March 23, 2015 at 9:52 am
I'm not sure if a DBA form or a Windows Server forum is the right place for this question, but I thought I'd give this a try.
I'm wanting to implement AlwaysOn, and while I feel comfortable with the AlwaysOn / DAG setup, I have never had to implement clustering before, so am finding this to be a learning curve. I'm also noticing most of the AlwaysOn articles out there are done with SQL 2012 on Windows Server 2008R2. I'm going to be using SQL 2012/ Server 2012 R2, which I see has some cool new quorum stuff on it.
What I'm wanting to do is have a multi-site cluster set up with a minimum number of nodes possible and still have the ability to have a quorum and keep my cluster alive in the event of a total loss of a site. Was wondering is someone with more experience could tell me if I'm thinking about this right and give me pointers on how to configure the cluster quorum settings.
So what I would like to do is have an "A" site which will be my preferred primary site, and a "B" site which will be our "HA" site each with a single node, and a fileshare witness at the "A" site.
The way I understand things, this will allow the cluster to stay up if either of the SQL nodes die because the fileshare witness will be able to vote and keep the quorum alive. It will also cover me in the case of a loss of connectivity between the two sites - the "A" site will have a quorum because of the fileshare witness, and the "B" site will shut down. My question is, what happens if the entire "A" site were to go down (i.e. a power outage, total SAN failure, massive earthquake swallows the entire building, etc.). I'm thinking the "B" site will need to be manually brought online in this situation because it won't have a quorum. Is there a way to configure this to have the "B" site automatically assume the role of the primary without having a 2nd DB node at the "B" site?
Thanks in advance for any pointers you may have.
The Redneck DBA
March 23, 2015 at 11:39 am
The Redneck DBA (3/23/2015)
I have never had to implement clustering before, so am finding this to be a learning curve. I'm also noticing most of the AlwaysOn articles out there are done with SQL 2012 on Windows Server 2008R2. I'm going to be using SQL 2012/ Server 2012 R2, which I see has some cool new quorum stuff on it.
Please see my stairway to AlwaysOn series on this site starting at this link
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/FCI/107536/[/url]
The Redneck DBA (3/23/2015)
So what I would like to do is have an "A" site which will be my preferred primary site, and a "B" site which will be our "HA" site each with a single node, and a fileshare witness at the "A" site.
ideally the witness would be on a 3rd site, in the absence of this better to have it on Prod and certainly not DR.
The Redneck DBA (3/23/2015)
The way I understand things, this will allow the cluster to stay up if either of the SQL nodes die because the fileshare witness will be able to vote and keep the quorum alive. It will also cover me in the case of a loss of connectivity between the two sites - the "A" site will have a quorum because of the fileshare witness, and the "B" site will shut down.
Yes and yes
The Redneck DBA (3/23/2015)
My question is, what happens if the entire "A" site were to go down (i.e. a power outage, total SAN failure, massive earthquake swallows the entire building, etc.). I'm thinking the "B" site will need to be manually brought online in this situation because it won't have a quorum.
Yes, you would have to force start the cluster.
The Redneck DBA (3/23/2015)
Is there a way to configure this to have the "B" site automatically assume the role of the primary without having a 2nd DB node at the "B" site?Thanks in advance for any pointers you may have.
No, not without a 3rd site for the witness
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