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Deployment of a SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance on Huawei Cloud

September 28, 2021 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Deployment of a SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance on Huawei Cloud

*DISCLAIMER: While the following completely covers the high availability portion within the scope of our product, this is a setup “guide” only and should be adapted to your own configuration.

Overview

HUAWEI CLOUD is a leading cloud service provider not just in China but also has global footprint with many datacenters around the world. They bring Huawei’s 30-plus years of expertise together in ICT infrastructure products and solutions and are committed to providing reliable, secure, and cost-effective cloud services to empower applications, harness the power of data, and help organizations of all sizes grow in today’s intelligent world. HUAWEI CLOUD is also committed to bringing affordable, effective, and reliable cloud and AI services through technological innovation.

DataKeeper Cluster Edition provides replication in a virtual private cloud (VPC) within a single region across availability zones for the Huawei cloud. In this particular SQL Server clustering example, we will launch four instances (one domain controller instance, two SQL Server instances and a quorum/witness instance) into three availability zones.

Huawei Cloud SIOS Datakeeper HA Architecture

DataKeeper Cluster Edition provides support for a data replication node outside of the cluster with all nodes in Huawei cloud. In this particular SQL Server clustering example, four instances are launched (one domain controller instance, two SQL Server instances and a quorum/witness instance) into three availability zones. Then an additional DataKeeper instance is launched in a second region including a VPN instance in both regions. Please see Configuration of Data Replication From a Cluster Node to External DR Site for more information. For additional information on using multiple regions please see Connecting Two VPCs in Different Regions.

Huawei Cloud SIOS Datakeeper DR architecture

DataKeeper Cluster Edition also provides support for a data replication node outside of the cluster with only the node outside of the cluster in Huawei Cloud. In this particular SQL Server clustering example, WSFC1 and WSFC2 are in an on-site cluster replicating to a Huawei Cloud instance. Then an additional DataKeeper instance is launched in a region in Huawei Cloud. Please see Configuration of Data Replication From a Cluster Node to External DR Site for more information.

Huawei Cloud SIOS Datakeeper Hybrid DR Architecture

Requirements

Description	Requirement
Virtual Private Cloud	In a single region with three availability zones
Instance Type	Minimum recommended instance type: s3.large.2
Operating System	See the DKCE Support Matrix
Elastic IP	One elastic IP address connected to the domain controller
Four instances	One domain controller instance, two SQL Server instances and one quorum/witness instance
Each SQL Server	ENI (Elastic Network Interface) with 4 IPs · Primary ENI IP statically defined in Windows and used by DataKeeper Cluster Edition · Three IPs maintained by ECS while used by Windows Failover Clustering , DTC and SQLFC
Volumes	Three volumes (EBS and NTFS only) · One primary volume (C drive) · Two additional volumes o One for Failover Clustering o One for MSDTC

Release Notes

Before beginning, make sure you read the DataKeeper Cluster Edition Release Notes for the latest information. It is highly recommended that you read and understand the DataKeeper Cluster Edition Installation Guide.

Create a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

A virtual private cloud is the first object you create when using DataKeeper Cluster Edition.

*A virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is an isolated private cloud consisting of a configurable pool of shared computing resources in a public cloud.

Using the email address and password specified when signing up for Huawei Cloud, sign in to the Huawei Cloud Management Console.
From the Services dropdown, select Virtual Private Cloud.

On the right side of the screen, click on Create VPC and select the region that you want to use.
Input the name that you want to use for the VPC
Define your virtual private cloud subnet by entering your CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing) as described below
Input the subnet name, then click Create Now.

*A Route Table will automatically be created with a “main” association to the new VPC. You can use it later or create another Route Table.

*HELPFUL LINK:
Huawei’s Creating a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Launch an Instance

The following walks you through launching an instance into your subnet. You will want to launch two instances into one availability zone, one for your domain controller instance and one for your SQL instance. Then you will launch another SQL instance into another availability zone and a quorum witness instance into yet another availability zone.

*HELPFUL LINKS:
Huawei Cloud ECS Instances

Using the email address and password specified when signing up for Huawei Cloud, sign in to the Huawei Cloud Management Console.
From the Service List dropdown, select Elastic Cloud Server.

Select Buy ECS button and choose the Billing Mode, Region and AZ (Availability Zone) to deploy the Instance
Select your Instance Type. (Note:Select s3.large.2 or larger.).
Choose an Image. Under Public Image, select the Windows Server 2019 Datacenter 64bit English image
1. For Configure Network, select your VPC.
2. For Subnet, select an Subnet that you want to use, select Manually-specified IP address and input the IP address that you want to use
3. Select the Security Group to use or Edit and select an existing one.
4. Assign an EIPif you need the ECS instance to access the internet
5. Click Configure Advanced Settings and provide a name for the ECS, use Password for Login Mode and provide the secure password for Administrator login
6. Click Configure Now on Advanced Options Add a Tag to name your instance and Click on Confirm
Perform final review of the Instance and click on Submit.

*IMPORTANT: Make a note of this initial administrator password. It will be needed to log on to your instance.

Repeat the above steps for all instances.

Connect to Instances

You can connect to your domain controller instance via Remote Login from the ECS pane.

*BEST PRACTICE: Once logged on, it is best practice to change your password.

Configure the Domain Controller Instance

Now that the instances have been created, we started with setting up the Domain Service instance.

This guide is not a tutorial on how to set up an Active Domain server instance. We recommend reading articles on how to set up and configure an Active Directory server. It is very important to understand that even though the instance is running in a Huawei cloud, this is a regular installation of Active Directory.

Static IP Addresses

Configure Static IP Addresses for your Instances

Connect to your domain controller instance.
Click Start/ Control Panel.
Click Network and Sharing Center.
Select your network interface.
Click Properties.
Click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), then Properties.
Obtain your current IPv4 address, default gateway and DNS server for the network interface from Amazon.
In the Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) Properties dialog box, under Use the following IP address, enter your IPv4 address.
In the Subnet mask box, type the subnet mask associated with your virtual private cloud subnet.
In the Default Gateway box, type the IP address of the default gateway and then click OK.
For the Preferred DNS Server, enter the Primary IP Address of Your Domain Controller(ex. 15.0.1.72).
Click Okay, then select Close. Exit Network and Sharing Center.
Repeat the above steps on your other instances.

Join the Two SQL Instances and the Witness Instance to Domain

*Before attempting to join a domain make these network adjustments. On your network adapter, Add/Change the Preferred DNS server to the new Domain Controller address and its DNS server. Use ipconfig /flushdns to refresh the DNS search list after this change. Do this before attempting to join the Domain.

*Ensure that Core Networking and File and Printer Sharing options are permitted in Windows Firewall.

On each instance, click Start, then right-click Computer and select Properties.
On the far right, select Change Settings.
Click on Change.
Enter a new Computer Name.
Select Domain.
Enter Domain Name– (ex. docs.huawei.com).
Click Apply.

*Use Control Panel to make sure all instances are using the correct time zone for your location.

*BEST PRACTICE: It is recommend that the System Page File is set to system managed (not automatic) and to always use the C: drive.

Control Panel > Advanced system settings > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory. Select System managed size, Volume C: only, then select Set to save.

