Always On HA Build: Drives are lost

  • I'm building an Always on configuration, so far I've built 3 X Windows 2008R2 servers with SP1 and SQL 2012 Developer edition installed.

    Each server has a C: (OS) drive and D: (data, logs, etc) local drives.

    There is no SAN involved.

    I Configured the Windows clusters and so far, all was good.

    When I enabled Always On HA and restarted the SQL Service, only the First node started. On all the other nodes the D: drive was no longer visable.

    I've not been able to find any notes on this, but is there a requirement that each node have unique Drive letters (excluding c:)?

    I worked through the MS hotlabs, and went back to check, but these are built on C: drives only with no other drives so I can't see there if this could be a requirement.

    Any one tried this and got an answer? I'm currently restoring my virtual environment and may have to rename the drives on the 2nd and 3rd node to E: and F: to get this to work.

    Cheers

    Leo

    Nothing in MS SQL Server is ever so complicated that with a little work it can't be made more complicated.

    Leo
    Nothing in life is ever so complicated that with a little work it can't be made more complicated.

  • Hi all,

    I retried my cluster build with the data drives on each node having a different drive letter, but once again after configuring the cluster only the C: Drives were on line on all 3 nodes. The D: drive was on line on the server where I was working, but the E: and F: drives, one on each of the other two nodes were off line.

    I eventually rebuilt the VMs with only a C: drive and have now got my LAB environment working and Always on HA fully configured. This however is not how one would do it in real life.

    Can anyone give me some info, or point me to info on how to configure the Windows cluster so I can have Servers A and B (and possibly C) where:

    Server A Has

    C: Local for OS and Binaries

    D:, L:, T:, E: Local Attached for data, logs, TempDB and Backups

    Server B Has

    C: Local for OS and Binaries

    F:, H:, S:, G: Local Attached for data, logs, TempDB and Backups

    Cheers

    Leo

    Leo
    Nothing in life is ever so complicated that with a little work it can't be made more complicated.

  • Leo.Miller (6/10/2012)


    ...

    I've not been able to find any notes on this, but is there a requirement that each node have unique Drive letters (excluding c:)?

    ...

    No, in fact it is recommended that the drive letters and folder structure be the same on all nodes of an AlwaysOn Availability cluster. That way, any database change, such as a filegroup change, will be synchronized on all nodes with no extra intervention.

    Sorry, with regards to your main question, I can't think of any reason why this is happening.

    __________________________________________________________________________________
    SQL Server 2016 Columnstore Index Enhancements - System Views for Disk-Based Tables[/url]
    Persisting SQL Server Index-Usage Statistics with MERGE[/url]
    Turbocharge Your Database Maintenance With Service Broker: Part 2[/url]

Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply