SQL Server Clustering for Dummies

Mark Broadbent

@retracement
[email protected] tenbulls.co.uk LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/gylT4I

Presentation and materials available from: http://bit.ly/gAqN32

A bit more about me!

More than 20 years in IT and more than 14 years using SQL Server. Have worked my many large global corporations and SMEs such as Microsoft, Nokia, Hewlett Packard and Encyclopaedia Britannica. Presented at SQLBits 7 and due to speak at SQLRally 1 in Orlando Microsoft Certified IT Professional Database Development SQL 2008 Microsoft Certified IT Professional Database Administrator SQL 2008 Microsoft Certified IT Professional Database Administrator SQL 2005 Microsoft Certified Application Developer (C# .net) Microsoft Certified Database Administrator (SQL 2000) Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer + Internet Participate on #sqlhelp ,MSDN Forums, Stackoverflow & Serverfault. Used to be active in the MS newsgroups until their demise :(

Run the LinkedIn groups Linux Mint User Group http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2989801 SQL Server Scripting http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3033621

Agenda
Introduction to Clustering What, why and who? DEMO Installation Preparation, Validation and Installation Administration Problems and benefits DEMO Houston we have a problem

Introduction
What is a SQL Cluster?
One or more clustered SQL Instances on one or more physical servers running MS Windows

Why use one?

Single point of failure is the OS Is Virtualization protecting the Virtual OS?

Who supports?
Diverse range of knowledge required, perhaps too much for a specialist DBA? How do we monitor? Not all tools are cluster aware Who controls the Cluster?

Is Clustering right for us?

Management expectation is that Clustering is 100% HA. It is not Are skills in place, if not HA = Hopefully Available Do your applications recover from unavailability?

Terminology
Terms can mean the same thing or sometimes tend to be used interchangeably (often wrongly!) ...including by me. Depending upon who you talk to they can cause confusion. They include: Cluster Cluster Node...Node...Server Service or Application... Virtual Server... Cluster Group... Failover

Cluster... SQL Instance... SQL Server and *ahem* Server Active/Passive Single Instance... Multi Instance ... N+n Cluster Resources (take your pick) Private Network...interconnect...internal Public Network...LAN (or whatever network is the one clients will connect through facing!) SAN... iSCSI target... Shared Storage LUN... Partition... Volume... Disk Quorum... Voting Disk... Majority

A Dummies Dictionary
Cluster Connected Windows servers running Cluster service with the ability to own the Cluster Name and IP Cluster Node A Windows server that is Clustered Cluster Group Collection of clustered resources Single Instance Cluster One SQL Instance installed to a Cluster containing one or more Cluster Nodes Multi Instance Cluster Come on people! Resources those things in the Cluster Groups remember! Public/ Private/ Storage networks logical networks across Clustered nodes (each NIC configured in own subnet) Quorum voting mechanism to ensure correct ownership of shared resources. E.g. Magician is No majority: Disk only style Quorum.

Failover Cluster Manager

Cluster Name Cluster Groups

Cluster Nodes

Shared Storage

Cluster Networks

Events

DEMO: Intro to the Failover Cluster

Network Name/ IP SQL Services Dependency Possible Owner and Preferred Owner Remote Desktop

Installation
Preparation
Remove Disabled Adapters to avoid "ghosted NICs Ensure .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 is installed Disable Firewall on private network Before Installing Failover Clustering http://bit.ly/dEZc6H Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster Configuration Program http://bit.ly/fldSrK

Validation
HCL no longer exists, although there are pre-validated vendor solutions Successful validation is required Microsoft SQL Server support policy for Microsoft Clustering http://bit.ly/a7yDok Microsoft Support Policy for Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clusters http://bit.ly/f17wew Understanding Cluster Validation Tests http://bit.ly/efBIHp

Installation
One SQL installation per instance per node Installing a SQL Server 2008 R2 Failover Cluster http://bit.ly/gmXyip Download my Installation Videos from http://bit.ly/gAqN32

Installation

Create Cluster Group and Install SQL instance to it This is the SQL Failover Cluster