Assign Secondary Private IPs to the Two SQL Instances

In addition to the Primary IP, you will need to add three additional IPs (Secondary IPs) to the elastic network interface for each SQL instance.

From the Service List dropdown, select Elastic Cloud Server.
Click the instance for which you want to add secondary private IP addresses.
Select NICs > Manage Virtual IP Address.
Click on Assign Virtual IP address and select Manual enter an IP address that is within the subnet range for the instance (ex. For 15.0.1.25, enter 15.0.1.26). Click Ok.
Click on the More dropdown on the IP address row, and select Bind to Server, select the server to bind the IP address to, and the NIC card.
Click OK to save your work.
Perform the above on both SQL Instances.

*HELPFUL LINKS:
Managing Virtual IP Addresses
Binding a Virtual IP Address to an EIP or ECS

Create and Attach Volumes

DataKeeper is a block-level volume replication solution and requires that each node in the cluster have additional volume(s) (other than the system drive) that are the same size and same drive letters. Please review Volume Considerations for additional information regarding storage requirements.

Create Volumes

Create two volumes in each availability zone for each SQL server instance, a total of four volumes.

From the Service List dropdown, select Elastic Cloud Server.
Click the instance for which you want to manage
Go to the Disks tab
Click Add Disk to add a new volume of your choice and size, make sure you select the volume in the same AZ as the SQL server that you intend to attach it to
Select the check box to agree to the SLA and Submit
Click Back to Server Console
Attach the disk if necessary to the SQL instance
Do this for all four volumes.

*HELPFUL LINKS:
Elastic Volume Service

Configure the Cluster

Prior to installing DataKeeper Cluster Edition, it is important to have Windows Server configured as a cluster using either a node majority quorum (if there is an odd number of nodes) or a node and file share majority quorum (if there is an even number of nodes). Consult the Microsoft documentation on clustering in addition to this topic for step-by-step instructions. Note: Microsoft released a hotfix for Windows 2008R2 that allows disabling of a node’s vote which may help achieve a higher level of availability in certain multi-site cluster configurations.

Add Failover Clustering

Add the Failover Clustering feature to both SQL instances.

Launch Server Manager.
Select Features in the left pane and click Add Features in the Features This starts the Add Features Wizard.
Select Failover Clustering.
Select Install.

Validate a Configuration

Open Failover Cluster Manager.
Select Failover Cluster Manager, select Validate a Configuration.
Click Next, then add your two SQL instances.

Note: To search, select Browse, then click on Advanced and Find Now. This will list available instances.

Click Next.
Select Run Only Tests I Select and click Next.
In the Test Selection screen, deselect Storage and click Next.
At the resulting confirmation screen, click Next.
Review Validation Summary Report then click Finish.

Create Cluster

In Failover Cluster Manager, click on Create a Cluster then click Next.
Enter your two SQL instances.
On the Validation Warning page, select No then click Next.
On the Access Point for Administering the Cluster page, enter a unique name for your WSFC Cluster. Then enter the Failover Clustering IP address for each node involved in the cluster. This is the first of the three secondary IP addresses added previously to each instance.
IMPORTANT!Uncheck the “Add all available storage to the cluster” checkbox. DataKeeper mirrored drives must not be managed natively by the cluster. They will be managed as DataKeeper Volumes.
Click Next on the Confirmation
On Summary page, review any warnings then select Finish.

Configure Quorum/Witness

Create a folder on your quorum/witness instance (witness).
Share the folder.
1. Right-click folder and select Share With / Specific People….
2. From the dropdown, select Everyone and click Add.
3. Under Permission Level, select Read/Write.
4. Click Share, then Done. (Make note of the path of this file share to be used below.)
In Failover Cluster Manager, right-click cluster and choose More Actions and Configure Cluster Quorum Settings. Click Next.
On the Select Quorum Configuration, choose Node and File Share Majority and click Next.
On the Configure File Share Witness screen, enter the path to the file share previously created and click Next.
On the Confirmation page, click Next.
On the Summary page, click Finish.

Install and Configure DataKeeper

After the basic cluster is configured but prior to any cluster resources being created, install and license DataKeeper Cluster Edition on all cluster nodes. See the DataKeeper Cluster Edition Installation Guide for detailed instructions.

Run DataKeeper setup to install DataKeeper Cluster Edition on both SQL instances.
Enter your license key and reboot when prompted.
Launch the DataKeeper GUI and connect to server.

*Note: The domain or server account used must be added to the Local System Administrators Group. The account must have administrator privileges on each server that DataKeeper is installed on. Refer to DataKeeper Service Log On ID and Password Selection for additional information.

Right click on Jobs and connect to both SQL servers.
Create a Job for each mirror you will create. One for your DTC resource, and one for your SQL resource..
When asked if you would like to auto-register the volume as a cluster volume, select Yes.

*Note: If installing DataKeeper Cluster Edition on Windows “Core” (GUI-less Windows), make sure to read Installing and Using DataKeeper on Windows 2008R2/2012 Server Core Platforms for detailed instructions.

Configure MSDTC

For Windows Server 2012 and 2016, in the Failover Cluster Manager GUI, select Roles, then select Configure Role.
Select Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC), and click Next.

*For Windows Server 2008, in the Failover Cluster Manager GUI, select Services and Applications, then select Configure a Service or Application and click Next.

On the Client Access Point screen, enter a name, then enter the MSDTC IP address for each node involved in the cluster. This is the second of the three secondary IP addresses added previously to each instance. Click Next.
Select the MSDTC volume and click Next.
On the Confirmation page, click Next.
Once the Summary page displays, click Finish.

Install SQL on the First SQL Instance

On the domain controller server create a folder and share it..
1. For example “TEMPSHARE” with Everyone permission.
Create a sub folder “SQL” and copy the SQL .iso installer into that sub folder.
On the SQL server, create a network drive and attach it to the shared folder on the domain controller.
- . For example “net use S: \\\TEMPSHARE
On the SQL server the S: drive will appear. CD to the SQL folder and find the SQL .iso installer. Right click on the .iso file and select Mount. The setup.exe installer will appear with the SQL .iso installer.

F:\>Setup /SkipRules=Cluster_VerifyForErrors /Action=InstallFailoverCluster

On Setup Support Rules, click OK.
On the Product Key dialog, enter your product key and click Next.
On the License Terms dialog, accept the license agreement and click Next.
On the Product Updates dialog, click Next.
On the Setup Support Files dialog, click Install.
On the Setup Support Rules dialog, you will receive a warning. Click Next, ignoring this message, since it is expected in a multi-site or non-shared storage cluster.
Verify Cluster Node Configuration and click Next.
Configure your Cluster Network by adding the “third” secondary IP address for your SQL instance and click Next. Click Yes to proceed with multi-subnet configuration.
Enter passwords for service accounts and click Next.
On the Error Reporting dialog, click Next.
On the Add Node Rules dialog, skipped operation warnings can be ignored. Click Next.
Verify features and click Install.
Click Close to complete the installation process.

Install SQL on the Second SQL Instance

Installing the second SQL instance is similar to the first one.

On the SQL server, create a network drive and attach it to the shared folder on the domain controller as explained above for the first SQL server.
Once the .iso installer is mounted, run SQL setup once again from the command line in order to skip the Validate Open a Command window, browse to your SQL install directory and type the following command:

Setup /SkipRules=Cluster_VerifyForErrors /Action=AddNode /INSTANCENAME=”MSSQLSERVER”

(Note: This assumes you installed the default instance on the first node)

On Setup Support Rules, click OK.
On the Product Key dialog, enter your product key and click Next.
On the License Terms dialog, accept the license agreement and click Next.
On the Product Updates dialog, click Next.
On the Setup Support Files dialog, click Install.
On the Setup Support Rules dialog, you will receive a warning. Click Next, ignoring this message, since it is expected in a multi-site or non-shared storage cluster.
Verify Cluster Node Configuration and click Next.
Configure your Cluster Network by adding the “third” secondary IP address for your SQL Instance and click Next. Click Yes to proceed with multi-subnet configuration.
Enter passwords for service accounts and click Next.
On the Error Reporting dialog, click Next.
On the Add Node Rules dialog, skipped operation warnings can be ignored. Click Next.
Verify features and click Install.
Click Close to complete the installation process.

Common Cluster Configuration

This section describes a common 2-node replicated cluster configuration.

The initial configuration must be done from the DataKeeper UI running on one of the cluster nodes. If it is not possible to run the DataKeeper UI on a cluster node, such as when running DataKeeper on a Windows Core only server, install the DataKeeper UI on any computer running Windows XP or higher and follow the instruction in the Core Only section for creating a mirror and registering the cluster resources via the command line.
Once the DataKeeper UI is running, connect to each of the nodes in the cluster.
Create a Job using the DataKeeper UI. This process creates a mirror and adds the DataKeeper Volume resource to the Available Storage.

!IMPORTANT: Make sure that Virtual Network Names for NIC connections are identical on all cluster nodes.

If additional mirrors are required, you can Add a Mirror to a Job.
With the DataKeeper Volume(s)now in Available Storage, you are able to create cluster resources (SQL, File Server, etc.) in the same way as if there were a shared disk resource in the cluster. Refer to Microsoft documentation for additional information in addition to the above for step-by-step cluster configuration instructions.

Connectivity to the cluster (virtual) IPs

In addition to the Primary IP and secondary IP, you will also need to configure the virtual IP addresses in the Huawei Cloud so that they can be routed to the active node.

From the Service List dropdown, select Elastic Cloud Server.
Click on one of the SQL instance for which you want to add cluster virtual IP address (one for MSDTC, one for SQL Failover Cluster)
Select NICs > Manage Virtual IP Address.
Click on Assign Virtual IP address and select Manual enter an IP address that is within the subnet range for the instance (ex. For 15.0.1.25, enter 15.0.1.26). Click Ok.
Click on the More dropdown on the IP address row, and select Bind to Server, select both the server to bind the IP address to, and the NIC card.
Use the same steps 4. and 5 for the MSDTC and SQLFC virtual IPs
Click OKto save your work.

Management

Once a DataKeeper volume is registered with Windows Server Failover Clustering, all of the management of that volume will be done through the Windows Server Failover Clustering interface. All of the management functions normally available in DataKeeper will be disabled on any volume that is under cluster control. Instead, the DataKeeper Volume cluster resource will control the mirror direction, so when a DataKeeper Volume comes online on a node, that node becomes the source of the mirror. The properties of the DataKeeper Volume cluster resource also display basic mirroring information such as the source, target, type and state of the mirror.

Troubleshooting

Use the following resources to help troubleshoot issues:

Troubleshooting issues section
For customers with a support contract – http://us.sios.com/support/overview/
For evaluation customers only – Pre-sales support

Additional Resources:

Step-by-Step: Configuring a 2-Node Multi-Site Cluster on Windows Server 2008 R2 – Part 1 — http://clusteringformeremortals.com/2009/09/15/step-by-step-configuring-a-2-node-multi-site-cluster-on-windows-server-2008-r2-%E2%80%93-part-1/

Step-by-Step: Configuring a 2-Node Multi-Site Cluster on Windows Server 2008 R2 – Part 3 — http://clusteringformeremortals.com/2009/10/07/step-by-step-configuring-a-2-node-multi-site-cluster-on-windows-server-2008-r2-%E2%80%93-part-3/

Major Cloud Outage Impacts Google Compute Engine – Were You Prepared?

June 7, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Major Cloud Outage Impacts Google Compute Engine – Were You Prepared?

Google first reported an “Issue” on Jun 2, 2019 at 12:25 PDT. As is now common in any type of disaster, reports of this outage first appeared on social media. Social media seems to the most reliable place to get any type of information early in a disaster now.

Twitter is quickly becoming the first source of information on anything from revolutions, natural disasters to cloud outages.

Many services that rely on Google Compute Engine were impacted. I’ve three teenage kids at home. Something was up when all three kids emerged from their caves, aka, bedrooms, at the same time with a worried look on their faces. Snapchat, Youtube and Discord were all offline!

They must have thought that surely this was the first sign of the apocalypse. I reassured them this was not the beginning of the new dark ages. And instead they should go outside and do some yard work. That scared them back to reality and they quickly scurried away to find something else to occupy their time.

All kidding aside, there were many services being reported as down, or only available in certain areas. The dust is still settling on the cause, breadth and scope of the outage. But it certainly seems that the outage was pretty significant in size and scope, impacting many customers and services including Gmail and other G-Suite services, Vimeo and more.

Many services were impacted by this outage, Gmail, YouTube and SnapChat just to name a few.

While we wait for the official root cause analysis on this latest Google Compute Engine outage, Google reported “high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA” caused the downtime. We will have to wait to see what they determine caused the network issues. Was it human error, cyber-attack, hardware failure, or something else?

Were You Prepared For This Cloud Outage?

I wrote during the last major cloud outage. If you are running business critical workloads in the cloud, regardless of the cloud service provider, it is incumbent upon you to plan for the inevitable outage. The multi-day Azure outage of Sept 4th, 2018 was related to a failure of the secondary HVAC system to kick in during a power surge related to an electrical storm. While the failure was just within a single datacenter, the outage exposed multiple services that had dependencies on this single datacenter. This made the datacenter itself a single point of failure.

Have A Sound Disaster Recovery Plan

Leveraging the cloud’s infrastructure, minimize risks by continuously replicating critical data between Availability Zones, Regions or even cloud service providers. In addition to data protection, having a procedure in place to rapidly recover business critical applications is an essential part of any disaster recovery plan. There are various replication and recovery options available. This includes services provided by the cloud vendor themselves like Azure Site Recovery, to application specific solutions like SQL Server Always On Availability Groups, to third party solutions like SIOS DataKeeper that protect a wide range of applications running on both Windows and Linux.

Having a disaster recovery strategy that is wholly dependent on a single cloud provider leaves you susceptible to a scenario that might impact multiple regions within a single cloud. Multi-datacenter or multi-region disasters are not likely. However, as we saw with this recent outage and the Azure outage last fall, even if a failure is local to a single datacenter, the impact can be wide reaching across multiple datacenters or even regions within a cloud. To minimize your risks, consider a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud scenario where the disaster recovery site resides outside of your primary cloud platform.

