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Category: Clustering

Cluster Shared Volumes

Published 2016-07-08 by Kevin Feasel

Edwin Sarmiento discusses Cluster Shared Volumes within Failover Cluster Instances:

CSVs still use the concept of a shared disk but with an added layer of abstraction. Instead of having the shared disk be accessible to only one WSFC node at a time, all of the WSFC nodes have their own logical paths to it. This is made possible thru the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Since the WSFC nodes are connected to each other thru the heartbeat network (it’s another reason to have a dedicated network for inter-node communication,) CSV can take advantage of this route to the shared storage to send I/O commands.

Don’t be confused. While all of the WSFC nodes have both physical and logical paths to the shared disk, only the node that owns the SQL Server clustered resource can own it, just like when using traditional shared disks. In other words, the owner node dictates how to send the I/O commands – either directly thru its own access path or thru the heartbeat network. This is why you won’t see any direct dependency on the shared disk if you look at the Dependency Report. It also means that the failover process will be faster with CSVs.

If you’re using SQL Server 2014 or later and have built a cluster, check this feature out and see if it fits in your environment.

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Trust Relationship Failed

Published 2016-01-21 by Kevin Feasel

Chrissy LeMaire ran into a trust issue one one node of a cluster:

You know what’s scary as hell? When one node of an important cluster loses its trust relationship with the domain and you see the error “the trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed”. That happened to me late last year with one of my SQL Server 2008 R2 nodes. The scary part was that I just didn’t know what to expect. The fix could be simple, or it could require a node rebuild.

Trust no one.

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Installing SSRS On An Existing Clutered Instance

Published 2015-12-30 by Kevin Feasel

Corey Beck shows how to install SQL Server Reporting Services on an instance which sits on a Windows Failover Cluster:

You will also notice this is the end of your road for this installation without getting a success on this rule since the ‘Next’ button is grayed out.

Sure, you could go back and just create a new instance in the process to install SSRS on this node, but there has to be another way, right?  If only we could skip this rule in the installation….

We can using command prompt!

Knowing how to install SQL Server from the command line (or Powershell) is important; this is just one reason why.

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Cluster Name Changes

Published 2015-12-08 by Kevin Feasel

Matt Slocum ran into a production issue with a cluster name that changed:

Next is just a simple matter of updating the registry value.  I launched Registry Editor (RegEdit.exe) and navigated to HKLM > Software > Microsoft > Microsoft SQL Server > MSSQL12.MSSQLSERVER > Cluster
Note: MSSQL12.MSSQLSERVER will vary based on SQL version (SQL 2012 is “MSSQL11”) and instance name (“MSSQLSERVER” is the default instance and named instances are the actual instance name instead of “MSSQLSERVER”).

Within the Cluster key I updated the value of ClusterName to match what was specified in Failover Cluster Manager

This is a good diagnosis and resolution of an issue.

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