Install SQL instance onto Cluster node and join into existing SQL Failover Cluster

Administration for the DBA

Storage
Must be available otherwise instance will fail Filesystem corruption repaired through maintenance mode Battle for server resources will occur. Provision dedicated node or avoid co-existance Memory. What is your Min and Max Memory? Processor. Solutions could be Resource Governor, WRSM, Processor Affinity and Dedicated failover node/s Do not change the default dependencies of the Clustered SQL instance services Ticked Preferred Ownership sets order, un-ticked still potentially possible owner Only Possible Owner (set on resource) will be allowed to own resource Rolling updates is possible reducing downtime to potentially a single failover Is cluster service running on each node? If it is stopped then node is offline in the cluster Can you ping Cluster Group network name and IP. If its inaccessible then Cluster Group & SQL is be down Monitor the SQL Services within the Cluster group. If they are stopped then so is SQL! Ensure you set a fixed port and avoid using DHCP Can have one default instance per cluster. Cluster Group needs unique network name Instance names must be unique across the Cluster.

Co-existance

Dependency, Current owner, Preferred Owners and Possible Owners

SQL Patching

Monitoring

IP Address, port, network name and instance.

DEMO: More SQL Failover Cluster

Automatic Failover
Stopping, starting and pausing nodes Network Failure

Adding Disks PowerShell Querying events

Danger Will Robinson!

SSRS and SSIS are not Cluster aware
Put SSRS dbs on Clustered SQL Instance. Use Standalone SSRS web servers and Scale-out using NLB I prefer to install SSIS ONLY if you can police, control and regulate the package deployments SSAS is Cluster aware Resource hungry, allocate to dedicated Cluster Nodes

SSAS should be installed to its own Cluster Group

Be careful with Mirrored Databases in

High Safety with Automatic Failover A Cluster Group has failover could cause Database Mirror failover. Is this what you want? Can change partner timeout by ALTER DATABASE dbname SET PARTNER TIMEOUT x however Cluster Group failover time can vary

Failover time can be substantially affected by

Database Recovery time and performance of servers Ensure it is configured correctly Have a proven tested way to test it

MSDTC configuration is different to a standalone

Keep Dummies, developers (in fact anyone but you)

away from production!

Disaster Planning
Hang on lads, I've got a great idea.
Is the Shared Storage accessible? Can you make storage available elsewhere? Do you have Backups? What is the restore time? Have you available instances? What about name resolution? Can you redirect your apps? Will you maintain same performance level?

What are our SLAs?

Shouldnt you have thought about this already?

In summary
We discussed
What is a SQL Failover Cluster Overview of the Cluster Group Installation, preparation, and validation Administration of the SQL Failover Cluster Recovery from failure

Further references

Books
Apress - Pro SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering Allan Hirt

Blogs/ Websites
MSDN Clustering and High-Availability http://bit.ly/czSTPz Allan Hirt blog http://bit.ly/epAoPj Mark Broadbent blog/ clustering http://bit.ly/i8knch Geoff Hiten blog http://bit.ly/cd8aCA David Bermingham blog http://bit.ly/hYmwxU Symon Perriman blog http://bit.ly/eyGa3U

Video/ Webcasts
SQLBits 8: Multi-site Failover Cluster With SQL 2008 and Denali Allan Hirt Thinking outside the Box http://bit.ly/eUe3v5 - Mark Broadbent PASS Summit 2010: DBA324 Clustering for mere mortals - Geoff Hiten TechNet Webcast: Failover Cluster Validation and Troubleshooting with Windows Server 2008 (Level 300) http://bit.ly/hx8xCl TechNet Webcast: Windows Failover Clustering PowerShell Cmdlets: Overview and Examples (Level 400) http://bit.ly/fNBF4O TechNet Webcast: Failover Clustering 101 (Level 300) http://bit.ly/fmCOqc TechNet Webcast: High Availability Server Apps with Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clusters (Level 300) https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=enUS&EventID=1032448854&CountryCode=US

SQL Server Clustering for Dummies

THANKS FOR COMING!