The cloud is just as susceptible to outages as your own datacenter. You must take steps to prepare for disasters. I suggest you start by looking at your most business critical apps first. What would you do if they were offline and the cloud portal to manage them was not even available? Could you recover? Would you meet your RTO and RPO objectives? If not, maybe it is time to re-evaluate your Disaster Recovery strategy.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

― Benjamin Franklin

Configure SQL Server 2008 R2 Failover Cluster Instance On Windows Server 2008 R2 In Azure

April 24, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Step-By-Step: How To Configure A SQL Server 2008 R2 Failover Cluster Instance On Windows Server 2008 R2 In Azure

Intro

On July 9, 2019, support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will end. That means the end of regular security updates. However, if you move those SQL Server instances to Azure, Microsoft will give you three years of Extended Security Updates at no additional charge. If you are currently running SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 and you are unable to update to a later version of SQL Server before the July 9th deadline, you will want to take advantage of this offer rather than running the risk of facing a future security vulnerability. An unpatched instance of SQL Server could lead to data loss, downtime or a devastating data breach.

One of the challenges you will face when running SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 in Azure is ensuring high availability. On premises you may be running a SQL Server Failover Cluster (FCI) instance for high availability, or possibly you are running SQL Server in a virtual machine and are relying on VMware HA or a Hyper-V cluster for availability. When moving to Azure, none of those options are available. Downtime in Azure is a very real possibility that you must take steps to mitigate.

In order to mitigate the possibility of downtime and qualify for Azure’s 99.95% or 99.99% SLA, you have to leverage SIOS DataKeeper. DataKeeper overcomes Azure’s lack of shared storage and allows you to build a SQL Server FCI in Azure that leverages the locally attached storage on each instance. SIOS DataKeeper not only supports SQL Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 as documented in this guide, it supports any version of Windows Server, from 2008 R2 through Windows Server 2019 and any version of SQL Server from from SQL Server 2008 through SQL Server 2019.

This guide will walk through the process of creating a two-node SQL Server 2008 R2 Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) in Azure, running on Windows Server 2008 R2. Although SIOS DataKeeper also supports clusters that span Availability Zones or Regions, this guide assumes each node resides in the same Azure Region, but different Fault Domains. SIOS DataKeeper will be used in place of the shared storage normally required to create a SQL Server 2008 R2 FCI.

Create The First SQL Server Instance In Azure

This guide will leverage the SQL Server 2008R2SP3 on Windows Server 2008R2 image that is published in the Azure Marketplace.

When you provision the first instance you will have to create a new Availability Set. During this process be sure to increase the number of Fault Domains to 3. This allows the two cluster nodes and the file share witness each to reside in their own Fault Domain.

Add additional disks to each instance. Premium or Ultra SSD are recommended. Disable caching on the disks used for the SQL log files. Enable read-only caching on the disk used for the SQL data files. Refer to Performance guidelines for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines for additional information on storage best practices.

If you don’t already have a virtual network configured, allow the creation wizard to create a new one for you.

Once the instance is created, go in to the IP configurations and make the Private IP address static. This is required for SIOS DataKeeper and is best practice for clustered instances.

Make sure that your virtual network is configured to set the DNS server to be a local Windows AD controller. This is to ensure you will be able to join the domain in a later step.

Create The End SQL Server Instance In Azure

Follow the same steps as above. Except be sure to place this instance in the same virtual network and Availability Set that you created with the 1st instance.

Create A File Share Witness (FSW) Instance

In order for the Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) to work optimally you are required to create another Windows Server instance and place it in the same Availability Set as the SQL Server instances. By placing it in the same Availability Set, you ensure that each cluster node and the FSW reside in different Fault Domains. Thereby ensuring your cluster stays on line should an entire Fault Domain go off line. This instances does not require SQL Server. It can be a simple Windows Server as all it needs to do is host a simple file share.

This instance will host the file share witness required by WSFC. This instance does not need to be the same size, nor does it require any additional disks to be attached. It’s only purpose is to host a simple file share. It can in fact be used for other purposes. In my lab environment my FSW is also my domain controller.

Uninstall SQL Server 2008 R2

Each of the two SQL Server instances provisioned already have SQL Server 2008 R2 installed on them. However, they are installed as standalone SQL Server instances, not clustered instances. SQL Server must be uninstalled from each of these instances before we can install the cluster instance. The easiest way to do that is to run the SQL Setup as shown below.

When you run setup.exe /Action-RunDiscovery you will see everything that is preinstalled

setup.exe /Action-RunDiscovery

Running setup.exe /Action=Uninstall /FEATURES=SQL,AS,RS,IS,Tools /INSTANCENAME=MSSQLSERVER kicks off the uninstall process

setup.exe /Action=Uninstall /FEATURES=SQL,AS,RS,IS,Tools /INSTANCENAME=MSSQLSERVER

Running setup.exe /Action-RunDiscovery confirms the uninstallation completed

setup.exe /Action-RunDiscovery

Run this uninstallation process again on the 2nd instance.

Add Instances To The Domain

All three of these instances will need to be added to a Windows Domain.

Add Windows Failover Clustering Feature

The Failover Clustering Feature needs to be added to the two SQL Server instances

Add-WindowsFeature Failover-Clustering

Turn Off Windows Firewall

For simplicity sake, turn off the Windows Firewall during the installation and configuration of the SQL Server FCI. Consult Azure Network Security Best Practices for advice on securing your Azure resources. Details on required Windows ports can be found here , SQL Server ports here and SIOS DataKeeper ports here, The Internal Load Balancer that we will configure later also requires port 59999 access. So be sure to account for that in your security configuration.

NetSh Advfirewall set allprofiles state off

Install Convenience Rollup Update For Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

There is a critical update ( kb2854082) that is required in order to configure a Windows Server 2008 R2 instance in Azure. That update and many more are included in the Convenience Rollup Update for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Install this update on each of the two SQL Server instances.

Format The Storage

The additional disks that were attached when the two SQL Server instances were provisioned need to be formatted. Do the following for each volume on each instance.

Microsoft best practices says the following…

“NTFS allocation unit size: When formatting the data disk, it is recommended that you use a 64-KB allocation unit size for data and log files as well as TempDB.”

Run Cluster Validation

Run cluster validation to ensure everything is ready to be clustered.

Your report will contain WARNINGS about Storage and Networking. You can ignore those warnings as we know there are no shared disks and only a single network connection exists between the servers. You may also receive a warning about network binding order which can also be ignored. If you encounter any ERRORS you must address those before you continue.

Create The Cluster

Best practices for creating a cluster in Azure would be to use Powershell as shown below. Powershell allows us to specify a Static IP Address, whereas the GUI method does not. Unfortunately, Azure’s implementation of DHCP does not work well with Windows Server Failover Clustering. If you use the GUI method you will wind up with a duplicate IP address as the Cluster IP Address. It’s not the end of the world, but you will need to fix that as I show.

As I said, the Powershell method generally works best. However, for some reason, it seems to be failing on Windows Server 2008 R2 as shown below.

New-Cluster -Name cluster1 -Node sql1,sql2 -StaticAddress 10.1.0.100 -NoStorage

You can try that method and if it works for you – great! I need to go back and investigate this a bit more to see if it was a fluke. Another option I need to explore if Powershell is not working is Cluster.exe. Running cluster /create /? gives the proper syntax to use for creating clusters with the deprecated cluster.exe command.

