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marvinc
Seasoned But Casual Onlooker
USA
46 Posts
Status: offline |
 Posted - 08/11/2008 : 12:49:11 AM
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Anyone have any info or direction they can provide for setting up a MS Cluster between two VM's? I've got two VM's that sit in the same HP blade chassis. I'm sure I'll have two move one of the VM's to another chassis but I'm having a hard time grasping how to set up the heartbeat connection. Should I add another network card to the chassis or should I set up something like a VLAN for the private network?
Any direction on this is appreciated.
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joe_elway
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Ireland
6673 Posts
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arek73
Moderator
Poland
4592 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/11/2008 : 09:08:46 AM
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| It would also help to know what you are trying to achieve. If by any chance you are running ESX and Virtual Center, you might want to check out HA and DRS first. |
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Arek |
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marvinc
Seasoned But Casual Onlooker
USA
46 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/11/2008 : 10:35:35 AM
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We're not running HA, DRS, or VI. We have licensed versions of both 3.01 and 3.5. The plan is to build an active/passive MS Cluster for two VM's running SQL 2005. The VM's currently reside in the same HP blade chassis and if necessary I plan on moving one to anothr blade and creating the heartbeat between the two. I'm just not sure of the best way to do this.
Let me know if I've missed out anything.
tia |
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arek73
Moderator
Poland
4592 Posts
Status: offline |
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marvinc
Seasoned But Casual Onlooker
USA
46 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/11/2008 : 3:26:11 PM
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I mispoke and forgot that both of my VM's are on separate host servers. From reading this document it looks as though my current setup will have me "clustering across boxes". I think this is the correct option as the goal is to have failover in case one VM fails. The question I have on this solution is that aside from the quorum I don't need shared storage. So I'm not sure if I should move the VM's to the same host server and go with the "Cluster in a Box" solution.
Any responses appreciated.
tia |
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deandownsouth
Old Timer
USA
415 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/11/2008 : 4:50:06 PM
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"So I'm not sure if I should move the VM's to the same host server and go with the "Cluster in a Box" solution."
I'm not sure why you would bother doing clustering if you have both nodes of the cluster on the same physical host. The only reason to do that would to test clustering, or learn clustering. Clustering is an High Availability configuration, so putting both nodes in such a way that a single system failure from the host or host OS will bring down the entire cluster is not providing anything close to HA. All you are really getting is HA from SQL Server's standpoint for OS things like Windows patching. You say "...in case one VM fails." Since you are removing all hardware and driver issues, a Windows VM is pretty stable in a virtual environment, so although it is possible to have problems, those are more likely to happen as result of patching than anything else-and using internal or external snapshots is a good way to mitigate that, or better yet, since you are running in virtual, it is just as easy to create a dev environment that mirrors your production system and test the patches there.
As Arek says, if High Availability is what you are striving for, running your VM in a VI 3 HA/DRS cluster is a much better solution-unless you can't tolerate the few minutes it takes to bring the VM back online in the (rare) case that an ESX host goes belly up. Many MSCS, Veritas HA, and Oracle RAC customers are moving from those solutions to an HA/DRS solution since it takes the complexity out of clustering the OS and application in the VM. |
Mark Dean
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marvinc
Seasoned But Casual Onlooker
USA
46 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 09:08:42 AM
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There lies the problem: we don't have the licensed HA\DRS options. So I'm unable to set up a HA/DRS cluster. All we have is a licensed version of ESX Server. I'm trying to convince management to look into this but it all boils down to money and may not happen this quarter. So my question is what options, if any, do I have to make this work? Is there anything documented that speaks against setting up a MS cluster between two VM's that reside on separate ESX host servers? Also, other than the quorum there is to be no shared storage.
tia |
Edited by - marvinc on 08/12/2008 09:28:39 AM |
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Playwell
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Netherlands
4061 Posts
Status: online |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 09:29:34 AM
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| Iscsi drives, and add the drives to the VM as mapped devices. That could work in theory but never tested it. |
'People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. '
Quote by Isaac Asimov |
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deandownsouth
Old Timer
USA
415 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 09:54:24 AM
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"Is there anything documented that speaks against setting up a MS cluster between two VM's that reside on separate ESX host servers?
No, that is the best way to do it, you do not have a single point of failure for the entire cluster.
"Also, other than the quorum there is to be no shared storage."
So, where is the database going to reside? If it is on one of the ESX hosts, then you're back to a single point of failure for the entire cluster. |
Mark Dean
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marvinc
Seasoned But Casual Onlooker
USA
46 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 10:50:27 AM
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There's no SQL involved in this setup as the servers will mainly be used for service transactions. So I simply need to set them up in a cluster and everything's handled by the applications.
I hope this answers your question. |
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Playwell
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Netherlands
4061 Posts
Status: online |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 11:03:58 AM
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| you can set up clustering with a local quorum. You do not HAVE to have shared storage, but it's better though |
'People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. '
Quote by Isaac Asimov |
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marvinc
Seasoned But Casual Onlooker
USA
46 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 11:12:26 AM
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"Iscsi drives, and add the drives to the VM as mapped devices. That could work in theory but never tested it."
I take it adding another virtual disk and making it the quorum wouldn't be a good idea? The other part of this is setting up and configuring the networks between the host servers, which sit in separate blade chassis.
tia |
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deandownsouth
Old Timer
USA
415 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 11:12:28 AM
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Oh, I got confused by this line:
"The plan is to build an active/passive MS Cluster for two VM's running SQL 2005"
I'm not a SQL anything expert, so are these front ends to the database? |
Mark Dean
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marvinc
Seasoned But Casual Onlooker
USA
46 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 11:21:43 AM
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| My apologies for that mistype but from what I understand the servers have no interaction with a database. |
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deandownsouth
Old Timer
USA
415 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 12:23:57 PM
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| Then you are golden my friend. I have quite a few customers that run front end applications across a number of ESX hosts for fault tolerance and load balancing. Seeing how you don't have HA/DRS, then clustering (even if it's just NLB) between two hosts is the way to go to get HA. |
Mark Dean
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Playwell
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Netherlands
4061 Posts
Status: online |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 1:34:16 PM
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I take it adding another virtual disk and making it the quorum wouldn't be a good idea? The other part of this is setting up and configuring the networks between the host servers, which sit in separate blade chassis.
tia
[/quote]
Uh, no that would be not a good idea since this disk would not be known to Windows as a 'shared disk' which is needed to have a cluster. Both nodes have to have access to the disk. |
'People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. '
Quote by Isaac Asimov |
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Cluster on VM's
