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Hyper-V Replica Coming In Windows Server “Next”

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Watch new feature Hyper-V Replica

Here is an interesting video that demonstrates “Hyper-V Replica”, a new feature coming in the next version of Windows. Skip to the 39 minute mark to see the demonstration.

http://digitalwpc.com/Videos/AllVideos/Permalink/3cb3788c-5c47-4b9e-987c-0dec4194058b/#fbid=slfi0dmNMqP

It looks like a very welcome feature that certainly will make Hyper-V even more competitive when comparing the feature set vs. price between vSphere and Hyper-V, especially with the new pricing announced by VMware.

I’ll be very curious to see if this integrates with Windows Server Failover Clustering to allow you create shared nothing clusters as you can today with 3rd party replication software, which I’ve demonstrated using SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition in an earlier blog post.

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2011/07/21/hyper-v-replica-coming-in-windows-server-%E2%80%9Cnext%E2%80%9D/

Microsoft Multi-site Cluster Users Rejoice

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It Is Now Possible To Have Automatic Failover In A 3 Node Cluster!

Microsoft recently released a patch that allows you to specify whether or not a cluster node can vote in in a majority quorum model. This is particularly useful in a multisite cluster configuration that consists of an even number of nodes.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2494036

Consider the following…

I have a two node cluster in a local site high availability and I wish to extend it to a 3rdlocation and add a single node for disaster recovery. Sound like a great plan as a multisite cluster is just about the most robust DR plan you can implement. However, you will not be able to take advantage of one of the best features of a multisite cluster – automatic recovery in the event of a site loss. If you were to lose your primary site the DR site only contains one cluster node (see Figure 1). This is just one vote out of three in the cluster so a majority cannot be obtained and Node3 will not come online automatically. The only way to make Node3 come online is to force the quorum online, which kind of defeats the purpose of multisite cluster by requiring human intervention for a failover to happen.

Figure 1 – In a typical 3 node multisite cluster if you lose the primary site the DR site cannot obtain majority so failover never occurs.
Figure 1 – In a typical 3 node multisite cluster if you lose the primary site the DR site cannot obtain majority so failover never occurs.

The only “safe” way to have automatic failover in a multisite cluster is to have an equal number of nodes in each site and to have a file share witness in a 3rd location with connectivity back to both the primary site and the DR site. This concept is a little difficult to grasp at first, so let me attempt to explain through illustrations.

Figure 2- With an even number of nodes in both locations and the file share witness in the primary site a loss of the primary site would not result in a failover as the Alternate Site would only have 2 out of 5 votes, not a majority.
Figure 2- With an even number of nodes in both locations and the file share witness in the primary site a loss of the primary site would not result in a failover as the Alternate Site would only have 2 out of 5 votes, not a majority.
Figure 3 – If the file share witness was moved to the Alternate Site a failure of the WAN would cause a false failover as the Alternate Site would form a majority and come online.
Figure 3 – If the file share witness was moved to the Alternate Site a failure of the WAN would cause a false failover as the Alternate Site would form a majority and come online.
Figure 4 – with the file share witness in a 3rd location failover will occur if the Primary Site is lost and false failovers are avoided in the case of connectivity failure between the Primary and Alternate Site.
Figure 4 – with the file share witness in a 3rd location failover will occur if the Primary Site is lost and false failovers are avoided in the case of connectivity failure between the Primary and Alternate Site.

As you can see, figure 4 represents the only reasonable configuration which supports automatic failover. However, this assumes that there are an equal number of nodes in each location. If you are stuck with the original 3-node configuration you are stuck as adding a file share witness does not help as you can never achieve a majority in the alternate site…until today! Microsoft release a patch that basically allows you to specify whether or not a node gets to vote or not. So what this means is you can build a 3-node cluster as illustrated in Figure 1, yet take advantage a file share witness in a 3rd location as illustrated in Figure 4. By simply telling one of the nodes in the Primary Site to note vote in the cluster you will allow the Alternate Site to form a majority with the file share witness and come online. Assuming connectivity to your 3rd location and Alternate Site is relatively reliable there really is no downside to the configuration shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 – by disabling the vote on Node2 you can deploy a 3-node multisite cluster with a file share witness and safely support automatic failover to the DR site. The same concept can be applied to any cluster with an odd number of nodes.
Figure 5 – by disabling the vote on Node2 you can deploy a 3-node multisite cluster with a file share witness and safely support automatic failover to the DR site. The same concept can be applied to any cluster with an odd number of nodes.

