SIOS SANless clusters High-availability Machine Learning monitoring
In case you missed it, I held this in depth webinar on cluster quorums. In 30 minutes I go over everything you need to know about quorums, from node majority through Cloud Witness and everything in between. If you have additional questions about quorums post them as a comment on this article. I will be glad to help.
Just announced this week, Azure can now be used for Windows 7/8 client backups. The first 5 GB are free, then it is $0.20 per GB. You can get about 105 GB (compressed) per month for about $20. That is half the price of MozyHome. What do you all use for your offsite backups for your home PC?
Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2014/12/18/azure-as-a-cloud-backup-service-your-windows-clients/
UPDATE – Due to new features introduced, I have updated my guidance on deploying SQL Server clusters on Azure. The latest article can be found here: https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2015/01/01/step-by-step-how-to-configure-a-sql-server-failover-cluster-instance-fci-in-microsoft-azure-iaas-sqlserver-azure-sanless/
This is the 3rd post in the series on High Availability and Disaster Recovery in Windows Azure. This post contains step-by-step instructions for implementing a Windows Server Failover Cluster in the Windows Azure IaaS Cloud between two cluster nodes in different Fault Domains. While this post focuses on building a SQL Server 2014 Failover Cluster Instance, you could protect any cluster aware application with just making some minor adjustments to the steps below. In my next post, I will show you how to extend this cluster to a third node in a different datacenter for a very robust disaster recovery plan. Because Azure does not have a clustered storage option, we will use the 3rd party solution called DataKeeper Cluster Edition for our cluster storage.
This post assumes you have created a Virtual Network in Azure and you have your first DC already provisioned in Azure. If you haven’t done that yet, you will want to go ahead and have a look at the first two posts on this topic.
How To Create A Site-To-Site VPN Tunnel To The Windows Azure Cloud
While creating a VPN connection to your primary Datacenter is not a pre-requisite, I highly recommend you considering doing it. This way you can be ready for our hybrid disaster recovery configuration which will be discussed in the next post.
The high levels steps which we will illustrate in this post are as follows:
Click on the Virtual Machine tab in the left column and then click the New button in the bottom left corner.
Choose New Virtual Machine From Gallery
For our cluster we are going to choose Windows 2012 R2 Datacenter
Choose the latest Version Release Date, Name the VM and Size. The user name and password will be the local administrator account that you will use to log in to the VM to complete the configuration.
On this next page you will choose the following:
Cloud Service: I choose the same Cloud Service that I created when I provisioned my first VM. Cloud Service documentation says that it is used for load balancing, but I see no harm in putting all of the cluster VMs and DCs in the same Cloud Service for easier management. By choosing an existing Cloud Service my Virtual Network and Subnets are automatically selected for me.
Storage Account: I choose an existing Storage Account
Availability Set: This is EXTREMELY important. You want to make sure all of your VMs reside in the same Availability Set. By put putting all of your VMs in the same Availability Set you guarantee that the VMs all run in a different Fault Domain.
The last page shows the ports where this VM can be reached.
Once the VM is created you will see it as a new VM in the Azure Portal
The next step is to add additional storage to the VM. Azure best practices would have you put your databases and log files on the same volume, otherwise you must disable the Geo-replication feature that is enabled by default. The following article describes this issue in more detail: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj870962.aspx#BKMK_GEO
To add additional storage to your VM, click on the VM and then Dashboard to get to the VMs dashboard. Once there, click on Attach.
There are lots of things to consider when considering storage options for SQL Server. The safest and easiest method is the one we will use in this post. We will use a single volume for our data and log files and have caching disabled. You will want to read this article for the latest information on SQL Server Performance Considerations and best practices for Azure.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/dn133149.aspx
After you add this additional volume, you will need to open each VM and use Disk Management to initialize and format the volumes. For the purpose of this demo we will format this volume as the “F:\” drive.
You now have one VM called SQL1. You will want to complete the same process as described about to provision another VM and call it SQL2, making sure you put it in the same Cloud Service, Availability Set and Storage Account. Also make sure to attach another volume to SQL2 just as you have done for SQL1 and format it as the F:\ drive.
When you have finished provisioning both VMs we will move forward to the next step, adding them to the domain.
