Configure your replication

Deploying a multi-site cluster will require that you work very closely with your replication vendor during this part of the configuration. Each vendor will have very specific instructions on how to set up the replication and create the storage resources to be used in your cluster. For the purposes of this demonstration, I will use SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition to replicate the E drive from the server named PRIMARY to the server named SECONDARY. The E drive on PRIMARY and SECONDARY are just local attached volumes and not part of any SAN. As long as the E drive shows up as a local attached disk, DataKeeper can replicate it from one server to another. You can mix and match SAS, iSCSI, SAN, VHD, or any other storage type as DataKeeper is storage agnostic.

After you have configured your basic cluster as described in Part 1 of my series, run the DataKeeper setup.exe to install SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition on both nodes of the cluster. You will be prompted to enter your license key at the end of the install. Enter your license and reboot your servers when prompted. You are now ready to create your mirror. Launch the DataKeeper GUI and follow the instructions below to create your mirror.

Click on “Connect to Server”.

Figure 1 – Connect to your source and target servers

Enter the name of the first server. Click Connect.

Enter the name of the second server, click Connect

Now click Create Job. That will launch the Create Job wizard.

Figure 2 – Create your Job

Give your job a name and description. These can be anything you like.

Figure 3 – Give your Job a name and description

Choose the following:

Source Server – where the data will be replicated from
Network adapter – the network where the replication traffic will travel
Volume – the volume you want to replicate

Click Next to continue.

Figure 4 – Choose you source server and network to use for replication

Choose the following:

Target Server – where the data will be replicated to
Network adapter – the network where the replication traffic will travel
Volume – the volume you want to replicate

Click Next to continue.

Figure 5 – Choose your target server

Choose the following:

Compression Level – If you have a 100 Mbps or faster network for replication, leave it set to none. If you have a WAN that is less that 100 Mbps, you may benefit from enabling compression. Settings somewhere in the middle tend to give you the best performance of compression vs. CPU overhead associated with enabling compression.
Asynchronous vs. Synchronous – Asynchronous replication is generally acceptable in most environments and is definitely required in high-latency WAN environments. I wrote a whole blog post on this topic, so if you have any questions, check out my article on Asynchronous vs. Synchronous replication.
Maximum bandwidth – you can think of this as a “poor man’s” QOS. If you want to ensure that replication never exceeds a certain threshold of your WAN capacity, you can put a limiter on the amount of bandwidth it can consume. Unless you have a good reason to set it, it is better off leaving it set to 0.

Click Done to create your mirror.

Figure 6 – Choose your mirror settings

Now if you take a look at your DataKeeper GUI, it will look similar to the following.

Figure 7 – Your mirror is now created

Once you have created your mirror, you need to make your mirror available in the Microsoft Cluster “Available Storage”. There are a few ways to do this, but the most straight forward way is to use the Windows PowerShell CLI. Below is an example that shows how to take the existing mirror we just created on the E drive and add it to the cluster “Available Storage”, move it to the PRIMARY node and bring it in-service

Import-Module FailoverClusters

Add-ClusterResource -Name “DataKeeper Volume E” -ResourceType “DataKeeper Volume” -Group “Available Storage”

Get-ClusterResource “DataKeeper Volume E” | Set-ClusterParameter VolumeLetter E

Move-ClusterGroup “Available Storage” -Node primary

Start-ClusterResource “DataKeeper Volume E”

For more information on PowerShell and the available commands for use with Failover Clustering, check out this great blog post from Symon Perriman of the Microsoft Failover Clustering Team.

http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/archive/2008/12/20/9243367.aspx

You are now going to repeat the above steps to add any additional mirrors that you will use in your cluster. In our case, we are going to create a mirror of the F drive and use it to cluster the MSDTC. After you have added your additional mirrors and added them to Available Storage, your DataKeeper GUI should look something like this.

Figure 8 – After adding the second Job for the MSDTC resource

And your Failover Cluster Manager GUI should look like this.

Figure 9 – After adding the second DataKeeper resource

Clustering MSDTC

IMPORTANT NOTE – There is a hotfix that is required in order to support DTC with 3rd party disk resources. Please see the following KB article and apply the howfix to all cluster nodes. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978476

SQL 2008 is very dependent upon MSDTC, so it is highly recommended that you cluster the MSDTC resource before you cluster your SQL resource. The following articles are provided for your reference for configuration and management of your MSDTC resource.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770748(WS.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771540(WS.10).aspx

You will start by opening the Failover Cluster Manager GUI and then choose “Configure a Service or Application”.

Figure 10 – Creating a MSDTC resource

You will then choose “Distributed Transaction Coordinator” and click Next

Figure 11 – Choose your Service or Application

Give the MSDTC resource a name and unique IP address. These should be unique to MSDTC and not the same as you will use later when you create your SQL resource.

Figure 12 – Choose a name and IP address

Choose the volume where you will store the data for the MSDTC resource. In our case we are choosing the replicated F drive.

Figure 13 – Choose a dedicated volume for the MSDTC resource

Confirm your information and click Next to continue.

