New to Clustering

• krypto69

  SSChampion

  Points: 13604

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  July 16, 2009 at 9:32 am

  #132062

  I'm starting a new DBA job monday and have little expeirience with clustering. I know this location uses acitve/passive clustering and has a remote server in another state.

  How do I go about monitoring the cluster?

  Any advise on best practices, things to look out for?

  Should I setup a tool like Idera to monitor?

  Any and all advise greatly appreciated.

• Steve Jones - SSC Editor

  SSC Guru

  Points: 736494

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  July 16, 2009 at 9:56 am

  #1025753

  First start basic SQL Server monitoring. The virtual instance is what you should monitor. Here's one ref: http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1663&home

  then I'd read up on clustering to understand how it works. There are some articles on this site, some good videos at JumpStartTV (http://www.jumpstarttv.com/channel.aspx?cat=4a00c49a-6207-4ba8-952c-807481629761) , BOL, etc.

  Someone should be monitoring the Windows Event logs for cluster related items. I'd check with the Windows admins to see what they are using.

• derek-870357

  Grasshopper

  Points: 11

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  July 16, 2009 at 12:08 pm

  #1025832

  A small but helpful query is this:

  select

  @@SERVERNAME AS Instance,

  serverProperty('ComputerNamePhysicalNetBios') AS PhysicalServer

  It tells you the instance name and what PhysicalServer that the node is sitting on. I've worked it into a SSRS report so I can at a glance make sure the server hasn't rolled over for any reason.

  Also a great thing to read is Microsoft's whitepaper on fail over clustering:

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=818234dc-a17b-4f09-b282-c6830fead499&displaylang=en

• SQLBuddy123

  One Orange Chip

  Points: 28294

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  July 16, 2009 at 4:43 pm

  #1025952

  Hi Derek,

  The best way to monitor SQL server instances on a cluster is to use Cluster administrator. Its a tool on the windows machine with which you can monitor things like on which node a particular instance is running, which instance is offline for whatever reason, the resources, resource groups etc...

  Here are the links where you can get all the required information about clustering.

  1. http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetsqlserver2005.aspx?tab=webcasts&id=42454--Contains some good videos on clustering

  2. http://www.sql-server-performance.com/articles/clustering/main.aspx ---This also has the best practises article in it.

  3. http://www.mssqltips.com/category.asp?catid=11-- Has arrticles on Cluster Administrator

  4. Also if possible read the following excellent book on clustering

  " Pro SQL Server 2005 High Availability ---By Allan Hirt"

  Thank You,

  Best Regards,

  SQLBuddy.