Cluster Server 8.0 Implementation Guide for Microsoft SQL Server - Windows
- Section I. Introducing Veritas InfoScale solutions for application high availability
- Understanding the InfoScale solutions for application high availability
- About the VCS agents for SQL Server
- How VCS monitors storage components
- How application availability is achieved in a physical environment
- How is application availability achieved in a VMware virtual environment
- Managing storage and installing the VCS agents
- Installing SQL Server
- Understanding the InfoScale solutions for application high availability
- Section II. Configuring SQL Server in a physical environment
- Overview
- Configuring the VCS cluster
- Configuring the SQL Server service group
- Configuring a SQL Server service group using the wizard
- Making SQL Server user-defined databases highly available
- Verifying the service group configuration
- Administering a SQL Server service group
- Configuring an MSDTC service group
- Configuring the standalone SQL Server
- Configuring an Active/Active cluster
- Configuring a disaster recovery setup
- Section III. Configuring SQL Server in a VMware environment
- Configuring application monitoring using the Veritas High Availability solution
- Administering application monitoring
- Administering application monitoring using the Veritas High Availability tab
- Administering application availability using Veritas High Availability dashboard
- Understanding the dashboard work area
- Section IV. Appendixes
- Appendix A. Troubleshooting
- Error and warning messages from VCS agent for SQL Server
- Troubleshooting application monitoring configuration issues
- Troubleshooting Veritas High Availability view issues
- Appendix B. Using the virtual MMC viewer
- Appendix A. Troubleshooting
Managing storage using VMware virtual disks
Configure the storage disks to save the application data.
VMware virtualization manages the application data by storing it on SAN LUNs (RDM file), or creating virtual disks on a local or networked storage attached to the ESX host using iSCSI, network, or Fibre Channel. The virtual disks reside on a datastore or a raw disk that exists on the storage disks used.
For more information, refer to the VMware documentation.
The application monitoring configuration in a VMware environment requires you to use the RDM or VMDK disk formats. During a failover, these disks can be deported from a system and imported to another system.
Consider the following to manage the storage disks:
Use a networked storage and create virtual disks on the datastores that are accessible to all the ESX servers that hosts the VCS cluster systems.
In case of virtual disks, create non-shared virtual disks (Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed).
Add the virtual disks to the virtual machine on which you want to start the configured application.
Create volumes on the virtual disks.
Note:
If your storage configuration involves NetApp filers that are directly connected to the systems using iSCSI initiator, you cannot configure application monitoring in a virtual environment with non-shared disks.
The VCS agent for SQL Server requires that you create two volumes, one for the SQL Server data and the other for the registry replication information.
If you use SQL Server FILESTREAM, create additional volumes for the FILESTREAM-enabled database objects.
Veritas recommends that you create separate volumes for the following:
INST1_DATA_FILES
Contains the SQL Server system data files (including the master, model, msdb, and tempdb databases).
INST1_REGREP_VOL
Contains the list of registry keys that must be replicated among cluster systems for the SQL Server service. Create a 100 MB (minimum recommended size) volume for this purpose.
INST1_FS_VOL
Contains the FILESTREAM-enabled database objects for the SQL Server database.
INST1_DB1_VOL
Contains the user database files.
INST1_DB1_LOG
Contains the user database log files.
INST1_DB1_FS_VOL
Contains the FILESTREAM-enabled database objects for the user database.
The following VCS storage agents are used to monitor the storage components involving non-shared storage:
If the storage is managed using SFW, the MountV, VMNSDg, and VMwareDisks agents are used.
If the storage is managed using LDM, the Mount, NativeDisks, and VMwareDisks agents are used.
Before configuring the storage, you can review the resource types and attribute definitions of these VCS storage agents. For details refer to the Cluster Server Bundled Agents Reference Guide.