While this is a great solution, you still need that 3rd location for the file share witness. If you don’t have that 3rd location you will just have to settle for a manual switchover and keep the file share witness in the primary site if you have an even number of nodes.

The PreventQuorum switch is also included as part of this hotfix which will also be of interest to people deploying multisite clusters. Well explore that option in a future article.

Get the hot fix here…

A hotfix is available to let you configure a cluster node that does not have quorum votes in Windows Server 2008 and in Windows Server 2008 R2

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2494036

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2011/04/29/microsoft-multisite-cluster18-users-rejoice-it-is-now-possible-to-have-automatic-failover-in-a-3-node-cluster19/

SQL Server Denali And Hadron

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Microsoft’s latest version of SQL, code named Denali, is currently in CTP. One of the most anticipated feature is something called HADRON. Basically, it is has been described as mirroring 2.0. The best features of HADRON as I can see compared to mirroring as it is in 2005/2008 are as follows:

  • You can query the mirror (now known as a replica)
  • You can have more than one replica
  • Database are grouped into availability groups to ensure related databases always fail over together
  • Support for replicating more than 10 databases

If you want a great preview, check out fellow MVP Brent Ozar’s post, SQL Server Denali Rocks!

From reading Brent’s post I gather Microsoft only plans to include this in the Enterprise version of SQL. That is too bad for the many customers running SQL Server Standard as traditionally there is a significant price jump to go from Standard to Enterprise. However, that is good news for the 3rd party replication vendors out there who are providing similar functionality today on SQL 2005/2008 on Standard and Enterprise Editions.

SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition for SQL Server

While it is not an exact duplicate of HADRON, a multi-site cluster using SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition for SQL Server gives you a great solution for HA/DR without requiring shared storage. So while we wait for Denali and all the application vendors to start supporting Denali you might want to have a look at what SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition can do for you today!

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2010/12/10/sql-server-denali-and-hadron/

The Difference Between Hyper-V Live Migration And Quick Migration

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With the launch of Windows Server 2008 R2 and the interest in DataKeeper replication solutions for Hyper-V, I have been pretty busy – which is a good thing! Recently, I have been speaking with some Microsoft Gold Partners who are busy installing Hyper-V at their customer locations and looking at some of the disaster recovery options, including multi-site Hyper-V clusters with SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition. Many of the questions are the same each time and the demonstration is always the same. I figured it may be beneficial to produce a video that talks specifically about one of the questions – the difference between Live Migration and Quick Migration and when to use one vs. the other. This video that demonstrates Live Migration and Quick Migration while discussing some of the things to consider may be of interest to you.

Step-By-Step: Configuring A 2-Node Multi-Site Cluster On Windows Server 2008 R2 – Part 3

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In Part 1 of this series, I showed you how to prepare your multi-site cluster, including setting up the Node and File Share Majority Quorum. In Part 2, we saw a video example of how to integrate SteelEye DataKeeper, one of the available cluster replication solutions, with failover clustering to configure a multi-site Hyper-V failover cluster. In Part 3, we will examine how Microsoft SQL Server 2008 can be configured in a multi-site cluster with Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering and SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition.

First, why would you want to deploy a multi-site SQL server cluster? SQL Server comes with a variety of high availability options, including log shipping, replication (transactional, merge, snapshot), database mirroring and failover clusters. There is a great article that talks about the High Availability options in SQL Server 2008, so I won’t re-invent the wheel here. If you want to learn more about all of the options, have a look at this article by Ross Mistry, High Availability Options in SQL Server 2008.

If you read the article, Ross’ summary makes the following statement…

“Clearly, failover clustering is the best choice to reduce system downtime and provide higher application availability for the whole instance of SQL Server within a site; however, a failover cluster does not protect against disk failure and requires a SAN.”

What if you could have all of the benefits that Ross outlines and also protect against disk failure and eliminate the need for a SAN? Well, the good news is that is exactly what you can do by implementing a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 multi-site cluster on Windows Server 2008. SQL Server 2008 multi-site cluster may be a little bit of a misnomer. It does not necessarily need to be deployed across geographically dispersed locations. The servers could be located in the same rack, same room, same building or across continents; it really doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you are eliminating your storage as a single point of failure and if you choose to locate your cluster nodes in different physical locations then you also have built in site resiliency.

