What is the Best SQL 2012 cluster method available

Question

Can someone advise me on below scenario?

I’m going to have SQL 2012 cluster for my app,

1. What is the best clustering technology available in SQL 2012 to provide better performance as well as high availability?
2. Dose it support majority node clustering, if so any documentation?
3. Is it a must to have shared storage for SQL cluster?
4. How dose SQL will handle locking /unlocking in a cluster

Answer 1

https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/tracks/mission-critical-confidence-using-microsoft-sql-server-2012

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/FCI/92196/

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Best Regards,Uri Dimant SQL Server MVP, http://sqlblog.com/blogs/uri_dimant/

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Answer 2

Answers inline

What is the best clustering technology available in SQL 2012 to provide better performance as well as high availability?

"Best" is really determined by business requirements, however one of the most mature is AlwaysOn Failover Clustered Instances (or SQL Clustering) which will give you instance level HA.

Does it support majority node clustering, if so any documentation?

By majority node clustering I assume you mean majority-node set -which is specific to the quorum and availability of your cluster. Yes you can choose your quorum model with FCI. Clustering works on a shared nothing principle, so one FCI can only run on one Cluster node at any one time -just in case this was what you meant by your question. There is a lot of documentation accessible through MSDN, simply google for those concepts you need.

Is it a must to have shared storage for SQL cluster?

Yes (sort off). Shared storage is a necessary component of an FCI however single point of failure on disk failure can be avoided by designing a multisite cluster using asymetric storage.

How dose SQL will handle locking /unlocking in a cluster

Locking is handled, no differently than on an FCI than on a standalone instance.

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Regards,
Mark Broadbent.

Contact me through (twitter|blog|SQLCloud)

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Answer 3

Uri and Mark both provide excellent feedback.  In general, clustering does nothing to increase performance.  The only thing remotely related to increasing performance would be read-only secondaries that you can enable with AlwaysOn Availability Groups.  Backup and reporting can be redirected to a read-only copy of the database on a secondary instance to lighten the load of the primary server.

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David A. Bermingham, MVP, Senior Technical Evangelist, SIOS Technology Corp

Answer 4

What is the best clustering technology available in SQL 2012 to provide better performance as well as high availability?

Prior to SQL2012 there is only one SQL cluster technology. FCI (Fail over cluster instance). SQL 2012 introduced Always on failover cluster. These two are high availability cluster technologies. From performance point of view these are not too different from standard alone. Yes there is little bit overhead as Shared disks are in SYNC in FCI. And data bases in SYNC in Always on.

 Dose it support majority node clustering, if so any documentation?

This is part if Quorum configuration and i believe all windows servers that support cluster supports this.

Is it a must to have shared storage for SQL cluster?

Yes/No.

 Not required If you are using Always on Failover cluster as this fail over is in database level and instances are different.

YES-if you use FCI as fail over in at instance level.

I strongly support Mark comment: "Yes (sort off). Shared storage is a necessary component of an FCI however single point of failure on disk failure can be avoided by designing a multisite cluster using asymetric storage."

How dose SQL will handle locking /unlocking in a cluster

same as standard alone instance...

thanks

kumar