Adding SQL1 and SQL2 to the domain is a simple process. Assuming you have been following along with my previous posts, you have already created your domain and have a DC called DC2 provisioned in the same Cloud Service as SQ1 and SQL2. Adding them to the domain is as simple as connecting to the VMs and adding the VMs to the domain just as you would for in a regular on-premise network. If you configured the Virtual Network properly the new VMs should boot with an IP address assigned by DHCP which specifies the local DC2 and the domain controller.
Click Connect to open an RDP session to SQL1 and SQL2
IPconfig /all shows the current IP configuration. Windows Azure requires that you leave the addresses set to use the DHCP server, however the IP address will not change for the life of the VM. You should notice that your DNS server is set to the local DNS server that you created in the previous article previously.
Add SQL1 and SQL2 to the domain and continue with the next steps.
On both SQL1 and SQL2 you will enable the Failover Clustering feature
If you are familiar with clustering then the following steps should be very familiar to you with just a few exceptions, so pay close attention to avoid problems that are specific to deploying clusters in Windows Azure.
We will start by creating a single node cluster, this will allow us to make the necessary adjustment to the cluster name resource before we add the second node to the cluster. Use Failover Cluster Manager and start by choosing Create Cluster. Add SQL1 to the selected servers and click Next.
In order for us to install SQL Server 2014 into the cluster at the later steps, we will need to complete cluster Validation
Step through the rest of the cluster creation process as shown below. We will call this cluster SQLCLUSTER, which is simply the name we use to manage the cluster. This is NOT the name that you client applications will eventually connect to.
Once the cluster create process completes, you will notice that the cluster name resource fails to come online, this is expected.
The name resource failed to come online because the IP resource failed to come online. The IP address failed to come online because the address that the DHCP server handed out is the same as the physical address of the server, in this case 10.10.11.5, so there is a duplicate IP address conflict.
In order to fix this, we will need to go into the properties of the IP Address resource and change the address to another address in the same subnet that is not currently in use. I would select an address that is at the higher end of the subnet range in order to reduce the possibility that in the future you might deploy a new VM and Azure will hand out that cluster IP address, causing an IP address conflict. In order to eliminate this possibility, Microsoft will have to allow us more control over the DHCP address pool. For now, the only way to completely eliminate that possibility is to create a new subnet in the Virtual Private Network for any new VMs that you might deploy later, so only this cluster resides in this subnet. If you DO plan to deploy more VMs in this subnet, you might as well deploy them all at the same time so you know which IP addresses they will use, that way you can use whatever IP addresses are left of for the cluster(s).
To change the IP address, choose the Properties of the IP Address cluster resource and specify the new address.
Once the address is changed, right click on the Cluster Name resource and tell it to come online.
We are now ready to add the the second node to the cluster. In the Failover Cluster Manager, select Add Node
Browse out to your second node and click Add.
Run all the validation tests once again.
When you click finish, you will see that the node was added successfully, but because there is no shared storage in Azure, no disk witness for the quorum could be created. We will fix that next.
We now need to add a File Share Witness to our cluster to ensure the quorum requirements for two node cluster are satisfied. The file share witness will be configured on the DC2 server, the domain controller that is also running in the Azure Cloud.
Open up a RDP session to the domain controller in your Azure Private Cloud
Connect to your domain controller and create a file share called “Quorum”. You will need to give the Cluster Computer Name Object (which we called SQLCluster in this example) read/write permissions at both the Share level and Security (NTFS) level. If you are not familiar with creating a file share witness, you may want to review my previous post for more detail.
Once the file share witness folder is created on the domain controller, we need to add the witness in the cluster configuration using the Failover Cluster Manager on SQL1
The File Share Witness should now be configured as shown below.
A traditional failover cluster requires a shared storage device, like a SAN. The Azure IaaS cloud does not offer a storage solution that is capable of being used as a cluster disk, so we will use the 3rd party data replication solution called DataKeeper Cluster Edition which will allow us to create a replicate volume resource which can be used in place of a shared disk. A 14-day trial license is generally available for testing upon request.
Once you download DataKeeper, install it and license it on both SQL1 and SQL2 and reboot the servers. Once the servers reboot, connect to SQL1, launch the DataKeeper UI and complete the steps below.
“Connect” to both SQL1 and SQL2
Now click on “Create Job” and follow the steps illustrated below to create the mirror and DataKeeper Volume cluster resource.
Choose the source of the mirror. When you choose the IP Address for the source and target, be sure to choose IP address of the server itself, DO NOT CHOOSE THE CLUSTER IP ADDRESS!