One of the most common questions and points of confusion about SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 failover clustering is support for failing across subnets. Yes, Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering does support failing between subnets for most applications, however, SQL Server 2008 is not one of those applications. As far as I know, SQL Server 2008 R2 will also not support failing between subnets when it is released. My understanding is that the SQL team is working on support for cross-subnet failover, but it will be supported sometime after SQL Server 2008 R2 is released. So, for the time being, you will have to span your subnet if you wish to separate your nodes geographically.

Now that you have determined to deploy a multi-node SQL server cluster, here are the steps you will need to follow.

CONFIGURE YOUR BASIC CLUSTER

Follow the steps in Part 1 of this series to configure a basic 2-node cluster with a Node and File Share Majority Quorum.

CONFIGURE YOUR REPLICATION

Deploying a multi-site cluster will require that you work very closely with your replication vendor during this part of the configuration. Each vendor will have very specific instructions on how to set up the replication and create the storage resources to be used in your cluster. For the purposes of this demonstration, I will use SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition to replicate the E drive from the server named PRIMARY to the server named SECONDARY. The E drive on PRIMARY and SECONDARY are just local attached volumes and not part of any SAN. As long as the E drive shows up as a local attached disk, DataKeeper can replicate it from one server to another. You can mix and match SAS, iSCSI, SAN, VHD, or any other storage type as DataKeeper is storage agnostic.

After you have configured your basic cluster as described in Part 1 of my series, run the DataKeeper setup.exe to install SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition on both nodes of the cluster. You will be prompted to enter your license key at the end of the install. Enter your license and reboot your servers when prompted. You are now ready to create your mirror. Launch the DataKeeper GUI and follow the instructions below to create your mirror.

Click on “Connect to Server”.

Figure 1 – Connect to your source and target servers
Figure 1 – Connect to your source and target servers

Enter the name of the first server. Click Connect.

Enter the name of the second server, click Connect

Now click Create Job. That will launch the Create Job wizard.

Figure 2 – Create your Job
Figure 2 – Create your Job

Give your job a name and description. These can be anything you like.

Figure 3 – Give your Job a name and description
Figure 3 – Give your Job a name and description

Choose the following:

  • Source Server – where the data will be replicated from
  • Network adapter – the network where the replication traffic will travel
  • Volume – the volume you want to replicate

Click Next to continue.

Figure 4 – Choose you source server and network to use for replication
Figure 4 – Choose you source server and network to use for replication

Choose the following:

  • Target Server – where the data will be replicated to
  • Network adapter – the network where the replication traffic will travel
  • Volume – the volume you want to replicate

Click Next to continue.

Figure 5 – Choose your target server
Figure 5 – Choose your target server

Choose the following:

  • Compression Level – If you have a 100 Mbps or faster network for replication, leave it set to none. If you have a WAN that is less that 100 Mbps, you may benefit from enabling compression. Settings somewhere in the middle tend to give you the best performance of compression vs. CPU overhead associated with enabling compression.
  • Asynchronous vs. Synchronous – Asynchronous replication is generally acceptable in most environments and is definitely required in high-latency WAN environments. I wrote a whole blog post on this topic, so if you have any questions, check out my article on Asynchronous vs. Synchronous replication.
  • Maximum bandwidth – you can think of this as a “poor man’s” QOS. If you want to ensure that replication never exceeds a certain threshold of your WAN capacity, you can put a limiter on the amount of bandwidth it can consume. Unless you have a good reason to set it, it is better off leaving it set to 0.

Click Done to create your mirror.

Figure 6 – Choose your mirror settings
Figure 6 – Choose your mirror settings

Now if you take a look at your DataKeeper GUI, it will look similar to the following.

