June 5, 2015 at 5:05 am
I have a question on this set-up and the ways on which testing is agreed with Microsoft.
This is an interesting email -
It is an active passive cluster which doesn’t allow any testing.
All instances have to be failed over together, we aren’t allowed to just failover 1 even for testing purposes.
Node 1 is the active node and we can failover to node 2 for 30 days free of charge but services have to then be failed back.
We need to run the cluster with node 1 as the primary node always and 2 just use for failover testing or for less than 30 day periods whilst performing cluster patch upgrades etc.
Now l am sure we could fail over 1 instances at a time for testing and diagnosing issues plus if add a new instance that's not production to get to the platform level as the rest of the instances this would avoid taking production down in the fail over process
can any one shed some light on this please ?
June 5, 2015 at 5:35 am
so what's your question?
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"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉
June 5, 2015 at 7:55 am
Is this correct that one a Active / Passive config you can not have a install test or any instance on the inactive node at any time they all need to be on the same Node.
There is no tolerance from Microsoft towards set-up testing at all?
Even if you have production instances on the active node and the new install and to be patched instance on the inactive node!
Just some points of view would be grand.
June 5, 2015 at 10:02 am
this is something you'll need to cover with your licensing rep, if you install an instance on a passive node and leave it there it's no longer passive
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"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉
June 5, 2015 at 1:44 pm
Your question is quite vague and kinda weird, but I think I get it..
1. The provider is telling the truth; Microsoft licensing allows you to maintain 1 primary server and 1 passive fail-over server (this cannot be used for testing, development, reporting, etc. It's completely quiet unless the other server goes offline). They likely have the fail-over partner on an unlicensed host.
2. With a production license you are entitled to install SQL Server for development and testing INTERNALLY. This does not apply to your situation as you are not an internal employee of the hosting company.
3. Consider using SQL Server express for local development, the current version has a 10GB size limit. If that is not enough, you can purchase a license for SQL Server Developer edition; it's very reasonably priced and has all the same features that Enterprise edition does.
4.Your development and test environment should be completely disconnected from production, from what you've described I am not sure that is the case. Perform a full COPY-ONLY backup on the production database, restore it to your development server, and work from that.
Hope that helps!
June 8, 2015 at 5:06 am
Hi Thanks for the reply s.
I think i have it understood now as its a Passive/Active at no time can you have two active nodes even if this is for the install of a new instance they all have to be failed over then complete the set-up stages config tweak etc. as in all instances on one Node only.
Seems abit crazy if its just for set-up and config but l see the argument 😉
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