Creating a 2 Node SQL Server 2008 Virtual Cluster Part 1

  • Hi,

    This an excellent one.I was trying to set up a cluster in VMWare and had a problem of adding shared drives.So I found this very very helpful.But I have some problems with it if you can haelp me out...

    problem is I am using FreeNAS of following version config

    Hostname:freenas.local

    OS Version:FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE-p1

    Platform:Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 520 @ 2.40GHz

    System Time:Fri Jul 15 02:16:54 PDT 2011

    Uptime: 2:16AM up 23 mins, 0 users

    Load Average:0.00, 0.00, 0.01

    FreeNAS Build:FreeNAS-8.0-RELEASE-i386

    I cannot follow your first part becasue I doubt this version is not as yours? Could you pleaes tell me what version of FreeNAS is used for your document and how /where can I find it?

    Thank you for your help inadvance!!

  • Hi perry,

    This Link is not working it seems?

  • nalinabey (7/15/2011)


    Hi perry,

    This Link is not working it seems?

    try the link above now i have corrected it 😉

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

  • I think my earlier question may not have been clear, so I'll try to rephrase: In what situations would you want to use SQL server with the Microsoft cluster service? I understand why you might want to set up a test environment with VMs. I would like to know why you might want to use this architecture over other SQL server scale-out architectures (there seem to be a LOT of options).

    I really don't mean to beat this to death, but I really would like to know.

  • tobyteel (7/15/2011)


    I think my earlier question may not have been clear, so I'll try to rephrase: In what situations would you want to use SQL server with the Microsoft cluster service? I understand why you might want to set up a test environment with VMs. I would like to know why you might want to use this architecture over other SQL server scale-out architectures (there seem to be a LOT of options).

    I really don't mean to beat this to death, but I really would like to know.

    I'm not sure entirely why this is relevant, books online details the difference between the various HA options but we aim to please so

    Log Shipping


    commonly used to replicate a single database to a remote server for offloading of reporting applications, can also be used as a secondary failover database (manual interaction)

    Replication


    commonly used to replicate chosen parts of a database schema\data to a remote server for a variety of application (reporting, data distribution)

    Database Mirroring


    create a failover instance of a chosen database. Can also be used for reporting via the use of database snapshots. This is clustering merely at the database level

    Failover Clustering


    Primary purpose is to guard against on site hardware failures. In the event of a server loss the whole instance may be quickly resumed on another host

    For further info please check Books Online. This article aims to give users the ability to create their own SQL Server cluster from scratch and in the process gain a little knowledge of the surrounding technologies (AD, DNS, ip addressing, Windows server, etc).

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

  • I ambitiously started off trying to set up a windows cluster on VMWare and I came across your wonderful article. I am stuck on a small issue though. I am using Windows 7 and trying to power up the virtual machine. The boot image is FreeNAS as you mentioned in your article. I expected the NAS image to start the set up on power up of the Virtual machine. But nothing seems to be happening. I have little experience with VMWare. How can install the FreeNAS? Is there something that I am missing? In other words, Can you please elaborate on the following point made in your article.

    "Power on the VM and boot the ISO image accepting all defaults." How do I boot the ISO image is my question.

    Thanks,

    Aditya guthey.

  • guthey.aditya (7/18/2011)


    I ambitiously started off trying to set up a windows cluster on VMWare and I came across your wonderful article. I am stuck on a small issue though. I am using Windows 7 and trying to power up the virtual machine. The boot image is FreeNAS as you mentioned in your article. I expected the NAS image to start the set up on power up of the Virtual machine. But nothing seems to be happening. I have little experience with VMWare. How can install the FreeNAS? Is there something that I am missing? In other words, Can you please elaborate on the following point made in your article.

    "Power on the VM and boot the ISO image accepting all defaults." How do I boot the ISO image is my question.

    Thanks,

    Aditya guthey.

    Hi

    once you have created the NAS virtual machine, edit the settings for the virtual CD\DVD drive and point to the FreeNAS ISO which you should have downloaded and stored in your ISO repository. This is also the same for installing the Windows servers too.

    When creating the VM and adding a CD\DVD drive it will be set to use the host CD drive as default, you need to change this and point it to the relative ISO for the system you are installing. If you're still stuck let me know and I'll send you some more detailed screenshots. It may help you to read the VMWare Server 2.0 user guide PDF which is also available from VMWare when you obtain your download

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

  • Thanks for your prompt reply. I did exactly as you said. I even checked for permissions on the ISO folder, tried different versions of FreeNAS etc. But still getting the same issue. I guess I should be seeing the set up instructions on the console window if the image boots up successfully. But below is what I get when I click on the console window.

    Cannot access virtual machine console. The request timed out.

    The attempt to acquire a valid session ticket for "Virtual Machine" took longer than expected. If this problem persists, contact your system administrator.

    Is it because incompatibility with Windows7? Thanks again for your help.

  • Which browser are you using?

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

  • You are a genius. Thank you very much. I am able to move forward 🙂

  • 😉

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

  • Do you actually need the NAS element? I know you can create the shared storage on VM Server just by tweaking the properties of the storage so it can be shared by two virtual hosts. I did this last year while following a white paper on building an Oracle RAC on VMWare. if I can find the details I will post them.

    Nigel Moore
    ======================

  • nmoore (8/15/2011)


    Do you actually need the NAS element?

    As I explain in the beginning of the article the whole point of the article is to give the reader experience in all areas of the cluster deployment, including creating and presenting storage\LUNs to the server

    nmoore (8/15/2011)


    I know you can create the shared storage on VM Server just by tweaking the properties of the storage so it can be shared by two virtual hosts.

    If your cluster OS is Windows 2003 then yes you can, Windows 2008 however requires either FC, iSCSI or SAS storage for the shared drives. As i mentioned above it doesn't teach the user much about storage and its configurations either.

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

  • It is a good series of articles and the comment wasn't intended to be negative, I was just pointing out the possibility of settin up a VM cluster without creating a NAS server.

    Nigel Moore
    ======================

  • Can you please help here..

    I am stuck in this section "Create and Configure the NAS VM".

    "Add a 2GB virtual hard disk and a network adapter. Bind the virtual NIC to whichever virtual switch you want to use for the iSCSI network (VMNET2 in my case). Add a virtual cd drive and select the "use iso image" option and click next. Browse to the Freenas ISO image and click "Next", then click finish to complete adding the hardware.

    Power on the VM and boot the ISO image accepting all defaults. Once the NOS has booted (shown below), select option 9 from the menu."

    1) I am unable to browse to the Freenas ISO image even though I copied the contents to my ISO folder. I downloaded the latest FreeNAS image from this link.

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/files/FreeNAS-7-Stable/

    So, when I click on CD-properties-> I am unable to navigate to the ISO file.

    2) Also, while creating the Virtual machine.

    Under Hard Disk->Properties, the location is "[ISOs] NASTest/NASTest.vmdk" by default. Is this correct?

    M&M

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