However, if Powershell or Cluster.exe fails you, the steps below illustrate how to create a cluster via the Windows Server Failover Clustering UI, including fixing the duplicate IP address that will be assigned to the cluster.

Remember, the name you specify here is just the Cluster Name Object (CNO). This is not the name that your SQL clients will use to connect to the cluster; we will define that during the SQL Server cluster setup in a later step.

At this point, the cluster is created, but you may not be able to connect to it with the Windows Server Failover Clustering UI due to the duplicate IP address problem.

Fix The Duplicate IP Address

As I mentioned earlier, if you create the cluster using the GUI, you are not given the opportunity to choose an IP address for the cluster. Because your instances are configured to use DHCP (required in Azure), the GUI wants to automatically assign you an IP address using DHCP. Unfortunately, Azure’s implementation of DHCP does not work as expected and the cluster will be assign the same address that is already being used by one of the nodes. Although the cluster will create properly, you will have a hard time connecting to the cluster until you fix this problem.

To fix this problem, from one of the nodes run the following command to ensure the Cluster service is started on that node.

Net start clussvc /fq

On that same node you should now be able to connect to the Windows Server Failover Clustering UI, where you will see the IP Address has failed to come online.

Open the properties of the Cluster IP address and change it from DHCP to Static, and assign it an unused IP address.

Bring the Name resource online

Add The File Share Witness

Next we need to add the File Share Witness. On the 3rd server we provisioned as the FSW, create a folder and share it as shown below. You will need to grant the Cluster Name Object (CNO) read/write permissions at both the Share and Security levels as shown below.

Once the share is created, run the Configure Cluster Quorum wizard on one of the cluster nodes and follow the steps illustrated below.

Create Service Account For DataKeeper

We are almost ready to install DataKeeper. However, before we do that you need to create a Domain account and add it to the Local Administrators group on each of the SQL Server cluster instances. We will specify this account when we install DataKeeper.

Install DataKeeper

Install DataKeeper on each of the two SQL Server cluster nodes as shown below.

This is where we will specify the Domain account we added to each of the local Domain Administrators group.

Configure DataKeeper

Once DataKeeper is installed on each of the two cluster nodes, you are ready to configure DataKeeper.

NOTE – The most common error encountered in the following steps is security related, most often by pre-existing Azure Security groups blocking required ports. Please refer to the SIOS documentation to ensure the servers can communicate over the required ports.

First, you must connect to each of the two nodes.

If everything is configured properly, you should then see the following in the Server Overview report.

Next, create a New Job and follow the steps illustrated below

Choose Yes here to register the DataKeeper Volume resource in Available Storage

Complete the above steps for each of the volumes. Once you are finished, you should see the following in the Windows Server Failover Clustering UI.

You are now ready to install SQL Server into the cluster.

NOTE – At this point the replicated volume is only accessible on the node that is currently hosting Available Storage. That is expected, so don’t worry!

Install SQL Server On The First Node

On the first node, run the SQL Server setup.

Choose New SQL Server Failover Cluster Installation and follow the steps as illustrated.

Choose only the options you need.

Please note, this document assumes you are using the Default instance of SQL Server. If you use a Named Instance, you need to make sure you lock down the port that it listens on, and use that port later on when you configure the load balancer. You also will need to create a load balancer rule for the SQL Server Browser Service (UDP 1434) in order to connect to a Named Instance. Neither of those two requirements are covered in this guide. But if you require a Named Instance, it will work if you do those two additional steps.

Here you will need to specify an unused IP address

Go to the Data Directories tab and relocate data and log files. At the end of this guide we talk about relocating tempdb to a non-mirrored DataKeeper Volume for optimal performance. For now, just keep it on one of the clustered disks.

Install SQL On Second Node

Run the SQL Server setup again on the second node. Then, choose Add node to a SQL Server Failover Cluster.

Congratulations, you are almost done! However, due to Azure’s lack of support for gratuitous ARP, we will need to configure an Internal Load Balancer (ILB) to assist with client redirection as shown in the following steps.

Update The SQL Cluster IP Address

In order for the ILB to function properly, you must run run the following command from one of the cluster nodes. It SQL Cluster IP enables the SQL Cluster IP address to respond to the ILB health probe while also setting the subnet mask to 255.255.255.255 in order to avoid IP address conflicts with the health probe.

cluster res <IPResourceName> /priv enabledhcp=0 address=<ILBIP> probeport=59999  subnetmask=255.255.255.255

NOTE – I don’t know if it is a fluke. On occasion I have run this command and it looks like it works, but it doesn’t complete the job and I have to start again. The way I can tell if it worked is by looking at the Subnet Mask of the SQL Server IP Resource. If it is not 255.255.255.255 then you know it didn’t run successfully. It may simply be a GUI refresh issue. Do try restarting the cluster GUI to verify the subnet mask was updated.

After it runs successfully, take the resource offline and bring it back online for the changes to take effect.

Create The Load Balancer

The final step is to create the load balancer. In this case we are assuming you are running the Default Instance of SQL Server, listening on port 1433.

The Private IP Address you define when you Create the load balancer will be the exact same address your SQL Server FCI uses.

Add just the two SQL Server instances to the backend pool. Do NOT add the FSW to the backend pool.

In this load balancing rule, you must enable Floating IP.

Test The Cluster

The most simple test is to open SQL Server Management Studio on the passive node and connect to the cluster. Congratulations! You did everything correctly as it connects! If you can’t connect, don’t fear. I wrote a blog article to help troubleshoot the issue. Managing the cluster is exactly the same as managing a traditional shared storage cluster. Everything is controlled through Failover Cluster Manager.

Optional – Relocate TempDB

For optimal performance it would be advisable to move tempdb to the local, non replicated, SSD. But, SQL Server 2008 R2 requires tempdb to be on a clustered disk. SIOS has a solution called a Non-Mirrored Volume Resource which addresses this issue. It would be advisable to create a non-mirrored volume resource of the local SSD drive and move tempdb there. Do note, the local SSD drive is non-persistent. You must take care to ensure the folder holding tempdb and the permissions on that folder are recreated each time the server reboots.

After you create the Non-Mirrored Volume Resource of the local SSD, follow the steps in this article to relocate tempdb. The startup script described in that article must be added to each cluster node.

Reproduced with permission from Clusteringformeremortals.com

Multi-Instance SQL Server Failover Cluster With New Azure ILB Feature

April 14, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

New Azure ILB Feature Allows You To Build A Multi-Instance SQL Server Failover Cluster

At Microsoft Ignite this past September, Microsoft made some announcements around Azure. One of these announcements was the general availability of multiple VIPs on internal load balancers. Why is this so important to a SQL Server DBA? Well, up until now if you want to deploy highly available SQL Server in Azure you were limited to a single SQL Server FCI per cluster or a single Availability Group listener.

This limitation forced you to deploy a new cluster for each instance of SQL Server you wanted to protect in a Failover Cluster. It also forced you to group all of your databases into a single Availability Group if you wanted automatic failover and client redirection in your AlwaysOn AG configuration.

How To Get Out Of These Restrictions?

Those restrictions have now been lifted with these new ILB features. In this post I am going to walk you through the process of deploying a SQL Server FCI in Azure that contains two SQL Server instances. In a future post I will walk you through the same process for SQL Server AlwaysOn AG.

