Reminder: Win2008R2 SQL Clustering

Yet another reminder / quick fire how to post.  This time Windows 2008 R2 Clustering ready for a clustered SQL install.

In it's latest guise, Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 clustering is completely different beast from a Windows 2000 or 2003 cluster. 

For full details of what's new in 2008 Clustering, have a look at this technet library article.





Pre-Requisites
So you need to build a cluster? OK.  Here is what you need:

• Some shared storage (SAN / NAS / ISCSI etc) to hold data that is to be hosted by cluster
• Small shared storage for Quorum Disk (MS KB208345 states minimum 500Mb for Quorum)
• A hostname and IP address for the Cluster
• A hostname and IP address for each MSDTC instance
• A hostname and IP address for each SQL instance

SQL Cluster will require individual per instance shared storage areas for:

• SQL Data
• SQL Transaction Logs
• SQL Database Backups
• MSDTC (Again a minimum of 500Mb should be fine)

How to Configure
A movie tells more than a thousand words.  Here is how to create a Windows 2008 / 2008 R2 cluster and how to get around some of the more common problems:


Getting SQL and 2008 Failover Clustering to Play Together Nicely
The following is taken from this MSDN blog post:

While installing SQL Server 2008 the DBA will face following warning in the installation window:

This is because the domain / production network card is not the first bound network card. This will cause domain operations to run slowly and can cause timeouts that result in failures.

Use the command to enumerate network card GUID's:

wmic nicconfig get description, SettingID > C:\nicconfig.txt

Open C:\nicconfig.txt and regedit to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Tcpip\Linkage\Bind

Cut and paste GUID's so that production network card (or NIC team) is at the to of the list.  Save key and confirm binding is correct via ipconfig/all.

Ready for SQL install!

- Chris