SQL Server Reporting services and Veritas clustering
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Does anybody know of any issues of using SQL 2000 SQL Server Reporting services with Veritas clustering?
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In order for Veritas clustering to allow failover in the event one node goes down the resources on each box must be configured for a percentage of the nodes in the cluster. For instance, if you have two nodes, then each box much not exceed 50% of capacity during operation because when one fails to the other they must both be able to operate. I installed Oracle on a two node Veritas cluster; but modified the scripts to do the following:
start oracle using 10% of the resources
look and see if another instance is running and
if another running, decreases it's resources to 40% and increase new instance to 40% leaving 20% overhead for OS to operate.
if another instance is not running, increase resources used by this instance to 80%.
when the machine fails back to two node operation, repeat the process, first to 10% then to 80%, and up the remaining instance from 40% to 80%
So, this worked well with two nodes; but think about it if you have three, or four, or eight nodes. What is the advantage of running software in a cluster if you cannot use the horsepower of each node to its' advantage? The solution was NOT trivial and was not shared with Veritas or any other vendor. Even the concept was hard to make people understand; but when you look at how it works you will see I am right.
My configuration was in 2003, so this may be outdated; but based on the sale of Veritas to Symantec, I would say that there has been no further developments (i.e., improvments) in this area.
Veritas cluster is cheap...compared to say, a Sun cluster; but there's a reason. Symantec has been delivering the same buggy software for years - year after year, new versions with the same flaws... and you go to their site and they act like they've never heard it before... as if YOU discovered this new bug just today.
I would not recommend using Veritas clusters.
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I must have really been having a bad day yesterday. Since you really do not configure resources on SQL server like you do on Oracle, perhaps this does not really apply. If the concept of Veritas clusters meets your requirements then I would give it a try. On Oracle, where you configure several parameters specifically for the amounts you want it to use this is a very real problem; but with SQL, that takes up to 2 or 3 GB automatically, perhaps it will fail-over gracefully and adjust accordingly.
It does not change my recommendation for Veritas as a company, especially so since they were bought by Symantec. About the only thing I see as worse would be if they were subsequently bought out by CA. I have seen so many good products go to CA and die
Good luck with the cluster.
Thank-you,
David Russell
Any Cloud, Any Database, Oracle since 1982
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