Figure 7 – Your mirror is now created
Figure 7 – Your mirror is now created

Once you have created your mirror, you need to make your mirror available in the Microsoft Cluster “Available Storage”. There are a few ways to do this, but the most straight forward way is to use the Windows PowerShell CLI. Below is an example that shows how to take the existing mirror we just created on the E drive and add it to the cluster “Available Storage”, move it to the PRIMARY node and bring it in-service

Import-Module FailoverClusters

Add-ClusterResource -Name “DataKeeper Volume E” -ResourceType “DataKeeper Volume” -Group “Available Storage”

Get-ClusterResource “DataKeeper Volume E” | Set-ClusterParameter VolumeLetter E

Move-ClusterGroup “Available Storage” -Node primary

Start-ClusterResource “DataKeeper Volume E”

For more information on PowerShell and the available commands for use with Failover Clustering, check out this great blog post from Symon Perriman of the Microsoft Failover Clustering Team.

http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/archive/2008/12/20/9243367.aspx

You are now going to repeat the above steps to add any additional mirrors that you will use in your cluster. In our case, we are going to create a mirror of the F drive and use it to cluster the MSDTC. After you have added your additional mirrors and added them to Available Storage, your DataKeeper GUI should look something like this.

Figure 8 – After adding the second Job for the MSDTC resource
Figure 8 – After adding the second Job for the MSDTC resource

And your Failover Cluster Manager GUI should look like this.

Figure 9 – After adding the second DataKeeper resource
Figure 9 – After adding the second DataKeeper resource

CLUSTERING MSDTC

IMPORTANT NOTE – There is a hotfix that is required in order to support DTC with 3rd party disk resources.  Please see the following KB article and apply the howfix to all cluster nodes.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978476

SQL 2008 is very dependent upon MSDTC, so it is highly recommended that you cluster the MSDTC resource before you cluster your SQL resource. The following articles are provided for your reference for configuration and management of your MSDTC resource.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770748(WS.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771540(WS.10).aspx

You will start by opening the Failover Cluster Manager GUI and then choose “Configure a Service or Application”.

Figure 10 – Creating a MSDTC resource
Figure 10 – Creating a MSDTC resource

You will then choose “Distributed Transaction Coordinator” and click Next

Figure 11 – Choose your Service or Application
Figure 11 – Choose your Service or Application

Give the MSDTC resource a name and unique IP address. These should be unique to MSDTC and not the same as you will use later when you create your SQL resource.

Figure 12 – Choose a name and IP address
Figure 12 – Choose a name and IP address

Choose the volume where you will store the data for the MSDTC resource. In our case we are choosing the replicated F drive.

Figure 13 – Choose a dedicated volume for the MSDTC resource
Figure 13 – Choose a dedicated volume for the MSDTC resource

Confirm your information and click Next to continue.

Figure 14 – Click Next to configure the DTC resource
Figure 14 – Click Next to configure the DTC resource

Congratulations, you have successfully configured the DTC resource. Click Finish.

Figure 15 – A successfully configured DTC resource
Figure 15 – A successfully configured DTC resource

We are just about ready to begin the installation of the first node of the SQL Server Cluster, however, there is one thing we need to do in preparation – Slip Stream SQL 2008 SP1 onto the SQL Server 2008 RTM install media.

SLIP STREAM SQL SP1 ONTO YOUR SQL 2008 INSTALL MEDIA

What I have discovered is that SQL Server 2008 will not install on Windows Server 2008 R2 without first slipstreaming SQL Server 2008 SP1 onto your SQL 2008 install media. Here is a great article that describes how to slipstream SQL Server 2008 RTM and Service Pack 1. After I read that article and successfully slipstream SP1 onto SQL 2008 RTM, I found the following Microsoft KB article that describes the same procedure. You may get an error that looks like the following if you try to install SQL without first slipstreaming SP1 onto the media.

There was an error setting private property ‘RequireKerberos’ to value ‘1’

I followed the instructions detailed in the first article and copied my SQL 2008 with SP1 install to the C:\ drive of both nodes in my cluster. In the instructions below, I will do the installation from the local disk of each cluster node.

INSTALLING YOUR FIRST CLUSTER NODE

Now that you have your SQL Server 2008 SP1 installation media ready to go, you are ready to install your first SQL node. There is one major “gotcha” when it comes to installing SQL on a multi-node cluster. In order for you to install SQL on a multi-node cluster, you must first pass the Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster validate process. Unfortunately, a multi-site cluster is exempt from passing the storage related test, so you never are able to actually “pass” the validation as far as SQL is concerned. It took a little investigation on my part, but what I have come to find is that there is a command line parameter that allows you to skip the validation test on the SQL 2008 installation. Here is the command line.

