Does SQL Server support 'true' Active/Active Clustering?

Question

Does SQL Server support 'true' Active/Active Clustering?

I believe that SQL Server JUST supports a Failover Clustering where only one node is active at a certain point of time and next node takes up the work post a failover happens automatically/manually triggered.

I got confused today when somebody referred Active/Active Clustering for SQL Server as what I understand from Active/Active is that all nodes that are a part of the cluster are active and accessing the same set of database files...like we have in Oracle RAC.

Answer 1

No, SQL Server does not support load balanced clustering as in Oracle RAC or VMS clustering.  It is failover clustering only...

Some people use the term active/active to indicate they have an instance of SQL Server running on both nodes.  That is, 2 separate SQL Server instances with separate storage and databases.  I term this a multi-instance cluster because each instance could be running on either node at any given time.  It could be active/passive (both active on node 1, node 2 idle), active/active (one instance active on each node) or passive/active (both active on node 2, node 1 idle).

The problem with that terminology is that it really isn't clear which node is hosting which instance.

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Jeff Williams

Answer 2

An well discussion on the acticve/active and active/passive in SQL server 2005/2008 you can find in the below thread-

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqldisasterrecovery/thread/05cf41b7-c558-44bf-86c6-12f5c2b2ffe2

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Rama Udaya.K ramaudaya.blogspot.com ---------------------------------------- Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.

Answer 3

Thanks for the reply!

I had the same understanding...

Answer 4

There is a shared nothing technology available for sQL Server, the "Parallel Data Warehouse Edition". As the name indicates, it is targeted towards data warehouses.

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Tibor Karaszi, SQL Server MVP | web | blog

Answer 5

As it been answered, I'll second that motion.  No, unfortunately SQL Server does not have an 'Oracle RAC' configuration.  I'd like to see this in a future release as Oracle has been doing it for years.  For many of us who manage both Oracle and SQL Server databases; this has always been a missing feature of SQL Server.

Roz