Clustering and Virtualization

  • Are there any issues with using VM Ware and then clustering SQL Server on top of it for High Availability? Is it better to do the traditional windows clustering? Please forgive me if I asked the question incorrectly. I'm not familiar with VMs. I believe the environment will be Windows Server 2008, VMWare and then we want to install SQL Server 2008 R2. I'm reading on my own and from what i can tell clustering on Hyper-V is supported, but I don't know if VM Ware is or if it's a good idea to cluster SQL Server on VM Ware.

    Thanks for the help!

  • I regularly use VMWare for clustering Windows 2008 and SQL Server. You will need to get a handle on the performance requirements as not every system is suitable for virtualisation. MSCS works fairly well under ESX server and VMWare server.

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    "Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉

  • A word of warning about running SQL on VMWare. I have been speaking to a SQL DBA who has been working for a large UK bank who has run in to trouble running SQL on a VM. This issue occurred with a "brown out" and SQL could not finish committing to its databases. He said they had a number of DBA's looking at the problem but they could just not get the "SYSTEM" databases backup and running. It ended up with a complete SQL rebuild. They may have even restored a snapshot I guess and then restored the data DB's from backup but the long and short of it the system needed to be "refreshed" a databases restored.

    Have a google of it, I did find an article about it but it took a little bit of looking.

    On the flip side (which is why we got on to the subject) we run a number of SQL installations on a VM's that seem to run OK. Saying that, these servers only run one or two databases for a couple of applications each.

  • Taggs, thanks for the info.

    Perry, have you run into any issues with failover on the VMs? And if you don't mind me asking, could you tell me your system info? I'm trying to gather as much information as I can on the issue.

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