Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions 8.0.2 HA and DR Solutions Guide for Microsoft SQL Server - Windows
- Section I. Getting started with Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions for SQL Server
- Introducing SFW HA and the VCS agents for SQL Server
- About the Veritas InfoScale solutions for monitoring SQL Server
- How application availability is achieved in a physical environment
- How is application availability achieved in a VMware virtual environment
- Managing storage using VMware virtual disks
- Notes and recommendations
- Modifying the ESXDetails attribute
- How VCS monitors storage components
- Shared storage - if you use NetApp filers
- Shared storage - if you use SFW to manage cluster dynamic disk groups
- Shared storage - if you use Windows LDM to manage shared disks
- Non-shared storage - if you use SFW to manage dynamic disk groups
- Non-shared storage - if you use Windows LDM to manage local disks
- Non-shared storage - if you use VMware storage
- What must be protected in an SQL Server environment
- About the VCS agents for SQL Server
- About the VCS agent for SQL Server Database Engine
- About the VCS agent for SQL Server FILESTREAM
- About the VCS GenericService agent for SQL Server Agent service and Analysis service
- About the agent for MSDTC service
- About the monitoring options
- Typical SQL Server configuration in a VCS cluster
- Typical SQL Server disaster recovery configuration
- SQL Server sample dependency graph
- MSDTC sample dependency graph
- Deployment scenarios for SQL Server
- Workflows in the Solutions Configuration Center
- Reviewing the active-passive HA configuration
- Reviewing the prerequisites for a standalone SQL Server
- Reviewing a standalone SQL Server configuration
- Reviewing the MSDTC configuration
- VCS campus cluster configuration
- Reviewing the campus cluster configuration
- VCS Replicated Data Cluster configuration
- Reviewing the Replicated Data Cluster configuration
- About setting up a Replicated Data Cluster configuration
- Disaster recovery configuration
- Reviewing the disaster recovery configuration
- Notes and recommendations for cluster and application configuration
- Configuring the storage hardware and network
- Configuring disk groups and volumes for SQL Server
- About disk groups and volumes
- Prerequisites for configuring disk groups and volumes
- Considerations for a fast failover configuration
- Considerations for converting existing shared storage to cluster disk groups and volumes
- Considerations when creating disks and volumes for campus clusters
- Considerations for volumes for a Volume Replicator configuration
- Considerations for disk groups and volumes for multiple instances
- Sample disk group and volume configuration
- MSDTC sample disk group and volume configuration
- Viewing the available disk storage
- Creating a dynamic disk group
- Adding disks to campus cluster sites
- Creating volumes for high availability clusters
- Creating volumes for campus clusters
- About managing disk groups and volumes
- Configuring the cluster using the Cluster Configuration Wizard
- Installing SQL Server
- About installing and configuring SQL Server
- About installing multiple SQL Server instances
- Verifying that the SQL Server databases and logs are moved to shared storage
- About installing SQL Server for high availability configuration
- About installing SQL Server on the first system
- About installing SQL Server on additional systems
- Creating a SQL Server user-defined database
- Completing configuration steps in SQL Server
- Introducing SFW HA and the VCS agents for SQL Server
- Section II. Configuring SQL Server in a physical environment
- Configuring SQL Server for failover
- Tasks for configuring a new server for high availability
- Tasks for configuring an existing server for high availability
- About configuring the SQL Server service group
- Configuring the service group in a non-shared storage environment
- Verifying the SQL Server cluster configuration
- About the modifications required for tagged VLAN or teamed network
- Tasks for configuring MSDTC for high availability
- Configuring an MSDTC Server service group
- About configuring the MSDTC client for SQL Server
- About the VCS Application Manager utility
- Viewing DTC transaction information
- Modifying a SQL Server service group to add VMDg and MountV resources
- Determining additional steps needed
- Configuring campus clusters for SQL Server
- Configuring Replicated Data Clusters for SQL Server
- Tasks for configuring Replicated Data Clusters
- Creating the primary system zone for the application service group
- Creating a parallel environment in the secondary zone
- Setting up security for Volume Replicator
- Setting up the Replicated Data Sets (RDS)
- Configuring a RVG service group for replication
- Creating the RVG service group
- Configuring the resources in the RVG service group for RDC replication
- Configuring the IP and NIC resources
- Configuring the VMDg or VMNSDg resources for the disk groups
- Modifying the DGGuid attribute for the new disk group resource in the RVG service group
- Configuring the VMDg or VMNSDg resources for the disk group for the user-defined database
- Adding the Volume Replicator RVG resources for the disk groups
- Linking the Volume Replicator RVG resources to establish dependencies
- Deleting the VMDg or VMNSDg resource from the SQL Server service group
- Configuring the RVG Primary resources
- Configuring the primary system zone for the RVG service group
- Setting a dependency between the service groups
- Adding the nodes from the secondary zone to the RDC
- Adding the nodes from the secondary zone to the RVG service group
- Configuring secondary zone nodes in the RVG service group
- Configuring the RVG service group NIC resource for fail over (VMNSDg only)
- Configuring the RVG service group IP resource for failover
- Configuring the RVG service group VMNSDg resources for fail over
- Adding nodes from the secondary zone to the SQL Server service group
- Configuring the zones in the SQL Server service group