Let’s Start With A Multi-Instance SQL Server Failover Cluster

Build a basic, single instance SQL Server FCI in Azure as I describe in my post Deploying Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Failover Clusters in Azure Resource Manager .

That post describes the process of creating the Multi-Instance SQL Server Failover Cluster. Using DataKeeper to create the replicated volume resources used in the cluster, try creating the Internal Load Balancer (ILB) and then fixing the SQL Server Cluster IP Resource to work with the ILB. If you want to skip that process and jumpstart your configuration you can always use the Azure Deployment Template that creates a 2-Node SQL Server FCI using SIOS DataKeeper

Assuming you now have a basic two node SQL Server FCI, the steps to add a 2^nd named instance are as follows:

Create another DataKeeper Volume Resource on another volume that is not currently being used. You may need to add additional disks to your Azure instance if you have no available volumes. As part of this volume creation process the new DataKeeper Volume resource will be registered in Available Storage in the cluster. Refer to the article referenced earlier for the details.
Install a named instance of SQL Server on the first node, specifying the DataKeeper Volume that we just created as the storage location.
“Add a node” to the cluster on the second node.
Lock down the port number of this new named instance to a port that is not in use. In my example I use port 1440.

Adjust ILB To Second Instance

Next we have to adjust the ILB to redirect traffic to this second instance. Here are the steps you need to follow:

Add a frontend IP address that is identical to the SQL cluster IP address you used for the second instance of SQL Server as shown below.

Multi-Instance SQL Server Failover Cluster With New Azure ILB Feature

Next, we will need to add another probe since the instances could be running on different servers. As shown below, I added a probe that probes port 59998 (instead of the usual 59999). We will need to make sure the new rules reference this probe. We will also need to remember that port number since we will need to update IP address associated with this instance during the last step of this process.

Multi-Instance SQL Server Failover Cluster With New Azure ILB Feature

Now we need to add two new rules to the ILB to direct traffic destined for this 2^ndinstance of SQL. Of course we need to add a rule to redirect TCP port 1440 (the port I used for the named instance of SQL), but because we are now using named instances we will also need to have a port to support the SQL Server Browser Service, UDP Port 1434.

In the picture below depicting the rule for the SQL Server Browser Service, take note that the Front End IP Address is referencing the new FrontendIP address (10.0.0.201), UDP port 1434 for both the Port and Backend Port. In the pool you will need to specify the two servers in the cluster, and finally make sure you choose the new Health Probe we just created.

Multi-Instance SQL Server Failover Cluster With New Azure ILB Feature

We will now add a rule for TCP/1440. As show in the picture below, add a new rule for port TCP 1440, or whatever port locked down for the named instance of SQL Server. Again, be sure to choose the new FrontEnd IP Address and the new Health Probe (59998). Also, make sure the Floating IP (direct server return) is enabled.

Multi-Instance SQL Server Failover Cluster With New Azure ILB Feature

The Last Step

Now that the load balancer is configured, the final step is to run the PowerShell script to update the new Cluster IP address associated with this 2^nd instance of SQL Server. This PowerShell script only needs to be run on one of the cluster nodes.

# Define variables

$ClusterNetworkName = “”

# the cluster network name 
(Use Get-ClusterNetwork on Windows Server 2012 of higher to find the name)

$IPResourceName = “”

# the IP Address resource name of the second instance of SQL Server

$ILBIP = “”

# the IP Address of the second instance of SQL, 
which should be the same as the new Frontend IP address as well

Import-Module FailoverClusters

# If you are using Windows Server 2012 or higher:

Get-ClusterResource $IPResourceName | 
Set-ClusterParameter -Multiple @{Address=$ILBIP;ProbePort=59998;
SubnetMask="255.255.255.255";Network=$ClusterNetworkName;EnableDhcp=0}

# If you are using Windows Server 2008 R2 use this:

#cluster res $IPResourceName /priv enabledhcp=0 address=$ILBIP probeport=59998  
subnetmask=255.255.255.255

You now have a fully functional multi-instance SQL Server FCI in Azure. Let me know if you have any questions to build a Multi-Instance SQL Server Failover Cluster With New Azure ILB Feature

Reproduced from Clusteringformeremortals.com

A Guide To Configure A SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance in Azure

March 31, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Step-By-Step: How To Configure A SQL Server 2008 R2 Failover Cluster Instance in Azure

If you need a guide Configure A SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance in Azure, you probably are still using SQL Server 2008/2008 R2. And, want to take advantage of the extended security updates that Microsoft is offering if you move your SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 into Azure. I previously wrote about this topic in this blog post.

You may be wondering how to make sure your SQL Server Failover Cluster instance remains highly available once you make the move to Azure. Today, most people have business critical SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 configured as a clustered instance (SQL Server FCI) in their data center. When looking at Azure you have probably come to the realization that due to the lack of shared storage it might seem that you can’t bring your SQL Server FCI to the Azure cloud. However, that is not the case thanks to SIOS DataKeeper.

SIOS DataKeeper enables you to build a SQL Server Failover Cluster instance in Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, or anywhere else where shared storage is not available or where you wish to configure multi-site clusters where shared storage doesn’t make sense. DataKeeper has been enabling SANless clusters for Windows and Linux since 1999. Microsoft documents the use of SIOS DataKeeper for SQL Server Failover Cluster instance in their documentation: High availability and disaster recovery for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines.

I’ve written about SQL Server FCI’s running in Azure before, But I never published a Step-by-Step Guide specific to SQL Server 2008/2008 R2. The good news is that it works just as great with SQL 2008/2008 R2 as it does with SQL 2012/2014/2016/2017 and the soon to be released 2019. Also, regardless of the version of Windows Server (2008/2012/2016/2019) or SQL Server (2008/2012/2014/2016/2017) the configuration process is similar enough that this guide should be sufficient enough to get you through any configurations.

If your flavor of SQL or Windows is not covered in any of my guides, don’t be afraid to jump in and build a SQL Server FCI and reference this guide, I think you will figure out any differences and if you ever get stuck just reach out to me on Twitter @daveberm and I’ll be glad to give you a hand.

This guide uses SQL Server 2008 R2 with Windows Server 2012 R2. As of the time of this writing I did not see an Azure Marketplace image of SQL 2008 R2 on Windows Server 2012 R2, so I had to download and install SQL 2008 R2 manually. Personally I prefer this combination, but if you need to use Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 212 that is fine. If you use Windows Server 2008 R2 don’t forget to install the kb3125574Convenience Rollup Update for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Or if you are stuck with Server 2012 (not R2) you need the Hotfix in kb2854082.

Don’t be fooled by this article that says you must install kb2854082 on your SQL Server 2008 R2 instances. If you start searching for that update for Windows Server 2008 R2 you will find that only the version for Server 2012 is available. That particular hotfix for Server 2008 R2 is instead included in the rollup Convenience Rollup Update for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

PROVISION AZURE INSTANCES

I’m not going to go into great detail here with a bunch of screenshots, especially since the Azure Portal UI tends to change pretty frequently, so any screenshots I take will get stale pretty quickly. Instead, I will just cover the important topics that you should be aware of.

FAULT DOMAINS OR AVAILABILITY ZONES?