Figure 14 – Click Next to configure the DTC resource

Congratulations, you have succesfully configured the DTC resource. Click Finish.

Figure 15 – A successfully configured DTC resource

We are just about ready to begin the installation of the first node of the SQL Server Cluster, however, there is one thing we need to do in preparation – Slip Stream SQL 2008 SP1 onto the SQL Server 2008 RTM install media.

Slip stream SQL SP1 onto your SQL 2008 install media

What I have discovered is that SQL Server 2008 will not install on Windows Server 2008 R2 without first slipstreaming SQL Server 2008 SP1 onto your SQL 2008 install media. Here is a great article that describes how toslipstream SQL Server 2008 RTM and Service Pack 1. After I read that article and successfully slipstream SP1 onto SQL 2008 RTM, I found the following Microsoft KB article that describes the same procedure. You may get an error that looks like the following if you try to install SQL without first slipstreaming SP1 onto the media.

There was an error setting private property ‘RequireKerberos’ to value ’1′

I followed the instructions detailed in the first article and copied my SQL 2008 with SP1 install to the C:\ drive of both nodes in my cluster. In the instructions below, I will do the installation from the local disk of each cluster node.

Installing your first cluster node

Now that you have your SQL Server 2008 SP1 installation media ready to go, you are ready to install your first SQL node. There is one major “gotcha” when it comes to installing SQL on a multi-node cluster. In order for you to install SQL on a multi-node cluster, you must first pass the Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster validate process. Unfortunately, a multi-site cluster is exempt from passing the storage related test, so you never are able to actually “pass” the validation as far as SQL is concerned. It took a little investigation on my part, but what I have come to find is that there is a command line parameter that allows you to skip the validation test on the SQL 2008 installation. Here is the command line.

Setup /SkipRules=Cluster_VerifyForErrors /Action=InstallFailoverCluster

To launch the SQL setup, open a Command window, browse to your SQL 2008 with SP1 install directory and type the command as shown below.

If everything goes as planned, you should see the screen below. Click OK to continue.

Enter your product key and click Next

Figure 17 – Enter your product key

Accept the license agreement and click Next

Click Install to install the Setup Support Files

At the end of the Setup for the Support Files you will receive a warning. Click on Show details and you will see the message below. You can click Next, ignoring this message since it is expected in a multi-site or non-shared storage cluster.

Figure 18 – The warning is expected in a multi-site or non-shared storage cluster

Choose the features you would like to install and click Next. Leave the “Shared Feature” directory set to the C drive as the SQL binaries should not be installed on the replicated volume.

Figure 19 – Choose your features

On the next screen, you will choose a network name for your SQL Server. This will be the name that all of the clients will connect to. Assuming this is the default instance, leave the Instance ID and Instance root directory set to the defaults. Do not move the instance root directory to the replicated volume.

Figure 20 – Choose your SQL Network Name

It is recommended that you have separate domain accounts for SQLServer and SQLAgent. You can take the time to create these accounts now if you have not already done so. These accounts require no special permissions, as this install process will give them the permissions that they require.

Confirm you have enough disk space and click Next to continue.

Choose the default settings to allow a new cluster resource group named “SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)” to be created.

Figure 21 – Allow the wizard to create a new cluster resource group for you

Choose a replicated volume that is still available, in our case the E:\ drive. Click Next to continue.

Figure 22 – Choose your replicated volume

Now you will choose the IP address you want associated with the SQL cluster resource. You could leave it set to use DHCP if you wish.

Figure 23 – Choose your SQL cluster IP address

Choose your security settings and click Next

Add any SQL Server administrators and choose your authentication mode and then click Next

Choose your Error and Usage Reporting options and click Next

You will once again see some warnings related to the validation process. You can ignore those messages as they are to be expected in a multi-site SQL Server cluster.

Click Install to begin the installation process

If everything installs as expected, you should see the following screens. Click Next then Close to finish the installation.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed the first node of your multi-site SQL Server Cluster. Now we will install the second node of the cluster.

Install the second cluster node

Installing the second cluster node is similar to installing the first node. We need to run SQL Setup once again from the command line so that we can skip the Validate process. So, from the 2^nd node, open up your command prompt and run the following command.

Install SQL 2008 SP1 (merged setup) on the 2^nd node using the following command:
Setup /SkipRules=Cluster_VerifyForErrors /Action=AddNode /INSTANCENAME=”MSSQLSERVER”

*Note: This assumes you installed the default instance on the 1^st node

That will launch the install wizard as shown below. Click OK to continue.

Enter your product key and click next.

Accept the license terms and click Next

Click install to install the Setup Support files.

You can once again ignore the warning that some cluster validation tests have been skipped. This is to be expected in a multi-site cluster and non-shared storage clusters.

Verify you are adding the node to the righ instance and click Next.

Add the passwords to the service accounts and click Next

Choose your Error and Usage Reporting options and click Next

Once again, ignore the warning about the skipped operations.

Click Install to begin the installation process.

If everything goes as expected, you should see the following screen.

Now that you have a fully functional two node cluster, you probably should testing things out by doing some manual switchovers. Right click on the resource and choose “Move to node SECONDARY”.