For this implementation where both nodes are in the Azure Cloud, choose synchronous replication with no compression, as shown below.
Click Done and you will be asked if you want to register this mirror in Windows Server Failover Clustering. Click Yes.
You will now see there is DataKeeper Volume Resource in Available Storage when you open the Windows Server Failover Cluster GUI
You are now ready to install SQL Server into the cluster.
To start the SQL Server 2014 cluster installation, you must download the SQL 2014 ISO to SQL1 and SQL2. You can use SQL Server 2014 Standard Edition for a simple two node cluster. If you want to extend this cluster to a 3rd site for disaster recovery as we will discuss in the next post, then you will need the Enterprise Edition because the Standard Edition only supports a 2-node cluster. If you are only looking for a simple two node solution than SQL Server Standard Edition can be a much more economical solution.
Once SQL Server 2014 is downloaded to the servers, mount the ISO and run the setup. The option that we want is to open is in the Advanced tab. Open the Advanced tab and run the “Advanced cluster preparation“. My good friend and fellow Cluster MVP, Robert Smit, told me about using the Advanced option. Basically, the Advanced option lets you split the install into two different processes, preparation and completion. Many things can go wrong with cluster installations, usually related to active directory and privileges. If you use the standard install method you may wait 20 minutes or longer for the installation to complete, only to find out that at the last minute the cluster was unable to register the CNO in active directory and the whole installation fails. Not only did the whole installation fail, now you may have a partially installed SQL Server cluster and you have a mess to clean up. By using the Advanced method you are able to minimize the risk by putting the risky section just at the end during cluster completion. If cluster completion fails, you simply need to diagnose the problem and re-run just the cluster completion process once again.
If you really want to save some time, check out Robert’s article on installing SQL Cluster with a configuration file, it is pretty easy to do and saves a bunch of time if you are doing multiple installations. However, for our purposes we will walk through the SQL install with the GUI as shown below.
For demo purposes, I just used the administrator account for each of the services. In production you will want to create separate accounts for each service as a best practice.
Once the install completes it looks like this.
Now we are ready to move forward with part two of the installation, Advanced Cluster Completion.
Give the SQL instance a name. This is the name the clients will connect to. In this case I called it SQLINSTANCE1.
This is where the magic happens. If you configured the mirror in DataKeeper as described earlier, you will see the DataKeeper Volume listed here as an Available Shared Disk, when actually it is simply a replicated volume pair.
One the Cluster Network Configuration page, it is important to choose IPv4 and to specify an address that is not in use in your subnet. As stated before, this address should be at the higher end of the DHCP range to help minimize the risk that Azure will assign that address to another VM in the future. I highly suggest that you have a subnet that is dedicated to your cluster to avoid possible conflicts until Windows Azure offers us greater control over the IP addresses and DHCP ranges. Later, after the cluster is created, you will need to delete this client access point and add the client access point as described in http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlalwayson/archive/2013/08/06/availability-group-listener-in-windows-azure-now-supported-and-scripts-for-cloud-only-configuration.aspx. I will publish a blog post in the future that describes this process in detail.
On this page make sure you Click Add Current User, or specify the accounts you wish to use to administer SQL Server.
Starting with SQL Server 2012, tempdb no longer needs to be part of the SQL Server Cluster. If you move the tempdb to a non-replicated volume, you will need to make sure that directory structure exists on each node. To change the location of the tempdb, click on the Data Directories tab and change the location where the tempdb is located.
When the installation completes on SQL1, it is time to run the SQL installer on SQL2 and add the second node to the cluster. Run the Setup on SQL2 and choose Add node to a SQL Server failover cluster.
After the installation completes, you now have a fully functional SQL Server 2014 Failover Cluster Instance running on the Azure Cloud. Each instance is in a different Fault Domain providing a high level of resiliency. Be sure to replace the client access point with a client access point as described in my post…
In the next post in this series I will show you how to extend this two node cluster to a third node for a multi-site cluster. This third-node will be located in my on-premise data center, which will give us the ultimate in both high availability and disaster recovery.