In order to ensure your SQL Server instances are highly available, you have to make sure your cluster nodes reside in different Fault Domains (FD) or in different Availability Zones (AZ). Not only do your instances need to reside in different FDs or AZs, but your File Share Witness (see below) also needs to reside in a FD or AZ that is different than that one your cluster nodes reside in.

Here is my take on it. AZs are the newest Azure feature, but they are only supported in a handful of regions so far. AZs give you a higher SLA (99.99%) then FDs (99.95%), and protect you against the kind of cloud outages I describe in my post Azure Outage Post-Mortem. If you can deploy in a region that supports AZs then I recommend you use AZs.

In this guide I used AZs which you will see when you get to the section on configuring the load balancer. However, if you use FDs everything will be exactly the same, except the load balancer configuration will reference Availability Sets rather than Availability Zones.

WHAT IS A FILE SHARE WITNESS YOU ASK?

Without going into great detail, Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) requires you configure a “Witness” to ensure failover behaves properly. Windows Server Failover Clustering supports three kinds of witnesses: Disk, File Share, Cloud. Since we are in Azure a Disk Witness is not possible. Cloud Witness is only available with Windows Server 2016 and later, so that leaves us with a File Share Witness. If you want to learn more about cluster quorums check out my post on the Microsoft Press Blog, From the MVPs: Understanding the Windows Server Failover Cluster Quorum in Windows Server 2012 R2

ADD STORAGE TO YOUR SQL SERVER INSTANCES

As you provision your SQL Server instances you will want to add additional disks to each instance. Minimally you will need one disk for the SQL Data and Log file, one disk for Tempdb. Whether or not you should have a separate disk for log and data files is somewhat debated when running in the cloud. On the back end the storage all comes from the same place and your instance size limits your total IOPS. In my opinion there really isn’t any value in separating your log and data files since you cannot ensure that they are running on two physical sets of disks. I’ll leave that for you to decide, but I put log and data all on the same volume.

Normally a SQL Server 2008 R2 FCI would require you to put tempdb on a clustered disk. However, SIOS DataKeeper has this really nifty feature called a DataKeeper Non-Mirrored Volume Resource. This guide does not cover moving tempdb to this non-mirrored volume resource, but for optimal performance you should do this. There really is no good reason to replicate tempdb since it is recreated upon failover anyway.

As far as the storage is concerned you can use any storage type, but certainly use Managed Disks whenever possible. Make sure each node in the cluster has the identical storage configuration. Once you launch the instances you will want to attach these disks and format them NTFS. Make sure each instance uses the same drive letters.

NETWORKING

It’s not a hard requirement, but if at all possible use an instance size that supports accelerated networking. Also, make sure you edit the network interface in the Azure portal so that your instances use a static IP address. For clustering to work properly you want to make sure you update the settings for the DNS server so that it points to your Windows AD/DNS server and not just some public DNS server.

SECURITY

By default, the communications between nodes in the same virtual network are wide open, but if you have locked down your Azure Security Group you will need to know what ports must be open between the cluster nodes and adjust your security group. In my experience, almost all the issues you will encounter when building a cluster in Azure are either caused by blocked ports.

DataKeeper has some some ports that are required to be open between the clustered instance. Those ports are as follows:
UDP: 137, 138
TCP: 139, 445, 9999, plus ports in the 10000 to 10025 range

Failover cluster has its own set of port requirements that I won’t even attempt to document here. This article seems to have that covered. http://dsfnet.blogspot.com/2013/04/windows-server-clustering-sql-server.html

In addition, the Load Balancer described later will use a probe port that must allow inbound traffic on each node. The port that is commonly used and described in this guide is 59999.

And finally if you want your clients to be able to reach your SQL Server instance you want to make sure your SQL Server port is open, which by default is 1433.

Remember, these ports can be blocked by the Windows Firewall or Azure Security Groups, so to be sure to check both to ensure they are accessible.

JOIN THE DOMAIN

A requirement for SQL Server 2008 R2 FCI is that the instances must reside in the same Windows Server Domain. So if you have not done so, make sure you have joined the instances to your Windows domain

LOCAL SERVICE ACCOUNT

When you install DataKeeper, it will ask you to provide a service account. You must create a domain user account and then add that user account to the Local Administrators Group on each node. When asked during the DataKeeper installation, specify that account as the DataKeeper service account. Note – Don’t install DataKeeper just yet!

DOMAIN GLOBAL SECURITY GROUPS

You will be asked to specify two Global Domain Security Groups as you install SQL 2008 R2. You might want to look ahead at the SQL install instructions and create those groups now. Also, create a domain user account and place them in each of these security accounts. You will specify this account as part of the SQL Server Cluster installation.

OTHER PRE-REQUISITES

You must enable both Failover Clustering and .Net 3.5 on each instance of the two cluster instances. When you enable Failover Clustering, also be sure to enable the optional “Failover Cluster Automation Server”. This is required for a SQL Server 2008 R2 cluster in Windows Server 2012 R2.

CREATE THE CLUSTER AND DATAKEEPER VOLUME RESOURCES

We are now ready to start building the cluster. The first step is to create the base cluster. Because of the way Azure handles DHCP, we MUST create the cluster using Powershell and not the Cluster UI. We use Powershell because it will let us specify a static IP address as part of the creation process. If we used the UI, it would see that the VMs use DHCP and it will automatically assign a duplicate IP address. Therefore to avoid that situation, let’s use the Powershell as shown below.

New-Cluster -Name cluster1 -Node sql1,sql2 -StaticAddress 10.0.0.100 -NoStorage

After the cluster creates, run Test-Cluster. This is required before SQL Server will install.

Test-Cluster

You will get warnings about Storage and Networking. Thankfully, you can ignore those as they are expected in a SANless cluster in Azure. However, address any other warnings or errors before moving on.

After the cluster is created, you will need to add the File Share Witness. On the third server we specified as the file share witness, create a file share and give Read/Write permissions to the cluster computer object we just created above. In this case $Cluster1 will be the name of the computer object that needs Read/Write permissions at both the share and NTFS security level.

Once the share is created, you can use the Configure Cluster Quorum Wizard as shown below to configure the File Share Witness.

INSTALL DATAKEEPER

It is important to wait until the basic cluster is created before we install DataKeeper, since the DataKeeper installation registers the DataKeeper Volume Resource type in failover clustering. If you jumped the gun and installed DataKeeper already that is okay. Simply run the setup again and choose Repair Installation.

The screenshots below walk you through a basic installation. Start by running the DataKeeper Setup.

The account you specify below must be a domain account. It must be part of the Local Administrators group on each of the cluster nodes.

When presented with the SIOS License Key manager you can browse out to your temporary key. Or if you have a permanent key, you can copy the System Host ID and use that to request your permanent license. If you ever need to refresh a key, the SIOS License Key Manager is a program that will be installed that you can run separately to add a new key.

CREATE DATAKEEPER VOLUME RESOURCE

Once DataKeeper is installed on each node you are ready to create your first DataKeeper Volume Resource. The first step is to open the DataKeeper UI and connect to each of the cluster nodes.

If everything is done correctly the Server Overview Report should look something like this.

You can now create your first Job as shown below.

After you choose a Source and Target you are presented with the following options. For a local target in the same region, the only thing you need to select is Synchronous.