Setup /SkipRules=Cluster_VerifyForErrors /Action=InstallFailoverCluster

To launch the SQL setup, open a Command window, browse to your SQL 2008 with SP1 install directory and type the command as shown below.

If everything goes as planned, you should see the screen below. Click OK to continue.

Enter your product key and click Next

Figure 17 – Enter your product key
Figure 17 – Enter your product key

Accept the license agreement and click Next

Click Install to install the Setup Support Files

At the end of the Setup for the Support Files you will receive a warning. Click on Show details and you will see the message below. You can click Next, ignoring this message since it is expected in a multi-site or non-shared storage cluster.

Figure 18 – The warning is expected in a multi-site or non-shared storage cluster
Figure 18 – The warning is expected in a multi-site or non-shared storage cluster

Choose the features you would like to install and click Next. Leave the “Shared Feature” directory set to the C drive as the SQL binaries should not be installed on the replicated volume.

Figure 19 – Choose your features
Figure 19 – Choose your features

On the next screen, you will choose a network name for your SQL Server. This will be the name that all of the clients will connect to. Assuming this is the default instance, leave the Instance ID and Instance root directory set to the defaults. Do not move the instance root directory to the replicated volume.

Figure 20 – Choose your SQL Network Name
Figure 20 – Choose your SQL Network Name

It is recommended that you have separate domain accounts for SQLServer and SQLAgent. You can take the time to create these accounts now if you have not already done so. These accounts require no special permissions, as this install process will give them the permissions that they require.

Confirm you have enough disk space and click Next to continue.

Choose the default settings to allow a new cluster resource group named “SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)” to be created.

Figure 21 – Allow the wizard to create a new cluster resource group for you
Figure 21 – Allow the wizard to create a new cluster resource group for you

Choose a replicated volume that is still available, in our case the E:\ drive. Click Next to continue.

Figure 22 – Choose your replicated volume
Figure 22 – Choose your replicated volume

Now you will choose the IP address you want associated with the SQL cluster resource. You could leave it set to use DHCP if you wish.

Figure 23 – Choose your SQL cluster IP address
Figure 23 – Choose your SQL cluster IP address

Choose your security settings and click Next

Add any SQL Server administrators and choose your authentication mode and then click Next

Choose your Error and Usage Reporting options and click Next

You will once again see some warnings related to the validation process. You can ignore those messages as they are to be expected in a multi-site SQL Server cluster.

Click Install to begin the installation process

If everything installs as expected, you should see the following screens. Click Next then Close to finish the installation.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed the first node of your multi-site SQL Server Cluster. Now we will install the second node of the cluster.

INSTALL THE SECOND CLUSTER NODE

Installing the second cluster node is similar to installing the first node. We need to run SQL Setup once again from the command line so that we can skip the Validate process. So, from the 2nd node, open up your command prompt and run the following command.

  1. Install SQL 2008 SP1 (merged setup) on the 2nd node using the following command:

    Setup /SkipRules=Cluster_VerifyForErrors /Action=AddNode /INSTANCENAME=”MSSQLSERVER”

*Note: This assumes you installed the default instance on the 1st node

That will launch the install wizard as shown below. Click OK to continue.

Enter your product key and click next.

Accept the license terms and click Next

Click install to install the Setup Support files.

You can once again ignore the warning that some cluster validation tests have been skipped. This is to be expected in a multi-site cluster and non-shared storage clusters.

Verify you are adding the node to the right instance and click Next.

Add the passwords to the service accounts and click Next

Choose your Error and Usage Reporting options and click Next

Once again, ignore the warning about the skipped operations.

Click Install to begin the installation process.

If everything goes as expected, you should see the following screen.

Now that you have a fully functional two node cluster, you probably should testing things out by doing some manual switchovers. Right click on the resource and choose “Move to node SECONDARY”.

If everything is configured properly, your Failover Cluster GUI should look as follows.

CONCLUSION

I believe that SQL clusters with replicated storage make a lot of sense. Storage has always been a single point of failure of traditional clusters. You can eliminate that single point of failure by deploying a SQL Server cluster with replicated storage from SteelEye or any other Microsoft Multi-Site Cluster replication partner. I hope you found this article informative. If you have any questions or suggestions, please add your comments!

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2009/10/07/step-by-step-configuring-a-2-node-multi-site-cluster-on-windows-server-2008-r2-%E2%80%93-part-3/