- Configuring the application service group IP resource for fail over (VMNSDg only)
- Configuring the application service group NIC resource for fail over (VMNSDg only)
- Verifying the RDC configuration
- Additional instructions for GCO disaster recovery
- Configuring disaster recovery for SQL Server
- Tasks for configuring disaster recovery for SQL Server
- Tasks for setting up DR in a non-shared storage environment
- Guidelines for installing Veritas InfoScale Enterprise and configuring the cluster on the secondary site
- Verifying your primary site configuration
- Setting up your replication environment
- Assigning user privileges (secure clusters only)
- About configuring disaster recovery with the DR wizard
- Cloning the storage on the secondary site using the DR wizard (Volume Replicator replication option)
- Creating temporary storage on the secondary site using the DR wizard (array-based replication)
- Installing and configuring SQL Server on the secondary site
- Cloning the service group configuration from the primary site to the secondary site
- Configuring the SQL Server service group in a non-shared storage environment
- Configuring replication and global clustering
- Creating the replicated data sets (RDS) for Volume Replicator replication
- Creating the Volume Replicator RVG service group for replication
- Configuring the global cluster option for wide-area failover
- Verifying the disaster recovery configuration
- Adding multiple DR sites (optional)
- Recovery procedures for service group dependencies
- Configuring DR manually without the DR wizard
- Testing fault readiness by running a fire drill
- About disaster recovery fire drills
- About the Fire Drill Wizard
- About post-fire drill scripts
- Tasks for configuring and running fire drills
- Prerequisites for a fire drill
- Preparing the fire drill configuration
- System Selection panel details
- Service Group Selection panel details
- Secondary System Selection panel details
- Fire Drill Service Group Settings panel details
- Disk Selection panel details
- Hitachi TrueCopy Path Information panel details
- HTCSnap Resource Configuration panel details
- SRDFSnap Resource Configuration panel details
- Fire Drill Preparation panel details
- Running a fire drill
- Re-creating a fire drill configuration that has changed
- Restoring the fire drill system to a prepared state
- Deleting the fire drill configuration
- Considerations for switching over fire drill service groups
- Configuring SQL Server for failover
How is application availability achieved in a VMware virtual environment
The Veritas High Availability solution for VMware employs Cluster Server (VCS) and its agent framework to monitor the state of applications and their dependent components running on the virtual machines that use non-shared storage. Specific agents are available to monitor the application, storage, and network components. Together, these agents monitor the overall health of the configured applications by running specific commands, tests, or scripts.
The storage configuration in the VMware virtual environment determines how VCS functions differently in a non-shared virtual environment. The non-shared storage configuration in the VMware virtual environment involves the VMware VMDK and RDM disks that reside on the shared datastore. This datastore is accessible to multiple virtual machines. However, the disks are attached to a single virtual machine at any given point of time. VCS provides a new storage agent "VMwareDisks" that communicates with the VMware ESX/ESXi hosts to perform the disk detach and attach operations to move the storage disk between the virtual machines, in a VCS cluster.
Note:
By default the VMwareDisks agent communicates with the ESX/ESXi host to perform the disk detach and attach operations. However, instead of the ESX/ESXi hosts you can choose to communicate with the vCenter Server to perform these operations.
See How the VMwareDisks agent communicates with the vCenter Server instead of the ESX/ESXi host.
In event of an application failure, the agents attempt to restart the application services and components for a configurable number of times. If the application fails to start, they initiate an application fail over to the failover target system. During the fail over, the VMwareDisks agent moves the storage disk to the failover target system, the network agents bring the network components online, and the application-specific agents then start the application services on the failover target system.
In case of a virtual machine fault, the VCS agents begin to fail over the application to the failover target system. The VMwareDisks agent sends a disk detach request to the ESX/ESXi host. After the detach operation is successful, the agent proceeds to attach the disks to the new failover target system.
In a scenario where the ESX/ESXi host itself faults, the VCS agents begin to fail over the application to the failover target system that resides on another host. The VMwareDisks agent communicates with the new ESX/ESXi host and initiates a disk detach operation on the faulted virtual machine. The agent then attaches the disk to the new failover target virtual machine.
In event of a failure in a site recovery configuration, the following tasks are performed for application monitoring continuity:
The virtual machines at the protected site are failed over to the recovery site.
The pre-online script defined in the form of a command in the SRM recovery plan applies the specified attribute values for the application components.
The status monitoring script retrieves the application status.
The network agents bring the network components online and the application-specific agents start the application services on the failover target system.
For details on the VCS configuration concepts and clustering topologies, refer to the Cluster Server Administrator's Guide.
For details on the application agents, refer to the application-specific agent guide.
For details on the storage agents, refer to the Cluster Server Bundled Agents Reference Guide.