Read here for more information about SQL Server 2014 Failover Cluster Instance
Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2014/01/10/creating-a-sql-server-2014-alwayson-failover-cluster-fci-instance-in-windows-azure-iaas-azure-cloud/
In part 1 of my series on using Windows Azure as a disaster recovery site, I explained how to create a site-to-site VPN tunnel to Azure Cloud using Windows Server 2012 R2 Routing and Remote Access (RRAS). Now that the two sites are connected, I’m going to walk you through the steps required deploy your first VM in the Windows Azure IaaS Cloud and add it to your on-premise network as a Domain Controller. I will assume you have already done the following:
At this point we are ready to stat. Open the Windows Azure Portal. You should minimally see the Virtual Network the we previously created listed when you select the “All Items” category on the left.
To provision your first VM, click on the “Virtual Machines” in the left hand navigation pane and click “+New” in the bottom left hand corner.
For our purposes, we are going to create a new virtual machine from the gallery.
We will use the Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter Image.
Pick your machine size, username and password.
The next step has you create a “Cloud Service”, “Storage Account” and Availability Set. It also asks you where to place the VM. We will choose the Virtual Network that you previously created when you created your site-to-site VPN. We will create a new Cloud Service and Storage Account. The rest of the VMs we will create later will make use of the different accounts we create this first time through.
The final page lists the ports where you can administer this VM, but I’ll show you an easy way to RDP to it in just a moment.
Once the VM is provisioned it should look something like this.
If you click on the VM’s name you will be taking to the VM’s welcome screen where you can learn more about managing the VM
Click on Dashboard, this will give you some detail information about your VM. From here you will be able to click on the Connect button and launch an RDP session to connect to the running VM
Using the username and password you specified when you provisioned the VM, use the RDP session that opens when you click Connect to log in to the provisioned VM. Once connected, you will notice that the VM has a single NIC and it is configured to use DHCP. This is expected and DHCP is required. The VM will maintain the same internal IP address throughout the life of the VM through a DHCP reservation. Static IP addresses are NOT support, even though it may appear to work for a while should you change it to a static IP.
Also notice that if you configured you Virtual Network as I described in part 1 , the DNS server should point to the DC/DNS Server that resides in your onsite network. This will ensure that we are able to add this server to the on-premise domain in the next step.
Assuming your VPN is connected to the Gateway as shown below, you should be able to ping the DNS server on the other side of the VPN.
Ping the DNS server to verify network communication between the Azure Cloud and your on-premise network.
At this point you are able to add this server as a second Domain Controller to your domain, just as you would any other typical domain controller. I’m going to assume you know to add a Domain Controller to an Existing Domain and are familiar with other best practices when it comes to AD design and deployment.
The last step I recommend you update your Azure Virtual Private Network to specify this new DC as the Primary DNS Server and use the other on-premise DC as your secondary domain controller.
Click on Networks, then the name of the Virtual Private Network you want to edit.
Add the new DNS server to the list and click Save
From this point on when you configure servers in this Virtual Private Network, the VMs will be automatically configure with two DNS servers.
In Part 3 of my series on configuring Windows Azure for High Availability and Disaster Recovery, we will look at deploying a highly available SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance in the Windows Azure Cloud using the host based replication solution call DataKeeper Cluster Edition.
Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2014/01/07/extending-your-datacenter-to-the-azure-cloud-azure/
Are you wondering how your Microsoft cluster quorum should be configured? Microsoft MVP Dave Bermingham will simplify your quorum configuration options and give you the building blocks to better define or improve your cluster and quorum configuration. Dave will also break down quorum configurations based on your current server version, upgrade advantages and he’ll showcase some new options to achieve a majority and tackle interesting cases such as: What happens if you have no shared storage or want to use the cloud as a file share witness…
You can participate before the event by tweeting your questions to @SIOSTech using #Clustering101 and of course bring your own questions and comments.
Date: February 25, 2014
Time: 10:00a PST — 1:00pm EST
Clustering 101 is a webinar series hosted by Microsoft MVP, Dave Bermingham focused on addressing the numerous facets of clustering for high availability, data replication and any combination there of. This series will air monthly, the fourth Wednesday of the month at 10:00a PST / 1:00p EST.
David Bermingham is recognized within the technology community as a high availability expert and has been honored by his peers by being elected to be a Microsoft MVP in clustering since 2010. David’s work as director, technical evangelist at SIOS Technology Corp., has him focused on Microsoft high availability and disaster recovery solutions as well as providing hands on support, training and professional services for cluster implementations. David holds numerous technical certifications and draws from more than twenty years of experience in IT, including work in the finance, healthcare and education fields, to help organizations design solutions to meet their high availability and disaster recovery needs. Learn more at www.us.sios.com