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InfoScale™ 9.0 Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions Microsoft Clustering Solutions Guide for Microsoft SQL Server - Windows

Last Published: 2025-04-13

Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (9.0)

Platform: Windows

Workflow for a campus cluster configuration

You can install and configure InfoScale Storage and SQL Server in a Microsoft campus cluster.

This configuration workflow describes a two-node campus cluster with each node at a separate site.

The procedures for setting up a campus cluster are nearly the same as those for local clusters, with the following differences:

A campus cluster has the nodes located in separate buildings. Therefore, the hardware setup requires SAN interconnects that allow these connections.
In a campus cluster, each node has its own storage array rather than having a shared storage array between the two clusters.
Both local clusters and campus clusters have SFW dynamic disk groups and volumes, but the volumes on each campus cluster node are mirrors of one another. Each disk group must contain the same number of disks on each site for the mirrored volumes.
For campus clusters, you enable site allocation, assigning disks to one or the other campus cluster sites.

Table: Process for deploying SQL Server with InfoScale Storage in a Microsoft campus cluster

Action	Description
Understand the configuration	See Planning your campus cluster configuration.
Configure the storage hardware and network	Set up the storage hardware for a cluster environment. Verify the DNS entries for the systems on which SQL will be installed. See Configuring the storage hardware and network.
Establish a Microsoft cluster	Connect the two campus cluster nodes after setting up the Microsoft cluster. See Campus cluster: Connecting the two nodes.
Install InfoScale Storage with the Microsoft Failover Cluster option	Refer to the Arctera InfoScale™ Installation and Upgrade Guide.
Configure and manage disk groups and volumes	Use the VEA console to create disk groups and volumes for the application and for the quorum resource. See Tasks for configuring InfoScale Storage. Ensure that the disk group you configure on each site contains the same number of disks and that you configure mirrored volumes. See Considerations when creating disk groups and volumes for a campus cluster. After creating the disk group, add the disks to a campus cluster site to enable site allocation. See Adding disks to campus cluster sites. Note: Setting up a Microsoft failover cluster creates physical disk resources for all the basic disks on the shared bus. To use these disks when you create your SFW cluster disk groups, you must first remove the physical disk resources from the cluster. Otherwise, a reservation conflict occurs.
Implement a dynamic mirrored quorum resource	Create a dynamic cluster disk group with a mirrored volume for the quorum disks. Create a Volume Manager Disk Group (VMDG) resource for the quorum disk group. Change the cluster quorum resource to the dynamic mirrored quorum resource. See Tasks for implementing a dynamic mirrored quorum resource.
Create the SQL virtual server group	Create a SQL Server cluster group. Add the VMDG disk group resource(s). See Creating the resource group for the SQL Server instance.
Install SQL Server	Mount the disk group and volumes created for the data files on the node where you install. Install the software. Ensure that you install the data files to the path of the dynamic volume on shared storage. See Installing SQL Server in an InfoScale Storage environment. Verify the resource dependencies. See Dependency graph for SQL Server.
Create a group for the application in the failover cluster	Create a group within the failover cluster for the application. Include the cluster disk group or groups for the application as Volume Manager Disk Group type resources in the group.
Install the application on cluster nodes	Install the application program files on the local drive of the first node. Install files relating to the data and logs on the shared storage. Move the cluster resources to the second node. Make sure that the volumes on the second node have the same drive letters or mount points that they had on the first node. Install the application on the second node.
Complete the setup of the application group in the failover cluster	Refer to the application documentation for help on creating its resource. Establish the appropriate dependencies.
Verify the cluster configuration	Move the online SQL Server cluster group to the second node and back to the first node. See Verifying the SQL Server group in the Microsoft cluster.