and finally relax for a few minutes.

That’s the quick update. I hope to see more of you these next few days.

May 4, 2009

Major Milestone Completed Today

All primary writing for the new Pro SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering book is now complete. I still need to finish the editing process, but that's infinitely easier than writing! So it looks like the book will come out on time in June.

Maybe now I'll get some sleep … oh wait, TechEd is next week. So much for that idea!

Popular Posts

Categories