Choose Yes and auto-register this volume as a cluster resource.

Once you complete this process open up the Failover Cluster Manager and look in Disk. You should see the DataKeeper Volume resource in Available Storage. At this point WSFC treats this as if it were a normal cluster disk resource.

SLIPSTREAM SP3 ONTO SQL 2008 R2 INSTALL MEDIA

SQL Server 2008 R2 is only supported on Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server SP2 or later. Unfortunately, Microsoft never released a SQL Server 2008 R2 installation media that that includes SP2 or SP3. Instead, you must slipstream the service pack onto the installation media BEFORE you do the installation. If you try to do the installation with the standard SQL Server 2008 R2 media, you will run into all kinds of problems. I don’t remember the exact errors you will see. But I do recall they didn’t really point to the exact problem. You will waste a lot of time trying to figure out what went wrong.

As of the date of this writing, Microsoft does not have a Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server 2008 R2 offering in the Azure Marketplace. Do bring your own SQL license if you want to run SQL 2008 R2 on Windows Server 2012 R2 in Azure. If they add that image later, or if you choose to use the SQL 2008 R2 on Windows Server 2008 R2 image, you must first uninstall the existing standalone instance of SQL Server before moving forward.

I followed the guidance in Option 1 of this article to slipstream SP3 on onto my SQL 2008 R2 installation media. You will of course have to adjust a few things as this article references SP2 instead of SP3. Make sure you slipstream SP3 on the installation media we will use for both nodes of the cluster. Once that is done, continue to the next step.

INSTALL SQL SERVER ON THE FIRST NODE

Using the SQL Server 2008 R2 media with SP3 slipstreamed, run setup and install the first node of the cluster as shown below.

If you use anything other than the Default instance of SQL Server, you will have some additional steps not covered in this guide. The biggest difference is you must lock down the port that SQL Server uses since by default a named instance of SQL Server does NOT use 1433. Once you lock down the port you also need to specify that port instead of 1433 whenever we reference port 1433 in this guide, including the firewall setting and the Load Balancer settings.

Here make sure to specify a new IP address that is not in use. This is the same IP address we will use later when we configure the Internal Load Balancer later.

As I mentioned earlier, SQL Server 2008 R2 utilizes AD Security Groups. If you have not already created them, go ahead and create them now as show below before you continue to the next step in the SQL install

Specify the Security Groups you created earlier.

Make sure the service accounts you specify are a member of the associated Security Group.

Specify your SQL Server administrators here.

If everything goes well you are now ready to install SQL Server on the second node of the cluster.

INSTALL SQL SERVER ON THE SECOND NODE

One the second node, run the SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP3 install and select Add Node to a SQL Server Failover Clustering Instance.

Proceed with the installation as shown in the following screenshots.

Assuming everything went well, you should now have a two node SQL Server 2008 R2 cluster configured that looks something like the following.

However, you probably will notice that you can only connect to the SQL Server instance from the active cluster node. The problem is that Azure does not support gratuitous ARP .Your clients probably cannot connect directly to the Cluster IP Address. Instead, the clients must connect to an Azure Load Balancer, which will redirect the connection to the active node. To make this work there are two steps: Create the Load Balancer and Fix the SQL Server Cluster IP to respond to the Load Balancer Probe and use a 255.255.255.255 Subnet mask. Those steps are described below.

CREATE THE AZURE LOAD BALANCER

I’m going to assume your clients can communicate directly to the internal IP address of the SQL cluster. Let’s go ahead to create an Internal Load Balancer (ILB) in this guide. If you need to expose your SQL Instance on the public internet, use a Public Load Balancer instead.

In the Azure portal, create a new Load Balancer following the screenshots as shown below. The Azure portal UI changes rapidly. Bbut these screenshots should give you enough information to do what you need to do. I will call out important settings as we go along.

Here we create the ILB. The important thing to note on this screen is you must select “Static IP address assignment”. Specify the same IP address that we used during the SQL Cluster installation too.

Since I used Availability Zones, I see Zone Redundant as an option. If you used Availability Sets your experience will be slightly different.

In the Backend pool be sure to select the two SQL Server instances. You DO NOT want to add your File Share Witness in the pool.

Here we configure the Health Probe. Most Azure documentation uses port 59999, so we will stick with that port for our configuration.

Then we will add a load balancing rule. In our case we want to redirect all SQL Server traffic to TCP port 1433 of the active node. It is also important that you select Floating IP (Direct Server Return) as Enabled.

RUN POWERSHELL SCRIPT TO UPDATE SQL CLIENT ACCESS POINT

Now we must run a Powershell script on one of the cluster nodes to allow the Load Balancer Probe to detect which node is active. The script also sets the Subnet Mask of the SQL Cluster IP Address to 255.255.255.255.255 so that it avoids IP address conflicts with the Load Balancer we just created.

# Define variables
$ClusterNetworkName = “” 
# the cluster network name (Use Get-ClusterNetwork on Windows Server 2012 of 
higher to find the name)
$IPResourceName = “” 
# the IP Address resource name 
$ILBIP = “” 
# the IP Address of the Internal Load Balancer (ILB) and SQL Cluster
Import-Module FailoverClusters
# If you are using Windows Server 2012 or higher:
Get-ClusterResource $IPResourceName | Set-ClusterParameter 
-Multiple @{Address=$ILBIP;ProbePort=59999;SubnetMask="255.255.255.255";
Network=$ClusterNetworkName;EnableDhcp=0}
# If you are using Windows Server 2008 R2 use this: 
#cluster res $IPResourceName /priv enabledhcp=0 address=$ILBIP probeport=59999  
subnetmask=255.255.255.255

This is what the output will look like if run correctly.

You probably notice that the end of that script has a commented line of code to use if you are running on Windows Server 2008 R2. Running Windows Server 2008 R2? Ensure you run the code specific for Windows Server 2008 R2 at a Command prompt, it is not Powershell.

NEXT STEPS

You’re not the first if you get to this point and you still cannot connect to the cluster remotely. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in terms of security, load balancer, SQL ports, etc. I wrote this guide to help troubleshoot connection issues.

In fact, I ran into some strange issues in terms of my SQL Server TCP/IP Properties in SQL Server Configuration Manager. When I looked at the properties I did not see the SQL Server Cluster IP address as one of the addresses it was listening on. As such I had to add it manually. I’m not sure if that was an anomaly. Although it certainly was an issue I had to resolve before I could connect to the cluster from a remote client.

As I mentioned earlier, one other improvement you can make to this installation is to use a DataKeeper Non-Mirrored Volume Resource for TempDB. If you set that up please be aware of the following two configuration issues people commonly run into.

The first issue is if you move tempdb to a folder on the 1st node, you must be sure to create the exact same folder structure on the second node. If you don’t do that, when you try to failover SQL Server will fail to come online since it can’t create TempDB.

The second issue occurs anytime you add another DataKeeper Volume Resource to a SQL Cluster after the cluster is created. You must go into the properties of the SQL Server cluster resource and make it dependent on the new DataKeeper Volume resource you added. This is true for the TempDB volume and any other volumes you may decide to add after the cluster is created.

If you have any questions about this configuration or any other cluster configurations please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @DaveBerm

Reproduced with permission from Clusteringformeremortals.com