Anyone here an expert on windows server clustering?

jaydeeuk1

Just a quick question. I'm getting a couple of SQL server machines, one to serve as a backup should one fail. All data will be stored on a separate SAN drive, but the two machines will be setup as raid 1.

These are the Dell r310 servers, but with 8gb ram.

Both machines will be identical, but due to how we're setting our network up the 2 spare PCI slots are to be taken up by network cards.

This leaves the built in software raid controller - the PERC s100

Now we could swap a network card for a dedicated raid controller, and get a dual ethernet card and hope that it is compatible with Windows server clustering. My hope is that the s100 chip setup with RAID 1 is compatible with Windows Server clustering, and we won't run in to problems... Anyone confirm this? Or would I be much better off going with hardware raid and using a dual ethernet port card?

S0litaire

I'd prefer hardware raid myself (software raid is just too iffy when it comes to recovering from a hardware failure)
I've had problems in the past when a Motherboard fails in a server and they were using software raid! Even with an identical motherboard the software raid still didn't like the move to new hardware!

But Hardware raid was a lot easier! just plugged in the drives and controller card into a new server and was able to recover data very quickly

And i can't see a problem with the duel network cards.

tomtiddly

Hardware resilience is great and should be there but there are always times you need to reboot for security updates, unknown rubbish gets on the server etc !

I don't have a lot of experience myself but if it's just the SQL part you want highly available there is SQL cluster farm built into MS SQL. I think you just install the second server SQL telling it to join a farm...

Sorry not much help but worth a Google !

jaydeeuk1

The SQL server side I'm ok with, we have a 6 bay NAS where our data will be held, and an active/passive server. Boss reckons it a bit of a waste of cash on the hardware front with one server sitting around doing nothing, but a lot better than what we have already. Don't think they quite get how screwed we would be with the downtime we'd get on current setup.


I'm leaning towards hardware raid now, it means the budget will need a bit of a juggle, £2500 for database hardware and licenses (god bless Bizspark) was already bang on the limit, and adding the more expensive raid controller and dual intel ethernet card will push it nearer to £3k. Plus I like the idea of hot swappable drives.

Just means I'll have to go cap in hand to my boss!

Next thing to figure out... a NAS setup for my citrix xenserver data...

tomtiddly

Try eBay! You can get some brand-new boxed HP SAN arrays (e.g MSA1000) for cheap as anything, gives you loads of expansion room and great iops. We've just bought a load for developing hyper-v and mdop stuff on ...

S0litaire

How much activity will the SQL servers get?
Is it a customer facing or in-house server?

If it's large databases, Customer facing then I was just thinking you might be able to sell your boss on "Load Balancing". Using 2 servers to spread the connections to the database so user requests are handed quicker.

Then the second fallover server will be in use, and if one fails the other will still be up and running. ^_^